Set amid the natural beauty of West Virginia, these tales of crime and its detection feature a modern-day investigative team as well as Uncle Abner, Melville D. Post's righteous 19th-century sleuth.
A scientifically minded professor is stumped by a case involving séances and an inexplicable inheritance . . . After drifting apart from Sir John Claverton, Dr. Lancelot Priestley is finally visiting his old friend for dinner. But Claverton’s situation is worrying. He’s surrounded by relatives, among them a sister who speaks to the dead—but not to him—and a niece who may or may not be a qualified nurse. Based on Claverton’s odd behavior, Priestley and a mutual friend suspect that someone is slipping him arsenic. But when Priestley discovers that Claverton has died just a week later and shares his concerns with the police, no trace of arsenic—or anything else untoward—is found during the autopsy. Still, the perceptive professor can’t shake his sense that something isn’t right, and Claverton’s recently revised will only adds to the mystery . . . “The puzzle is sound, the atmosphere menacing in a splendidly gloomy way.” —Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, A Catalogue of Crime “You can never go far wrong with a Dr. Priestley story.” —The New York Times
A body on the tracks and a pair of missing wills have Dr. Priestley puzzled . . . Gervase Wickenden’s estate is close to a railroad line—and that’s where his mangled body is found after an unfortunate meeting with a train. The timing is a bit odd though, considering this happened only two days after Wickenden changed his will. And now, neither version of the will can be located . . . The heirs ask Dr. Lancelot Priestley to look into the matter of the missing documents, but he soon stumbles on something else entirely: evidence that the train was not the actual cause of death. It’s up to him to deduce the facts behind this fatal so-called accident, in a compelling British mystery by a Golden Age master. “You can never go far wrong with a Dr. Priestley story.” —The New York Times
The “astute and sharp-spoken” crime-solving professor must find out if a missing man got away with murder (The New York Times). After some initial suspicion, the death of Ernest Venner’s wealthy uncle was attributed to natural causes—a simple infection. But Dr. Lancelot Priestley and his crime-solving companions find it intriguing, to say the least, that as soon as Venner collected his much-needed inheritance, he vanished into the wind. Digging into the disappearance, though, will lead Priestley to some dangerous places, in this suspenseful Golden Age mystery featuring the scientifically minded sleuth . . .
The next time you visit Olympia, take a good look around and see if you think it would be possible to murder someone in the middle of the crowd there without being seen.
This is the first book to describe the early English woollens’ industry and its dominance of the trade in quality cloth across Europe by the mid-sixteenth century, as English trade was transformed from dependence on wool to value-added woollen cloth. It compares English and continental draperies, weighs the advantages of urban and rural production, and examines both quality and coarse cloths. Rural clothiers who made broadcloth to a consistent high quality at relatively low cost, Merchant Adventurers who enjoyed a trade monopoly with the Low Countries, and Antwerp’s artisans who finished cloth to customers’ needs all eventually combined to make English woollens unbeatable on the continent.
“The murders are most ingeniously planned and executed, and even Dr. Priestley is put to a severe test before the story is ended.” —The New York Times Constable Frean had an unpleasant sensation that he was not, as he seemed to be, patrolling a respectable London suburb, but was back at the Front in the year 1918, enduring a particularly vicious bombardment. Crash! With a roar like a bursting shell the roof of a nearby house blew off. Heading a rescue party, the constable found part of the house in ruins, and the owner, Sir Andrew Wiggenhall, missing. Eventually, his remains, or part of them, were discovered in the garden. Thus passed the Chairman of the Board of Porslin Ltd. Some months later another member of the same board of directors died in mysterious circumstances. Still another followed shortly. The reason for these apparently unrelated mysteries puzzled the police and intrigued Dr. Priestley. After a series of clever deductions, and as a result of clues which led far back into the past, he unearthed the secret of the Death that sat on the Board of Directors.
An “extremely clever” mystery about a doctor who appears to have fatally injected himself and a dinner party devoted to detection (The Saturday Review). Dr. Richard Mawsley was a happy man and a careful man. So how and why did the Harley Street specialist inject himself with strychnine while in his locked office? There’s no hint that anyone else was at the scene, and the guests at Dr. Lancelot Priestley’s weekly dinner party, including two from Scotland Yard, are determined to figure out what happened. Did he suddenly become despondent, or pick up the wrong bottle? This band of crime-solvers is puzzled indeed, and Priestley is left to wonder if there’s another possibility beyond accident, murder, or suicide . . . “A scientist who turns to crime puzzles for recreation . . . The more difficult they are, the better he likes them.” —The New York Times
Death on the Boat Train, first published in 1940, is book no. 32 in the series of mysteries featuring private detective Dr. Priestley and Scotland Yard's Superintendent Hanslet and Inspector Jimmy Waghorn. Author John Rhode, a pen name of Cecil Street (1884-1964), was a prolific writer of mostly detective novels, publishing more than 140 books between 1924 and 1961. From the dustjacket: Fair blew the wind from France, and the Channel steamer Isle of Jethou rolled a bit in the stiff southwesterly breeze. But the rough crossing didn’t upset the mysterious passenger who had locked himself into his cabin as soon as he boarded the boat at Guernsey. The same desire for seclusion had manifested itself on the boat-train to Waterloo, for the guard had been presented with a pound-note to reserve a compartment for Mr. Mystery. But did he travel alone? For at Waterloo the gentleman from Guernsey was a pretty genuine corpse. Death on the Boat-Train is a first-rate detective story, once again featuring the coldly clever scientific mind of Dr. Priestley, John Rhode’s brilliant creation.
Servitization and Physical Asset Management, third edition, was developed to provide a structured source of guidance and reference information on the business opportunities linked to servitization and the management of physical assets. A growing trend in the global economy, servitization focuses on the actual deliverables of an asset from the perspective of the customer: electricity instead of the power plant, thrust instead of the engine, mobility instead of a plane or a car. The book offers high-level overviews of how to servitized and manage assets from a variety of perspectives, reviewing nearly 1,500 books, magazine articles, papers and presentations and websites. Written by Michael J. Provost, Ph.D., and a subject matter expert in modeling, simulation, analysis and condition monitoring, Servitization and Physical Asset Management, third edition, is an invaluable reference to those considering providing asset management services for the products they design and manufacture. It is also meant to support middle management wishing to know what needs to be done to look after the assets they are responsible for and who to approach for help, and academics doing research in this field. Michael Provost, is a British engineer with a doctoral degree in thermal power from Cranfield University.
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