The Grave Digger of Monk's Arden

by Arthur Gask

In Colchester a recently bereaved husband sees in a shop-window a plaster-cast made from a death mask of his dead wife. He is sure no death mask of her was ever taken; and in great distress, asks Gilbert Larose, the famous investigator, to solve the mystery. Larose is soon upon the track of a sinister figure, but immediately he finds the trail crossing that of a far greater criminal who believes he has committed two murders and will never be found out.

Larose relentlessly pursues him, but his quarry suddenly becomes aware that he is being followed. He strikes quickly and with a sure hand to save himself; yet, with his escape certain and his safety quite assured, he makes one great mistake. Larose then finds himself in danger from the authorities, and it is only by a master-stroke that he succeeds in extricating himself from a highly invidious predicament.

316 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1938

About the author

Arthur Cecil Gask was born at St Marylebone, Middlesex (now London), and trained in dentistry, a profession he continued for the next forty years. He married in 1898 and had four children, then divorced his wife and married his children's nanny in 1909. He came to Australia in 1920 with his second wife and their two sons, establishing a practice in Adelaide. The publication of his first novel, The Secret of the Sand Hills (1921), was self-funded, but when the first edition sold out within weeks a London publisher, Herbert Jenkins, republished it, and it soon became a bestseller. Gask went on to write more than thirty crime and detective novels-averaging one a year-with many of them set in and around Adelaide, including The Red Paste Murders (1923), Cloud the Smiter (1926) and The Shadow of Larose (1930).

Reviews

[Paul Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

[Herbert Jenkins Ltd.] (1938). eBook. 316 Pages. Obtained from https://gutenberg.net.au.

An entry in the marathon Gilbert Larose series.

Well written. Convoluted. Grotesque.

Features murder, premature burial, suicide, grave robbery, swindling, hidden rooms, crypts, asylums, two psychopaths and a mad professor - expertly blended into an incredible, page-turning yarn.