The Ghost Party

by Henrietta Clandon

Jonnie Rogers tells his fellow guests at a Devonshire hotel that the nearby Dower House is reputedly haunted, and makes up a party to stay at night in the haunted house. Each person is to spend an hour in complete darkness in an allotted room. The result is unexpectedly tragic. One of the ghost investigators is killed in his room, while Rogers who was on guard at the top of the stairs is assaulted in the darkness and knocked unconscious. Also an old lady is found murdered at the hotel. Chief Inspector Grath of Scotland Yard is called in to solve the murders, while the guests anxiously eye each other as potential killers.

HENRIETTA CLANDON was the pen name of the incredibly prolific Irish author John Haslette Vahey (1881-1938), who wrote dozens of crime novels under various pseudonyms, most notably VERNON LODER.

245 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 16, 2023

About the author

"Vernon Loder was a pseudonym for John George Hazlette Vahey (1881-1938), an Anglo-Irish writer who also wrote as Henrietta Clandon, John Haslette, Anthony Lang, John Mowbray, Walter Proudfoot and George Varney. He was born in Belfast and educated at Ulster, Foyle College, and Hanover. Four years after he graduated college he was apprenticed to an architect and later tried his hand at accounting before turning to fiction writing full time." - DSP

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

First published in 1934,this was the second of the seven novels which this prolific author, best known as Vernon Loder, wrote as Henrietta Clandon

It is a very middling example of his work, as ever coming up with some good ideas and some touches of humour but just failing to make it into the first rank.

Here the wheeze is murder done while a group of people staying at a hotel in Devon are spending an hour or two separately in a “ haunted” old house. Instead of the usual amateurs taking centre stage,the investigation is handed over to Scotland Yard in the shapes of the rather interesting DS Bow and CI Jimmy Grath. The Chief Constable, Captain Hobell, is of the interfering kind:-

“Murder cases are bad enough in any circumstances, but their investigation under a head who is fussy, bullying, interfering, and egotistical, promised to lead to at least one more murder.”

However the detective duo prove more than adept at avoiding him and the bulk of the plot is taken up by eliminating suspects by a careful examination of their backgrounds.

Despite the occasional flashes of wry wit, it was a trifle dull for me as I spotted the perpetrator early on, although it was hard to fathom motive until some back history was given.

Loder is always very readable and here the interplay between the lead detectives held my attention through some of the more pedestrian scenes.

3.5 stars