Opfer № 27

Arthur Crook #45

by Anthony Gilbert

№ 27 is written on the envelope that the journalist Margaret Ross finds near the body of the murdered blackmailer. So she wasn't his only victim. But who is № 27? Margaret's own son?

The nineteen-year-old boy had an affair with the murdered man's wife. Was that why he was blackmailed by him? Did he kill you in his desperation?

Margaret fights doggedly to save her son, supported by Arthur Crook, the lawyer who has never lost a client - especially not to the executioner.
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Nr. 27 steht auf dem Briefumschlag, den die Journalistin Margaret Ross bie der Leiche des ermordenten Erpressers findet. Also war sie nicht sein einziges opfer. Aber wer ist Nr. 27? Margarets eigener sohn?

Der neunzehnjährige junge hatte ein verhältnis mit der frau des ermordenten. Wurde er deshalb von ihm erpreßit? Erschlug er inh in seiner Verzweiflung?

Verbissen Kämpft Margaret um die Rettung ihres sohnes, unterstütz von Arthur Crook, dem Rechtsanwalt, der noch nie einen Klienten verlor -- schon gar nicht an den Henker.

141 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Anthony Gilbert was the pen name of Lucy Malleson an English crime writer. She also wrote non-genre fiction as Anne Meredith , under which name she also published one crime novel. She also wrote an autobiography under the Meredith name, Three-a-Penny (1940).

Her parents wanted her to be a schoolteacher but she was determined to become a writer. Her first mystery novel followed a visit to the theatre when she saw The Cat and the Canary then, Tragedy at Freyne, featuring Scott Egerton who later appeared in 10 novels, was published in 1927.

She adopted the pseudonym Anthony Gilbert to publish detective novels which achieved great success and made her a name in British detective literature, although many of her readers had always believed that they were reading a male author. She went on to publish 69 crime novels, 51 of which featured her best known character, Arthur Crook. She also wrote more than 25 radio plays, which were broadcast in Great Britain and overseas.

Crook is a vulgar London lawyer totally (and deliberately) unlike the aristocratic detectives who dominated the mystery field when Gilbert introduced him, such as Lord Peter Wimsey.

Instead of dispassionately analyzing a case, he usually enters it after seemingly damning evidence has built up against his client, then conducts a no-holds-barred investigation of doubtful ethicality to clear him or her.

The first Crook novel, Murder by Experts, was published in 1936 and was immediately popular. The last Crook novel, A Nice Little Killing, was published in 1974.

Her thriller The Woman in Red (1941) was broadcast in the United States by CBS and made into a film in 1945 under the title My Name is Julia Ross. She never married, and evidence of her feminism is elegantly expressed in much of her work.