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Twenty Plus Two
Twenty two years ago a young girl disappeared from an upper class boarding school. She was young. She was beautiful. She was the heiress to a million dollar fortune.
Twenty two years is a long time to keep searching for a girl. The police had tried and failed. So had the FBI and a score of fortune hunters.
But she had disappeared completely ... as though the earth had swallowed her up.
What chance had a private detective of finding her when the trail was twenty two years stale? And when there were people who were willing to kill and kill again to stop her from being discovered?
Twenty two years is a long time to keep searching for a girl. The police had tried and failed. So had the FBI and a score of fortune hunters.
But she had disappeared completely ... as though the earth had swallowed her up.
What chance had a private detective of finding her when the trail was twenty two years stale? And when there were people who were willing to kill and kill again to stop her from being discovered?
160 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1961
About the author
Frank Gruber
156 books19 followersLibrarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Frank Gruber was an enormously prolific author of pulp fiction. A stalwart contributor to Black Mask magazine, he also wrote novels, producing as many as four a year during the 1940s. His best-known character was Oliver Quade, “the Human Encyclopedia,” whose adventures were collected in Brass Knuckles (1966), and will soon be republished in ebook format as Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia,featuring brand-new material, from MysteriousPress.com, Open Road Integrated Media, and Black Mask magazine.
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Frank Gruber was an enormously prolific author of pulp fiction. A stalwart contributor to Black Mask magazine, he also wrote novels, producing as many as four a year during the 1940s. His best-known character was Oliver Quade, “the Human Encyclopedia,” whose adventures were collected in Brass Knuckles (1966), and will soon be republished in ebook format as Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia,featuring brand-new material, from MysteriousPress.com, Open Road Integrated Media, and Black Mask magazine.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 24, 2009
One of my favorite mysteries. It is a classic detective-centered mystery involving murder, a missing heiress, and invincible integrity. Frank Gruber was best known as a western writer, but this book had perfect voice in the mystery noir genre.
July 11, 2026
An intelligent, finely crafted noir.
Tom Alder finds heirs. When someone dies and leaves money and possessions to distant relatives, he's the one that gets hired to find the long lost nephews and cousins. It's a fascinating idea for a job and Alder is a great investigator and always finds his man/woman. But this story is not about finding an heir. Instead Alder is seeking answers to a murder that he believes is related to a missing person report from 22 years ago.
I really enjoyed this. I've never read Gruber before. I know he is mostly known for westerns and writing television scripts, but if this book is any indication about his talent for crafting a story, I'm going to seek out more by this guy. The story was smart, had interesting characters, and a pretty good mystery at its heart. The ending might be a little too neatly tied up, but I'll be dipped if it wasn't some white-knuckle reading during the last 30 pages. I certainly did not close the book unsatisfied.
Tom Alder finds heirs. When someone dies and leaves money and possessions to distant relatives, he's the one that gets hired to find the long lost nephews and cousins. It's a fascinating idea for a job and Alder is a great investigator and always finds his man/woman. But this story is not about finding an heir. Instead Alder is seeking answers to a murder that he believes is related to a missing person report from 22 years ago.
I really enjoyed this. I've never read Gruber before. I know he is mostly known for westerns and writing television scripts, but if this book is any indication about his talent for crafting a story, I'm going to seek out more by this guy. The story was smart, had interesting characters, and a pretty good mystery at its heart. The ending might be a little too neatly tied up, but I'll be dipped if it wasn't some white-knuckle reading during the last 30 pages. I certainly did not close the book unsatisfied.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews