Sailor, Take Warning!

Jeff and Haila Troy Mystery #4

by Kelley Roos

Things this Mystery is about -

A nail-like piece of STEEL buried in the neck of a millionaire...A wealthy YACHT CLUB whose activities are confined to a small pond in Central Park in New York...Ten ONE-HUNDRED-DOLLAR BILLS picked from Jeff Troy's pocket and buried in a tea canister...A freshly pressed BLOUSE which destroyed the alibi of a matinee idol...An illicit LOVE NOTE smuggled across a pond in a toy boat...A rain-drenched JOURNEY TO HOBOKEN which had amazing results...A DARK FIGURE huddled in the rain and gloom of Gay Street...A tiny gold and jeweled ELEPHANT which had been torn from a watch chain...A LIBRARY with long shelves of books on ballistics, philately, numismatics, and cryptography...Three SHOTS in Central Park.

Wouldn't You Like To Know -
*How Austin Marshall was murdered when nobody else was in sight?
*Where the mysterious thousand-dollar retainer came from?
*Who pillaged the Troy apartment?
*Why William Phillips refused to offer his perfectly good alibi?
*What was the danger Diane Phillips was deathly afraid of?
*Who slugged her on the head?
*What the Troys found in the back yard of No. 479 Pine Street?
*Who made the mysterious telephone call to Diane Phillips?
*Who fired the shots in Central Park?

YOU will learn the answers to these questions in a story that is packed with incident and action, with chill terror, and with fast, amusing patter - when Jeff and Haila Troy take off in pursuit of a murderer on a mad trail that crisscrosses Manhattan, with an incredible side trip to Hoboken.

Genres: Mystery

192 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1944

About the author

Joint pseudonym. Audrey Kelley Roos [1912-1982] & William Roos [1911-1987] were a married couple who wrote about a a married couple; their series detectives were Jeff and Haila Troy, aided by NY Lieutenant George Hankins. Roos also wrote some non-series mysteries.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Photographer Jeff Troy and his wife Haila are visiting Central Park and run into a group of adult enthusiasts for model boats, which they sail in the lake. When one of them is found impossibly murdered (he's sitting on a rocky knoll and no-one approaches him before he's stabbed), the wife of one of the suspects hires Jeff for the princely sum of $1000--well, it's 1944 and that's a lot of money. Jeff doesn't want to investigate, but Haila insists, and they find themselves questioning a lot of different suspects and getting in a lot of trouble. Humorous, light-hearted, sometimes spooky--the Troys cover a lot of ground until they identify the not-at-all lighthearted motive for murder.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my full review click the link below:
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress...

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable, quick read. My first experience with this author (actually written by a husband & wife team), apparently I started in the middle of a series so maybe it would rate higher if read in sequence.

[Jeffrey Marks · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the better Haila and Jeff Troys with a plot that can be figured out to some degree (though one twist was confusing to me.) Very enjoyable look at NYC in the 1940s war years.

[Pam]

11/23/07 rec via bookmooch