Lock and Key

Matt Erridge #9

by Aaron Marc Stein

Love laughs at locksmiths? Anywhere else perhaps, but never in that apartment. One lived there as an oasis of peace from the city...but found ultimate peach and permanent quite. Another took up residence because no where else would have her...an alcoholic, she was beyond caring but rape and murder left her beyond everything. Another was pathetically innocent...even fatally trusting.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Aaron Marc Stein was an American novelist. Born in New York City and educated at Princeton, Stein worked as a journalist in the 1920s and 1930s before becoming a full-time fiction writer. During WWII he worked for the Office of War Information and did Army work in Chinese and Japanese translation. Stein wrote under the pseudonyms of George Babgy (the Inspector Schmidt series) and Hampton Stone (stories about NY Assistant DA, Jeremiah Gibson). Under his own name Stein has created the archaeologist detectives Tim Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt, and the hard-bitten engineer Matt Erridge.

Reviews

[Palmer Sheppard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Goodreads lists this book as #9 in the Matt Erridge series. This is incorrect, Matt Erridge does not appear in this book.

The story. Every time this specific apartment is rented, the woman ends up murdered. Who is the killer? Lastly a couple rents the apartment which had previously been rented by the single women. Does it happen again to the married woman?

Eventually the cases are solved but this is not a compelling story. Too poorly written to be satisfying with a thin plot, overly wordy even though it is only 208 pages and I'm sure you will figure out the plot twist long before it unfolds in the story.

Aaron Marc Stein does write some good books, this is not one of them.