Speedy Death
  • Published: 15 April 2014
  • ISBN: 9780099582267
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $24.99

Speedy Death

Formats & editions
EBook
3 Apr 2014
Paperback
15 Apr 2014
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READ ALL AGATHA CHRISTIE? TRY A VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERY
Introducing the inimitable Mrs Bradley, the most gloriously unorthodox female detective in Golden Age crime fiction

A VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERY
Rediscover Gladys Mitchell – one of the 'Big Three' female crime fiction writers alongside Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers.

Alastair Bing's guests gather around his dining table at Chaynings, a charming country manor. But one seat, belonging to the legendary explorer Everard Mountjoy, remains empty. When the other guests search the house, a body is discovered in a bath, drowned. The body is that of a woman, but could the corpse in fact be Mountjoy? A peculiar and sinister sequence of events has only just begun...

This is Gladys Mitchell's first book and it marks the entrance of the inimitable Mrs Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, psychoanalyst and unorthodox amateur sleuth, into the world of detective fiction. But instead of leading the police to the murderer, she begins as their chief suspect.
  • Published: 15 April 2014
  • ISBN: 9780099582267
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $24.99
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About the author

Gladys Mitchell

Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell – or ‘The Great Gladys’ as Philip Larkin called her – was born in 1901, in Cowley in Oxfordshire. She graduated in history from University College London and in 1921 began her long career as a teacher. Her hobbies included architecture and writing poetry. She studied the works of Sigmund Freud and her interest in witchcraft was encouraged by her friend, the detective novelist Helen Simpson.

Her first novel, Speedy Death, was published in 1929 and introduced readers to Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, the detective heroine of a further sixty six crime novels. She wrote at least one novel a year throughout her career and was an early member of the Detection Club, alongside Agatha Christie, G.K Chesterton and Dorothy Sayers. In 1961 she retired from teaching and, from her home in Dorset, continued to write, receiving the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger in 1976. Gladys Mitchell died in 1983.

Also by Gladys Mitchell

Death Comes at Christmas
Murder in the Snow
The Mrs Bradley Mysteries
The Devil at Saxon Wall
The Longer Bodies
Here Comes a Chopper
Dance to your Daddy
See all

Praise for Speedy Death

She is one of the Big Three women detective writers

Observer

Begins like a parody of a country house murder. But you soon see that the author means the jokes, and also develops both a tricky mystery and a quite solid argument about crime and its disruption of society. Then she brings it all to a head in a very remarkable conclusion. From the start, Mitchell was outstanding.

Glasgow Herald

A crime writer who, in her day, ranked with Christie and Sayers

Daily Mail

Extremely well constructed story of murder and detection...Mrs Bradley is the prize piece

Daily News

Gladys Mitchell can always be relied upon for a packed and meaty novel, and an intelligent one at that

Guardian

Mrs Bradley is full of surprises. Ugly she may be, but dull, never

Barry Turner, Daily Mail

Shrewd, intelligent, interesting, and really rather funny

Kirsty Hewitt, Nudge
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