Bøker av Harry Carmichael

On the night that Quinn of the Morning Post began his holiday, he strayed into a late party. When he got drunk, a girl called Carole made herself responsible for him. Next day, she took him off for a quiet weekend with friends in Dorset. But within a few hours, death had joined the guests at Elm Lodge...Inevitably, Quinn gets caught up in the smouldering passions that govern the house of secrets.

When insurance assessor John Piper calls at the Daveys' flat in Hampstead, he has no idea that his visit will turn out to be anything but an ordinary professional appointment. But it would seem that someone else had already visited Flat 2A that Saturday afternoon...Shortly after Piper's arrival, Pauline Davey is found brutally stabbed, apparently during her afternoon nap. The bloody scissors on her pillow hint at what has happened even before the covers are pulled back to reveal the once lovely body, horribly mutilated. All the evidence points to murder and the police are looking hard at Julian Davey. Piper and his friend, crime reporter Quinn, begin poking around, and in the process Davey's alibi is shot full of holes. Persisting in their inquiries, the two men soon uncover an adulterous love triangle among neighbors, a group of Pauline's wealthy friends with a penchant for gambling, and a general unwillingness by all concerned to answer any questions. The actions of Piper and Quinn apparently make the murderer uncomfortable, for more deaths follow as they come closer to discovering the truth. Soon Piper and Quinn are off again with a new set of problems, too many suspects with too many possible motives, and a dangerous killer on the loose who will stop at nothing to prevent the discovery of his identity.

The Quiet Woman begins when two people conspire to steal a fortune in cash. It ends in double murder. The payroll of the Jauncey Engineering plant is missing. According to the guard, found bound and gagged at the scene, two trusted employees, Harold Graham and Yvonne Marshall, are responsible for the crime, and the police proceed as if this were just another payroll theft. To crime reporter Quinn it sounds like the usual story of a married man and a younger woman who plot to steal the money in order to finance a new life together. He and his friend, insurance assessor Piper, question the missing woman's husband and the missing man's wife and her sister. Soon they are patching scattered clues together, and Quinn sets out to investigate the possibility that Yvonne may have already double-crossed Harold. Then the first corpse is discovered. All clues point in the same direction, but when the second body is found in a watery ditch, that theory must also be discarded. Another hypothesis is then proposed and painstakingly investigated. It, too, turns into a blind alley. A third cul-de-sac, equally convincing and just as false, makes the action by turns frustrating or suspenseful, but always gripping. And Quinn, who wanted only a human-interest angle for his column, becomes more and more intimately involved in the case. A telephone call from the police provides him with further evidence and leads Quinn reluctantly but inevitably to the conclusion of this fast-paced novel. The Quiet Woman is a story of ordinary people engulfed in frightening events. It will challenge even the most astute.