First she felt herself being pushed downstairs. Then there was the bowl of poisoned mushroom soup. Finally the tampered-with tablet amongst her sleeping pills was the last straw. Adriana Ford, famous actress and mistress of the house decided to call in Miss Silver. And Maud Silver, with impeccable logic, pointed out that the person who was trying to kill her must be a member of her own household. And then the murders started…

There has been no new full-length Nero Wolfe mystery novel in six years, a wartime shortage which we are delighted to remedy. The brilliant deductive methods of the fabulous fat man, beloved by so many thousands of readers, are put to another stiff test. It is a pleasure to report that Archie is back from the wars as Wolfe’s leg man (Nero himself has been a consultant for the War Department).

A murder has been committed, so daring and with such vital national implications that the whole country is shaken. The newspapers are having a field day; the corridors in Washington are buzzing with gossip. The murder took place at the Waldorf, just before the annual dinner of the National Industrial Association, as the guests sipped cocktails in the adjoining room. The murdered man was none other than Cheney Boone, the Director of the Bureau of Price Regulation, who was scheduled to be the principal speaker before this group of the country’s leading business men. industrialists, and manufacturers. Why has he been silenced — and by whom?

Again Rex Stout proves that he is still the old maestro in the field of the murder story lightened with wit and written with intelligence and skill. The Viking Press, which has not published a mystery for years, is proud to re-enter the field with this odds-on favorite.

On his train journey back to Scotland for a well-earned rest, Inspector Grant learns that a fellow passenger, one Charles Martin, has been found dead. It looks like a case of misadventure — but Grant is not so sure. Teased by some enigmatic lines of verse that the deceased had apparently scrawled on a newspaper, he follows a trail to the Outer Hebrides. And though it is the end of his holiday, it is also the beginning of an intriguing investigation into the bizarre circumstances shrouding Charles Martin's death…

JOHN MARCO, the dashing and handsome Spaniard, the great lover, despoiler and betrayer of women, sat quietly on the beach terrace of Spanish Cape that ghostly night, apparently musing on his many iniquities, on the hold he had over the frantic desperate women in the house above him. Hat on head, hand on stick, long black opera cloak draped about his virile figure... that is the way they found him the next morning — dead, strangled, murdered... and when they removed the opera cloak they found him without shoes or socks, without trousers or coat or shirt or necktie or underwear — completely nude!

Daring, clever, extraordinarily exciting, here is Ellery Queen at his best. And, as you might expect, again a stunning surprise at the end!

Both Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin are at their furious best when a murder is committed with Archie’s gun and the client lies to the cops, indicating that Goodwin is the prime suspect. Inspector Cramer threatens to cancel Wolfe’s detective license and arrests Archie. Wolfe is so angry that he works during an orchid session, begins a million dollar suit against the client, and reveals Cramer’s threat to the newspapers before finally exposing the culprit; Archie merely slams the client against a wall.

Mr. Gatewood is a grumpy man whose friend wishes to find a woman to entertain him. A soldier continues to see visions of a woman he’d seen once on a train and wishes to find her before he must return to duty. A young man falls in love with the lifelike remains of an Egyptian dancing girl and wishes for her to come to life. Who do they all turn to in order to have their wishes fulfilled? To the Tracer of Lost Persons, of course! And that would be Mr. Keene, the finder of the women of your dreams!

“The Twisted Scarf” finds Nero Wolfe having a gardening group and their guests visiting his orchid collection. During the event, a young woman confides in Archie that she has recognized one of the guests as having killed a good friend whose murder has gone unsolved. She gives him no more details and Archie is called to assist with the guests. While he is gone someone murders the young woman. Wolfe has little to go on to discover who murdered the young woman. His only clue is that it had to have been a guest and he believes that the murderer did not leave the scene of the crime.

90-year-old General Fentiman was definitely dead, but no one knew exactly when he had died — and the time of death was the determining factor in a half-million-pound inheritance.Lord Peter Wimsey would need every bit of his amazing skills to unravel the mysteries of why the General's lapel was without a red poppy on Armistice Day, how the club's telephone was fixed without a repairman, and, most puzzling of all, why the great man's knee swung freely when the rest of him was stiff with rigor mortis.

Another investigation for Miss Silver. Lurking beneath the tranquillity of the country village of Greenings is a tinder-dry passion which owes its origins to events in the recent past. When Clarice Dean is found drowned in a watersplash, the match is set. Can Miss Silver put out the blaze?

Dr. Paul Prye, who mode his effective first appearance in The Invisible Worm, continues to annoy people and catch murderers in this present opus. Dr. Prye was threatened by Joan, a hefty blonde of eighteen, with a quick demise in the bottom of the lake if he declared her insane, but it was Joan, not Dr. Prye, whom they fished out of the lake. Joan was just one of those people who from birth seemed destined to murder at the hands of most of her acquaintances.One of the other lake shore residents was picked as the guilty party until he, too, made his exit from life via the lake. Miss Emily Bonner, the self-made arbiter of the social life of Lake Rosseau, lived behind her field glasses, so she contributed to Dr. Prye some odds and ends of irrelevant evidence of the domestic life of everyone concerned. Fundamentally Dr. Prye was a psychiatrist, and actually it was his knowledge that solved the case — not Miss Emily's long-distance snooping. To celebrate catching a murderer, he caught himself a domineering wife and had the last laugh on old Emily all at once.This is a really grand mystery story with some very funny dialogue. All in all, a fine successor to The Invisible Worm.

THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWNBy G. K. ChestertonToLUCIAN OLDERSHAW