Cirrus@Austlit

'It was a sweet little 'set-up', ruined by murder.

'Washington Mainwaring was a guest with a purpose, his intentions in the house-party being strictly criminal. Somebody murdered the butler, and in a cold sweat Mainwaring imagined the hangman's noose tightening about his own neck.

'Not that he was the only guest who interested Scotland Yard. How could he be when the party included such assorted characters as Morton Hudson, who had stood in the dock of the Old Bailey, and Mrs. Benton Rome, the embers of whose past still glowed inextinguishably? Even their hostess behaved oddly, though not to the extent that she did not know when to stop talking. And what part in the crime had Dr. Ramsden Hendrick who was twenty miles away when the murder was committed?

'"Arthur Gask knows all there is to know of how to write a good mystery story," says the Sunday Mercury, and this story, featuring once again his famous investigator, Gilbert Larose, proves the truth of that comment.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'ARTHUR GASK'S new crime melodrama, 'The Silent Dead,' tells the story of the rise of a slum child to comfort and happiness as the wife of a husband from whom she resolutely keeps two deeply buried secrets. They're not such dreadful secrets, but the heroine goes to great efforts to avoid their being revealed — even becoming involved with a blackmailer, 'an unwholesome sexual beast,' who is shot dead in a country house where she is staying. Investigating the murder is Mr. Gask's unorthodox Scotland Yard detective, Gilbert Larose, who, to protect the heroine's secrets, is persuaded to dispose of the body of an attacker he has slain in self-defence.'

Source:

'Latest Fiction', Advertiser, 3 February 1951, p.6.

'Those responsible for the brutal murders of six eminent atom bomb scientists had covered their tracks with consummate skill. Scotland Yard was baffled; Press and public were seriously alarmed.

'Called in by the authorities at the eleventh hour, Gilbert Larose, the famous investigator, struck back at the conspirators but, caught in a web of intrigue, vengeance and espionage, faced almost certain death in the vaults of an ancient castle.

A high-speed mystery thriller with a dramatic climax by the renowned author of thirty popular novels.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Arthur Gask's new novel is more of a romance than a mystery story, with his familiar figure of Gilbert Larose appearing only briefly towards the end – and then only with some advice to a young woman who has shot a blackmailer. This young woman, Mr. Gask's heroine, a beautiful and stately Dora, who is brought up in France where her English mother is married to a French wine merchant. She becomes a nurse in a London hospital – with her heart set on the opportunity of making a good marriage. Opportunity comes closer when she gets the post of a nurse in a noted doctor's rooms, where she is brought in contact with some of the best of titles society people, many of whose names were so often mentioned in the social columns of the newspapers. But it doesn't knock on her door until she is nursing a wealthy old woman, whose nephew falls in love with Dora –and incidentally falls foul of his aunt by doing so. But a smart and not too ethical solicitor upsets the aunt's new will in which she has cut off the nephew who by now has married Dora, and Dora soon is Lady Stroud, moving amongst the best society people. But an unscrupulous doctor threatens blackmail and worse–for Dora was once unwittingly mixed up with a shade Institute of Perfect Health–and the distraught girl, in defence of her honor shoots him. Dora hides her crime–and everybody, including Larose, rallies to her aid in fooling Scotland Yard. In the end she finds that the titled judge who is to try an innocent man for the crime she has committed is her real father–and everything moves swiftly to understanding all round and a completely happy ending.'

Source:

'Latest Fiction', Advertiser, 17 September 1949, p.6.

'Around the extensive grounds of an estate in a quiet part of Suffolk a tall barbed-wire fence had been erected, and round an old house deep within these grounds had been built a high wall.

'No one knew who lived there, for none was allowed to come near. It was a house of evil, and to guard the sinister secret it held, three murders had been done. But for murder and other fearful crimes against society comes a day of reckoning.

'How the secret was discovered and how vengeance came at last form another thrilling episode in the brilliant career of the famous international detective, Gilbert Larose.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'A large sum of money was stolen from a London bank and hidden in an old mill in a lonely and unfrequented part of Essex. It is found by two men already deep in crime, and the dreadful murder of one of them follows.

'Gilbert Larose, the one-time great international detective, when discovery seems well-nigh impossible, nevertheless, picks up the trail—almost from what he hears in the whisperings of the wind—and it leads him to an important country gentleman living in an historic mansion in Norfolk.

'A story packed with thrills and surprises from cover to cover, featuring that most famous of all investigators Gilbert Larose at his brilliant best.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'It is a story told in the first person by a successful doctor who says about himself:– "Married to the daughter of a peer, Lord Carden of Ashdown Castle, and myself believed to be connected with another titled family, my practice is not unnaturally what would be called a fashionable one. I have a steadily increasing following among the best people in Society circles ... I am the youngest practitioner to have been admitted to the very exclusive Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians.'' His origin was actually a lowly one, both his father and his mother once having been humble employees of his beautiful young wife's parents. And his father was hanged for murder! He has assumed a false identity, and, far worse, he has committed murder: he has killed the man—"a vile man, one of the vilest"—who long before gave false witness against his innocent father. His life's history, and the way in which he has got the better of Gilbert Larose—"the star detective of the Yard, the man who by-passed all lack of clues and worked on his imagination!"—are told in this novel in Mr. Gask's usual popular style.'

Source:

'Latest Fiction', Advertiser, 13 December 1947, p.10.

'In a lonely house upon an unfrequented part of the Norfolk coast a retired Cambridge professor is living by himself. Gradually he becomes aware that his house, which is built upon the site of an age-old ruined church, is being watched. In his perplexity he appeals to Gilbert Larose. The mystery and dreadful happenings of all that follows after form another exciting chapter in the life-story of the one-time great international detective.

'Here, Arthur Gask has again written one of those outstanding mystery stories which have secured for him his enviable reputation.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

A happily married, suburban-dwelling clerk in the Income Tax Department discovers unexpected personal skills with the outbreak of war.

'THEY had been married 13 years when Matt Huggins was the cause of his wife's untimely and sudden death. There was no premeditation about the act and, in a way, her passing was quite accidental. He was shocked with what he had done.'

Source: Opening paragraph.