The Old Battle-Ax / Dark Power (Stark House Mystery Classics) - Softcover

Holding, Elisabeth Sanxay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933586168 ISBN 13: 9781933586168

Publisher: Stark House Press, 2008

Synopsis

Two classics of suspense from the author of The Blank Wall and The Unfinished Crime. Raymond Chandler called her "the top suspense writer of them all."

About this title

About the Author:

Raymond Chandler once called her "the top suspense writer of them all." Born in Brooklyn in 1889, Holding married British diplomat George E. Holding in 1913 and together they traveled widely in South America and the Caribbean before settling in Bermuda for awhile. She published 25 novels in her lifetime--19 of them mysteries-and a wide variety of short stories. She died in 1955.

Editor of Stark House Press.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Mrs. Herriott stood behind the barrier among a little crowd of people, all facing toward the pier that stretched before them vast and dim and strangely quiet. For some time the passengers had been coming down the gangway, but they stayed there, far away; there was no bustle, no stir.

But it's not really-queer, Mrs. Herriott told herself. Naturally, with that horrible war in Europe, there must be all sorts of new rules and regulations. She herself had had some experience with that; she was not allowed a dock pass, no one would even tell her when the ship was expected. It was Silas who had found that out, in some way of his own, and he had driven her in to New York, just in time. If it hadn't been for Silas, she thought, there'd have been no one here to meet Madge. Think of coming home after twenty-five years and finding no one. . . .

She had taken pains with her appearance today; a tall, slight woman, drooping forward a little from the waist, with fine gray eyes, dark-lashed, and abundant dark hair threaded with gray; there was an absent-minded jauntiness about her in her belted blue suit and her new three-cornered hat. I don't want Madge to be disappointed in me, she thought, Only, naturally I've changed a great deal.

But she had no picture in her mind of how she had looked twenty-five years ago, and she did not really know quite how she looked now, at fifty. She was simply Mrs. Herriott, and nobody looked at her particularly. Madge must have changed, too, she thought. She's forty-eight. It's hard to realize that.

The last time she had seen her sister had been on another pier, but in an atmosphere so different it was like a memory from the Golden Age. Madge had been a bride then, sailing off to France, where her new husband had a very good position in the Paris branch of his uncle's business. All the wedding party had gone on board; they had had champagne in the young couple's suite, and to this day Mrs. Herriott could remember how Madge had looked then, in a fawn-colored suit and a wide pale-blue hat turned up behind her soft pompadour; how lovely she had looked and how happy, in her sweet, shy way.

Her longing to see Madge rose in a wave; her throat contracted. It's almost too good to be true, she thought, and not for the first time. Fragments of her childhood's training came back to her. Don't set your heart on a thing too much, Miss Sharley. . . . We must be prepared for disappointments in this world, dear. . . .

About this edition

• Publisher: Stark House Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1933586168
• ISBN 13: 9781933586168
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280