Exit Before Midnight: A Collection of Murder Tales - Softcover

Quentin, Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798886010640

Publisher: Stark House Press, 2023

Synopsis

A Collection of Murder Tales from Patrick Quentin…

The Jack of Diamonds: Starner had something on each of them. So Vanderloon sent them all an invitation that included the handwritten phrase “to meet and to murder Mr. Joseph Starner.” The object is to kill him and make it look like an accident. But, of course, the best laid plans often go awry.

Exit Before Midnight: It’s New Year’s Eve, and the stockholders of Leland & Rowley are about to sign over an agreement to merge with the Pan-American Dye Combine. On her way to the meeting, secretary Carole Thorne finds a typed message: “… if the merger is carried, I have decided to murder several of you…” She thinks it’s a practical joke—until their attorney becomes the first victim!

Another Man’s Poison: When Dr. Knudsen collapses dead during an operation, it looks like someone had poisoned his coffee. And only one person could have done it. With his back against the wall, it’s up to young intern Oliver Lord to prove his innocence.

The Gypsy Warned Him: Gunner’s Mate Lew Warren is on an 8-hour leave and decides to hit the first bar he sees. There he meets a little man who tells him about a gypsy, “the best fortune teller in New York,” and even offers to pay the gypsy himself to tell Warren’s fortune. How could he know that he had just fallen into a subtle trap that would end in murder?

About this title

About the Author

The writing team of Patrick Quentin―also known as Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge―began as a collaboration between Philadelphia pharmaceutical executive Richard Wilson Webb (1901-1966), a native Englishman, and American writer Martha Mott Kelley (1906-1989). After Kelley left the partnership to marry and settle in England, Webb briefly wrote with future Harper’s Bazaar editor Mary Louise White Aswell (1902-1984) before joining forces in the mid-1930s with native Englishman Hugh Callingham Wheeler (1912-1987). The early Q. Patrick books were written as elaborate puzzle mysteries, but Webb’s and Wheeler’s crime writing increasingly became more psychologically acute with deepened characterization; the later Patrick Quentin novels, in particular, became increasingly dark and brooding. In the 1940s Webb’s writing input decreased and he retired from his partnership with Wheeler in 1951. Wheeler went on to write solo as Patrick Quentin until 1965, after which he wrote exclusively for television, film and the stage. One of his last works was the book for the 1979 musical Sweeney Todd, for which he won a Tony award.

Edition details

• Publisher: Stark House Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798886010640
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 254