Murder in Suffolk: A Chief Inspector Pointer Mystery

A Chief Inspector Pointer Mystery!

When Sergeant Peel, a Scotland Yard detective goes missing while on special duty on the coast of Suffolk, Chief Inspector Pointer dispatches private inquiry agent Hugh Duncan to investigate. Duncan fails to find the detective, but almost immediately discovers a body buried in the sand by the shore as well as evidence of a smuggling operation. Trying to determine if Peel’s disappearance related to the murder, Duncan soon finds himself embroiled in a much more complicated affair involving Arab politics and a long lost treasure as he investigates a . . . Murder in Suffolk!

The identity of the author is as much a mystery as the plots of the novels. Two dozen novels were published from 1924 to 1944 as by Archibald Fielding, A. E. Fielding, or Archibald E. Fielding, yet the only clue as to the real author is a comment by the American publishers, H.C. Kinsey Co. that A. E. Fielding was in reality a "middle-aged English woman by the name of Dorothy Feilding whose peacetime address is Sheffield Terrace, Kensington, London, and who enjoys gardening." Research on the part of John Herrington has uncovered a person by that name living at 2 Sheffield Terrace from 1932-1936. She appears to have moved to Islington in 1937 after which she disappears. To complicate things, some have attributed the authorship to Lady Dorothy Mary Evelyn Moore nee Feilding (1889-1935), however, a grandson of Lady Dorothy denied any family knowledge of such authorship. The archivist at Collins, the British publisher, reports that any records of A. Fielding were presumably lost during WWII. Birthdates have been given variously as 1884, 1889, and 1900. Unless new information comes to light, it would appear that the real authorship must remain a mystery.