The Westwood Mystery: A Chief Inspector Pointer Mystery

A Chief Inspector Pointer Mystery!
Sir Adam Youdale, K.C. was Britain’s preeminent barrister, at least for the defense. If there was anyone who could get his clients off, it was Sir Adam. Yet when the lawyer is found dead at Westwood, his home in Wimbledon, it is the barrister who becomes the center of a murder investigation. When Scotland Yard’s finest, Chief Inspector Pointer, takes over the case, he finds that he has plenty of clues, perhaps too many, and a plethora of suspects as well. He soon realizes, though, that one clue is missing from the crime scene, the clue that will provide the solution to The Westwood Mystery!

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.