A Double for Detection

[a moderately shelfworn book, with a few tiny dents at the top and bottom edges of the covers, a little fading to the spine cloth, and the front endpaper torn out; the jacket is pretty rough, with substantial chipping and creasing at the bottom of the front panel, with some internal tape-repairs to the area, and some wear at the spine ends]. After a half-dozen earlier mysteries featuring "Inspector Ryvet," all published between 1936 and 1940, the author took a five-year break (under this pseudonym, anyway) before returning with this "first of a new series of Carnac thrillers," introducing Chief Inspector Julian Rivers of Scotland Yard, who would feature in nearly every Carnac book from then until her death in 1958. The plot here: "The ancient village of Woldstane shelters some odd individuals before a wealthy and eccentric American sends his secretary to negotiate a lease of the Manor house. Once the new tenants are ensconced the story gathers momentum, and the whole village is involved in a mystery of impressive proportions. The Manor goes up in flames, and then Scotland Yard arrives in the person of Chief Inspector Julian Rivers, ex-Lieutenant Commander, R.N. [who] manages to elucidate an amazing tangle of clues, complicated by the identifying of identical twins, and finally sees his way through to the solution." The work of this author (who also wrote as E.C.R. Lorac) didn't receive much posthumous attention until the 2020s, when the British Library began including some of her books in their Crime Classics reprint series. (Not this one, however.) Despite having been out of print for 60 years, however, she clearly retained a following, as evidenced by the extreme scarcity of most contemporaneous printings of her books. NOTE that this book bears no date or edition statement, but the initial publication was in 1945 and there is a "Book Production War Economy Standard" logo and statement on the copyright page; the official publication date was October 28, and a contemporary newspaper advertisement states the price as 8/6, which matches the printed price on this unclipped jacket. In any event, a highly uncommon book, with an even more elusive dust jacket (although we certainly do wish this one was in better nick).…