Smoke Without Fire (Constable Crime)

Ferrars, Elizabeth

ISBN 10: 0002322269 / ISBN 13: 9780002322263

Published by Constable, London, UK, 1990

About this Item

First edition, first impression. 184pp. Red cloth-covered boards with gilt lettering to spine. 8vo. Cloth is a little pushed at spine ends else volume is neat, clean, bright and tight throughout. In its original dust wrapper, very slightly rubbed on extreme corners. Dust jacket now protected in an archival quality Brodart-style wrapper fitted without the use of tape or adhesives.

Seller Inventory # 037350

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Smoke Without Fire (Constable Crime)
• Publisher: Constable, London, UK
• Publication Date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0002322269
• ISBN 13: 9780002322263
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Printing: 1st Impression
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Modern Fiction Firsts
  • Fiction - Crime, Mysteries and Thrillers

About this title

Synopsis

Andrew Basnett, a retired professor of botany, finds his Christmas getting complicated when he is caught up in the eventful aftermath of the death of Sir Lucas Dearden, who is killed by a mysterious bomb.

From Publishers Weekly

It's two evenings before Christmas in the comfy Berkshire village home of Colin and Dorothea Cahill, the tea things have been washed, dinner's on the stove and the Cahills are sipping sherry with their customary houseguest for the holidays, widower Andrew Basnett, a retired botany professor in his 70s. Suddenly the tranquility of the scene is shattered by an explosion that kills the Cahills' arrogant, selfish neighbor Sir Lucas Dearden, a retired criminal lawyer, and shatters his Mercedes. Sir Lucas had enemies, among them, perhaps, his gentle spy-novelist son Nicholas, who ia married to the high-strung Gwen. But Dorothea is quite sure the booby trap was meant for her bachelor son Jonathan, the motive being Jonathan's passion for Gwen. (Jonathan would normally have been coming home from work at about the time of Sir Lucas's unexpected return from London.) Many red herrings and blind alleys later, unwilling amateur sleuth Andrew (who dislikes Christmas but loves Dorothea's cucumber sandwiches) comes to a surprising and satisfying conclusion, helped by the discovery that one page is missing from the typescript of Lucas's dismayingly dull memoirs. Ferrars ( Woman Slaughter , A Murder Too Many ) has published more than 60 books and the craftsmanship of this one shows why her popularity endures.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.