Uninvited Guest
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Trouble struck the schooner Griselda at 9:40 on an April evening. It was not the fault of the weather or the sea or the soundness of her hull. The trouble was human. A woman. Her name was Julia Parks, though in the beginning she insisted it was Lambert.
It was hard to blame Howard Crane for bringing her aboard, because Julia always got what she wanted. What she wanted in this case was money. Keith Lambert’s—her ex-husband’s—money. That there were others too who wanted it was one of the first things that came to the minds of the Barbados police the next morning when Julia was found suffocated in her cabin. But the only trail they had to follow was one of tangled lives and tangled motives that led to jealousy, blackmail, native secrecy, and sudden death — all against the peaceful tropical background of picturesque Barbados.
Here is another of the highly polished, tightly knit, and suspenseful mysteries that have made George Harmon Coxe for almost twenty years one of the deans of mystery writers.
George Harmon Coxe
George Harmon Coxe (1901–1984) was an early star of hard-boiled crime fiction, best known for characters he created in the seminal pulp magazine Black Mask. Born in upstate New York, he attended Purdue and Cornell Universities before moving to the West Coast to work in newspapers. In 1922 he began publishing short stories in pulp magazines across various genres, including romance and sports. He would find his greatest success, however, writing crime fiction. In 1934 Coxe, relying on his background in journalism, created his most enduring character: Jack “Flashgun” Casey, a crime photographer. First appearing in “Return Engagement,” a Black Mask short, Casey found success on every platform, including radio, television, and film. Coxe’s other well-known characters include Kent Murdock, another photographer, and Jack Fenner, a PI. Always more interested in character development than a clever plot twist, Coxe was at home in novel-writing, producing sixty-three books in his lifetime. Made a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America in 1964, Coxe died in 1984.
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