The Man with the Dark Beard
Report an issue
Tell us what's wrong and we'll take a look.
Thanks – we got it. We'll review and follow up if needed.
"Nobody would have murdered him," Miss Lavinia cried. "Everybody liked John!"
"I'm afraid it is evident that someone did not."
The note left beside Dr. John Bastow's corpse simply read: "It was the man with the dark beard."
Dr. Bastow hadn't approved of his daughter Hilary's fiancé. So when Hilary's father is found shot dead inside his own office, the door-key turned from the inside, the fiancé Basil Wilton becomes a chief suspect for Scotland Yard. Yet how could the crime have been engineered?
Now an important lacquered box is missing; a former colleague of Bastow's has suddenly shaved his beard; and the doctor's ex-secretary has come mysteriously into money. Before Inspector Stoddart of the Yard can form conclusions, another murder takes place, again credited to the "Man with The Dark Beard"...
The Man With the Dark Beard is the first of Annie Haynes' Inspector Stoddart mysteries, originally published in 1928. It is a sparkling lost classic from the early golden age of crime fiction.
"This is the best detective story she has yet written." Time and Tide.
Annie Haynes
Annie Haynes was born in Leicestershire, England, in 1864. With an “intense interest in crime and criminal psychology,” she once cycled to Ightham in Kent to visit the scene of Caroline Mary Luard’s 1908 murder and pushed her way into the Hilldrop Crescent home of Dr. Crippen after the remains of his wife, Corrine, were found in the cellar in 1910. Haynes also attended the doctor’s trial. Haynes’s first novel, TheBungalow Mystery, was published by Agatha Christie’s publisher, The Bodley Head, in 1923. Haynes and Christie were the only two female authors to be published by the imprint. Eleven more novels followed, the last two being published posthumously.
More by Annie Haynes
Why Readwise Books?
Readwise Books is an ebook & audiobook platform that automatically logs how much you and your friends read, making it fun and easy to read more. Learn more →