Death Among the Tulips

London: W.H. Allen. Very Good+ in Very Good+ dj. [1953]. First Edition. Hardcover. [light shelfwear, spine slightly turned, very light soiling to top of text block, one-time owner's name plus date & place of purchase written in ink along edge of rear pastedown (concealed beneath rear jacket flap)]. One of this author's numerous mysteries featuring Chief Inspector William Austen of Scotland Yard, first introduced in 1939, at which point Ms. Hocking already had a couple of dozen books under her belt, about evenly split between crime novels and straight novels (the latter under the pseudonym "Mona Messer"). This one involves a couple of "accidental" (truncated) deaths involving the suitors of a crippled woman's stepdaughter/caregiver -- which of course turn out to be murders, casting suspicion on the young woman. Reilly's "Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers" is somewhat dismissive of Hocking -- "She always produces a quiet, amiable mystery, of a type now classic" -- but she clearly has some kind of following, as her books are generally quite scarce (except, oddly, in cheap French and Spanish translations). . (Inventory #: 27768)