Mavis Doriel Hay

Murder Underground is more than just an interesting detective novel. The numerous characters are well differentiated and include one of the most feckless, exasperating, and lifelike literary men ever to confuse a trail, according to Dorothy L. Sayers, Sunday Times, 1934. When Miss Pongleton is found murdered on the stairs of Belsize Park station, her fellow-boarders at the Frampton Hotel...

Aunt Mildred declared that no good could come of the Melbury family Christmas gatherings at their country residence, Flaxmere. So when Sir Osmond Melbury, the family patriarch, is discovered—by a guest dressed as Santa Klaus—with a bullet in his head on Christmas Day, the festivities are plunged into chaos. Nearly every member of the party stands to reap some sort...

For Miss Cordell, principal of Persephone College, there are two great evils to be feared: unladylike behaviour among her students, and bad publicity for the college. So her prim and cosy world is turned upside down when a secret society of undergraduates meets by the river on a gloomy January afternoon, only to find the drowned body of the college...