''Accident by Design'' is a 1950 detective novel by

E.C.R. Lorac Edith Caroline Rivett (6 May 1894 – 2 July 1958) was a British crime writer, who wrote under the pseudonyms E. C. R. Lorac, Carol Carnac and Mary Le Bourne during the golden age of detective fiction. Life and career Childhood The youngest d ...

, the

pen name A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen na ...

of the British writer Edith Caroline Rivett. It is the thirty fourth in her long-running series featuring Chief Inspector MacDonald of

Scotland Yard Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's 32 boroughs, but not the City of London, the square mile that forms London's ...

.Reilly p.260 Like a number of Lorac's works it takes the form of a

country house mystery The closed circle of suspects is a common element of detective fiction, and the subgenre that employs it can be referred to as the closed circle mystery. Less precisely, this subgenre – works with the closed circle literary device � ...

, a popular branch of the genre during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

Maurice Richardson Maurice Richardson (1907–1978) was an English journalist and short story writer. Life and career Richardson was born to a wealthy family."Odd Man Out", Mary Manning,''Irish Times'', 4 August 1978 (p.11) Review of ''Fits and Starts''. As a ch ...

in an review in '' The Observer'' wrote "The usual carefully constructed, rural family murder case which we expect from this eminently trustworthy exponent of the English school of whodunnit."

Synopsis

Living in the grand Templedean Place in the

Cotswolds The Cotswolds (, ) is a region in central-southwest England, along a range of rolling hills that rise from the meadows of the upper Thames to an escarpment above the Severn Valley and Evesham Vale. The area is defined by the bedrock of Jur ...

, the Vanstead family are riven by mistrust and conflict. This is particularly directed towards the heir Gerald, returned from a Japanese internment camp in

Malaya Malaya refers to a number of historical and current political entities related to what is currently Peninsular Malaysia in Southeast Asia: Political entities * British Malaya (1826–1957), a loose collection of the British colony of the Straits ...

along with a brash Australian wife Muriel. When they died in a car crash, MacDonald has to investigate whether this was an accident or by deliberate intent.

References

Bibliography

* Cooper, John & Pike, B.A. ''Artists in Crime: An Illustrated Survey of Crime Fiction First Edition Dustwrappers, 1920-1970''. Scolar Press, 1995. * Hubin, Allen J. ''Crime Fiction, 1749-1980: A Comprehensive Bibliography''. Garland Publishing, 1984. * Nichols, Victoria & Thompson, Susan. ''Silk Stalkings: More Women Write of Murder''. Scarecrow Press, 1998. * Reilly, John M. ''Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers''. Springer, 2015. 1950 British novels British mystery novels Novels by E.C.R. Lorac Novels set in England British detective novels Collins Crime Club books {{1950s-mystery-novel-stub