''The House on Tollard Ridge'' is a 1929 detective novel by John Rhode, 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 Cecil Street. It marked the sixth appearance of the

armchair detective An armchair detective is a fictional investigator who does not personally visit a crime scene or interview witnesses; instead, the detective either reads the story of the crime in a newspaper or has it recounted by another person. As the armcha ...

Lancelot Priestley Dr. Lancelot Priestley is a fictional investigator born in July 1869 in a series of books by John Rhode After 1924, Dr. Priestley took over from Dr. Thorndyke as the leading fictional forensic investigator in Britain, and featured in 72 novels ...

, who featured in a long-running series of novels during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. The plot was partly inspired by Rudyard Kipling's short story '' Wireless'', which Rhode mentions in the novel.Evans p.66

Synopsis

At the brooding, isolated house of Samuel Barton on Tollard Ridge, the owner of the house is found murdered. The obvious culprit appears to be his wayward son Arthur, and the local police have no difficulty in presenting a case against him and bringing him to trial. Meanwhile Samuel Barton's ward and heiress Kitty plans to use the money to break free of her uninspiring marriage with a local farmer and live a little. A second suspicious death leads to the arrival of the celebrated criminologist Priestley, who soon unearths an elaborate plot of murder.

References

Bibliography

* Evans, Curtis. ''Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961''. McFarland, 2014. * Herbert, Rosemary. ''Whodunit?: A Who's Who in Crime & Mystery Writing''. Oxford University Press, 2003. * Reilly, John M. ''Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers''. Springer, 2015. 1929 British novels Novels by Cecil Street British crime novels British mystery novels British thriller novels British detective novels Geoffrey Bles books Novels set in England Dodd, Mead & Co. books {{1920s-mystery-novel-stub