Rinehart, Mary Roberts -- Haunted Lady (1942)

In 1942 Rinehart was 64, and her output was slowing down a little. Haunted Lady has one of the most hackneyed plots in detective fiction -- eccentric old lady murdered in bed by a member of her dysfunctional family -- but it's still interesting to see what Rinehart and her series sleuth Hilda ('Miss Pinkerton') Adams can do with it. 

Wealthy dowager Eliza Fairbanks reports to the police that someone is trying to scare her by inserting rats and bats into her room. Since she has already been the victim of an arsenic attack, Miss Pinkerton is called in by the police in the guise of a resident nurse. But she fails in her duty, and Mrs Fairbanks is stabbed to death in what appears to be a classic locked-room puzzle.

Investigations follow, there are various love-affairs to untangle, and the modern reader will not be in the least surprised when the murderer is revealed, although the method may still provoke a little bemusement. I found the occasional jumps between Hilda's perspective and a God's-eye-view mildly disconcerting, but on the whole this is a competent work by a seasoned expert, and just as pleasant to read now as it was when it appeared in 1942.

And references throughout the book to a current financial crisis help to remind us that 1929 was not the only depression in global history.

Jon.