Cover of the first edition, Fontana Books 1961. From Flickr. Go there to enlarge.
More about the private detective Francis Quarles can be found at Thrilling Detective Web Site
Contents:
Centre Court Mystery
Test Match Murder
The Grand National Case
The Case of S.W.2.
The Unhappy Piano Tuner
A Pearl among Women
Credit to William Shakespeare
Meeting in the Snow
The Wrong Hat
The Absent-minded Professor
Each Man Kills
Time for Murder
The Case of the Frightened Promoter
Picture Show
Sailors' Hornpipe
The Hiding Place
Airport Incident
The Plaster Pekingese
Comedy in Venice
The Invisible Poison
Little Man Lost
A Note on Francis Quarles
"He set up in practice as a private detective shortly after the end of the war, and now has an office in Trafalgar Square. He employs only one person permanently, his secretary Molly Player. When asked why he became a private detective Quarles says that he did so simply to earn a living, but this record of his cases at times belies that cynicism.
In person Francis Quarles is a big man, bulky but not fat. He weighs nearly thirteen stone, and is just over six feet tall. He is slightly dandyish in dress, with a taste for silk shirts and bright ties. In ordinary conversation he has an air of languor which, as a number of criminals have found, is deceptive." Symons, Julian--- A Note on Francis Quarles
Review of Center Court Mystery
Centre Court Mystery is with 40 pages by far the longest story of the collection. Private detective Francis Quarles has been employed by the mother of an English tennis player to search for her son, who has mysteriously disappeared during the Wimbledon championship. There seems to be a connection to a group of exiles from a Central European communist country. When two members of this group are found murdered, Mervyn Briffitt, the agent of the English counter-espionage, reconstructs a course of events which Quarles proves to be totally wrong. Brifitt and, I must confess, this reader missed a clue, which should have revealed to them the person behind the events.
Centre Court Mystery is an enjoyable well-constructed detective story with a Cold War background.
Juergen Lull
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