The Cat Wears a Noose: A Rachel Murdock Mystery

The Cat Wears a Noose: A Rachel Murdock Mystery

Dolores Hitchens, Rhys Bowen (Introduction by)
$15.95
Publication Date: March 26th, 2024
Publisher:
American Mystery Classics
ISBN:
9781613164914
Pages:
264
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Description

A drunken man is shot dead on his doorstep in this classic mystery starring the “observant [and] appealing” seventy-year-old sleuth (Publishers Weekly).

Walking home wearily from an evening spent poring over the books of the Parchly Heights Methodist Ladies’ Aid searching for a fifty-eight-cent error, Miss Jennifer Murdock becomes witness to a terrible scene: A man, stumbling drunk, arrives home—and just as he fumbles with his keys, gunfire erupts and kills him on the spot.





Jennifer is determined not to tell her sister, Rachel, anything about it. After all, Rachel considers herself a sleuth, or as Jennifer views it, a busybody who pokes her nose in places it doesn’t belong. What she doesn’t know is Rachel has just had a visit from a member of that same household, a meek eighteen-year-old taken in after she was orphaned and treated like a servant. Young Shirley has been alarmed by a series of nasty pranks—and now she’s heartbroken, and even more frightened, after finding her pet bird dead. There’s something awful going on in the house on Chestnut Street, and neither her prim and proper sister nor Det. Lt. Stephen Mayhew can stop Rachel from finding out what it is.…





The Cat Wears a Noose was previously published under the pseudonym D.B. Olsen.

About the Author

Dolores Hitchens (1907–1973) was a highly prolific mystery author who wrote under multiple pseudonyms and in a range of styles. A large number of her books were published under the D. B. Olsen moniker (under which her "Cat" series was originally published), but she is perhaps best remembered today for her later novel, Fool's Gold, published under her own name, which was adapted as Band a part by Jean-Luc Godard.

Rhys Bowen is the New York Times bestselling author of more than forty novels, including The Victory Garden, The Tuscan Child, and the World War II-based In Farleigh Field. Bowen’s work has won over twenty honors to date, including multiple Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards. A transplanted Brit, Bowen divides her time between California and Arizona.

Praise for The Cat Wears a Noose: A Rachel Murdock Mystery

Hitchens’s use of foreshadowing elevates this above similar whodunits. That the observant Rachel is an appealing Jessica Fletcher antecedent makes the prospect of her further exploits in the American Mystery Classics series welcome.
— Publishers Weekly

Rachel has never yet failed to solve a murder mystery. Never before have her methods been quite so devious and unorthodox as they are in this story.
— The New York Times

Miss Rachel [is] a treasure.
— Kirkus

A fun read from start to finish. Female amateur sleuths, a plot with multiple surprises, deftly crafted characters, and Hitchens's flair for originality and the kind of narrative driven storytelling style that keeps her readers compulsive page turners.
— Midwest Book Review