The Riddles of Hildegarde Withers: Stories

by Stuart Palmer, Ellery Queen (Introduction)

Overview

A sharp-witted Manhattan schoolteacher tackles eight little mysteries in this collection from the author of The Puzzle of the Happy Holligan.
 
When not teaching third graders, middle-aged singleton Hildegard Withers enjoys sipping orange pekoe tea, reading Sherlock Holmes stories, and tending to her tropical fish. And from time to time, she also helps her friend, Insp. Oscar Piper, with some puzzling cases . . .
 
“The Riddle of the Lady from Dubuque”: Miss Withers goes undercover at an affluent dinner party, but murder cuts the evening short.
 
“The Riddle of the Yellow Canary”: Hildegarde races to prove a young songwriter’s death was a homicide and force her killer to face the music.
 
“The Riddle of the Blue Fingerprint”: A mahogany wardrobe for sale at a local auction house contains a peculiar surprise: the body of a man Miss Withers was hired to find.
 
“The Riddle of the Doctor’s Double”: A doctor pays a house call to a sick patient on Riverside Drive, but the housekeeper thinks she just let him in, so . . . who is upstairs with her boss?
 
“The Riddle of the Twelve Amethysts”: Miss Withers investigates a curious case of blackmail involving packages containing the violet gemstone.
 
“The Riddle of the Black Museum”: A baffling locked-room murder sends Miss Withers on a field trip to the NYPD’s famed collection of apprehended weapons.
 
“The Riddle of the Green Ice”: Apartment hunting in New York can be killer, but Miss Withers wasn’t expecting a robbery and a shooting, too.
 
“The Riddle of the Snafu Murder”: After a possible spy uses her name in bars around town, Hildegarde’s search for answers leads her to a Greenwich Village murder.
 
Her style may be eccentric, but Miss Withers is as clever as they come. If you enjoy reading these cases, be sure to check out any of the full-length mysteries in the series like The Penguin Pool Murder, Murder on Wheels, or Murder on the Blackboard.
 
Praise for the Hildegarde Withers Mysteries
 
“One of the world’s shrewdest and most amusing detectives.” —The New York Times
 
“Hildegarde Withers remains incomparable and inimitable.” —Anthony Boucher

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504072861
Publisher:	MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Publication date:	02/08/2022
Series:	Hildegarde Withers Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	63,131
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Stuart Palmer (1905–1968) was an American author of mysteries. Born in Baraboo, Wisconsin, Palmer worked a number of odd jobs—including apple picking, journalism, and copywriting—before publishing his first novel, the crime drama Ace of Jades, in 1931. It was with his second novel, however, that he established his writing career: The Penguin Pool Murder introduced Hildegarde Withers, a schoolmarm who, on a field trip to the New York Aquarium, discovers a dead body in the pool. Withers was an immensely popular character, and went on to star in thirteen more novels, including Miss Withers Regrets (1947) and Nipped in the Bud (1951).

A master of intricate plotting, Palmer found success writing for Hollywood, where several of his books, including The Penguin Pool Murder, were filmed by RKO Pictures Inc.      
Stuart Palmer (1905–1968) was an American author of mysteries. Born in Baraboo, Wisconsin, Palmer worked a number of odd jobs—including apple picking, journalism, and copywriting—before publishing his first novel, the crime drama Ace of Jades, in 1931. It was with his second novel, however, that he established his writing career: The Penguin Pool Murder introduced Hildegarde Withers, a schoolmarm who, on a field trip to the New York Aquarium, discovers a dead body in the pool. Withers was an immensely popular character, and went on to star in thirteen more novels, including Miss Withers Regrets (1947) and Nipped in the Bud (1951). A master of intricate plotting, Palmer found success writing for Hollywood, where several of his books, including The Penguin Pool Murder, were filmed by RKO Pictures Inc.      
Ellery Queen was a pen name created and shared by two cousins, Frederic Dannay (1905–1982) and Manfred B. Lee (1905–1971), as well as the name of their most famous detective. Born in Brooklyn, they spent forty-two years writing, editing, and anthologizing under the name, gaining a reputation as the foremost American authors of the Golden Age “fair play” mystery. Although eventually famous on television and radio, Queen’s first appearance came in 1928, when the cousins won a mystery-writing contest with the book that would eventually be published as The Roman Hat Mystery. Their character was an amateur detective who uses his spare time to assist his police inspector uncle in solving baffling crimes. Besides writing the Queen novels, Dannay and Lee cofounded Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, one of the most influential crime publications of all time. Although Dannay outlived his cousin by nine years, he retired Queen upon Lee’s death.