Scarlett: The Beacon Hill Murders

Boston’s Beacon Hill, a distinguished neighborhood of old mansions and old money, has been invaded, much to its mortification, by the Suttons, a family of well-heeled parvenus. The latest daring play of the head of the clan, rags-to-riches stock exchange gambler Frederick Sutton, is to break into Boston society—but this ambitious move proves his most daunting stake yet. On the night Frederick Sutton hosts for dinner at his grand estate his prim and disapproving attorney, Mr. Underwood, and that widow of impeccable taste and irresistible charm, Mrs. Anceney, the final course for the night turns out to be death! When a murderer’s bullet puts an end to Frederick Sutton’s lofty social ambitions, there is only one person, seemingly, who could possibly have done the foul deed. But surely this person cannot be guilty of such an egregious social faux pas as murder! Then a second slaying takes place at the Sutton mansion, this one even more mystifying than the first, in a room guarded by Boston’s finest. Fortunately keen-minded Inspector Kane, as chronicled by the admiring Mr. Underwood, has the acumen necessary to solve the baffling Beacon Hill murders.

Additional

First published in 1930.

Author

Roger Scarlett was the pseudonym for writing pair Dorothy Blair and Evelyn Page,