Mary Roberts Rinehart, Otto Penzler (EDT) The Album

Annotation

Even in the early 1930s, Crescent Place is a neighborhood out of the past. The five Victorian mansions and the remote patch of pasture placed between them have the air of the 1890s, even as the city--once miles away from this idyllic retreat--encroaches and surrounds the enclave. But while these rarified residences may appear calm on the outside, their isolated interiors contain dark secrets, prolonged feuds, and generations of high-toned trouble. In these houses are a husband and wife who fight constantly, and another couple who hasn't spoken to each other in two decades. There is a widow in permanent mourning and a daughter whom the newspapers call psychotic. And there is a bedridden old woman who is about to be killed with an ax. When her murder shatters the well-mannered quiet of the cul-de-sac, the tabloids delight in trumpeting Crescent Place's peculiarities. But as the search for the killer intensifies, it becomes clear that the area's strangest secrets have yet to be revealed. A suspenseful mystery enriched by sly social satire and set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, The Album is a memorable whodunnit from one of the most beloved and best selling authors of the Golden Age era.