Product Description
Answer in the Negative
Author(s): Henrietta Hamilton
Format: Paperback
Rediscover the brilliance of Answer in the Negative in the Mermaid Collection - classic books by popular pioneering female authors republished to delight new generations of readers.
A 1950s Fleet Street murder mystery for classic crime fans - married couple and amateur sleuths Johnny and Sally Heldar are called into the National Press Archives to investigate some poison pen letters and cruel pranks, but things get a lot more sinister when the first murder happens . . .
With a foreword by Sophie Hannah
A Hatchards Book of the Month
'He was lying sprawled on his stomach just outside the open doorway of his office, with his head and shoulders out of sight . . .'
Frank Morningside, assistant at The National Press Archives on Fleet Street, is receiving nasty poison pen letters. His superior Toby Lorn wants to put a stop to it, so he calls on his friends Sally and Johnny Heldar.
Married amateur sleuths, Sally and Johnny agree to go undercover, posing as researchers to scout out the many suspects in the Archives. After all, Fleet Street is home to plenty of seedy types and murky happenings. But, soon after they begin, they find a body - bludgeoned to death by a box of glass negatives.
Suddenly, the genteel world of the Archives is a tangled web of suspicion and deadly danger. When another murder swiftly follows, the Heldars worry they are in over their heads.
And it is only a matter of time before one of them is next . . .
Reader praise for Henrietta Hamilton:
'A classic whodunnit, well written and engrossing' Reader Review *****
'Hugely enjoyable classic crime' Reader Review *****
'A gem!' Reader Review *****
About the Author
Henrietta Hamilton is the pseudonym for Hester Denne Shepherd who was born in Dundee in 1920 and educated at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, earning an honours degree in Modern Languages. During the Second World War, Hamilton served in the Wrens. Afterwards, she worked in a London bookshop, gaining first-hand experience of antiquarian bookselling – the background of her crime-solving duo, Sally and Johnny Heldar. During her life, Hamilton enjoyed writing and hill-walking. She died in 1995 in Hastings, East Sussex.
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