The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan

15 January 2019

Stuart Palmer (Author), Otto Penzler (Author)

Description

After a screenwriter is murdered on a film set, a street-smart school teacher searches for the killer.

Hildegarde Withers is just your average school teacher—with above-average skills in the art of deduction. The New Yorker often finds herself investigating crimes led only by her own meddlesome curiosity, though her friends on the NYPD don’t mind when she solves their cases for them. After plans for a grand tour of Europe are interrupted by Germany’s invasion of Poland, Miss Withers heads to sunny Los Angeles instead, where her vacation finds her working as a technical advisor on the set of a film adaptation of the Lizzie Borden story. The producer has plans for an epic retelling of the historical killer’s patricidal spree—plans which are derailed when a screenwriter turns up dead. While the local authorities quickly deem his death accidental, Withers suspects otherwise and calls up a detective back home for advice. The two soon team up to catch a wily killer.

At once a pleasantly complex locked room mystery and a hilarious look at the foibles of Hollywood, The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan finds Palmer, a screenwriter himself, at his most perceptive. Reprinted for the first time in over thirty years, this riotously funny novel shows why Hildegarde Withers was among the most beloved detectives of the Golden Age American mystery novel.

Reviews

"Entertaining, original." — Kirkus

"The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan is a book that will keep you laughing and guessing from the first page to the last." — The New York Times

Also By: Stuart Palmer View all by author...

  • The Penguin Pool Murder

    Stuart Palmer, Otto Penzler

    Hardback, 2023

    In this classic whodunnit, crime-solving teacher Hildegarde Withers discovers a dead body while on a trip to the New York Aquarium with her third-grade class.
  • The Penguin Pool Murder

    Stuart Palmer, Otto Penzler

    Paperback, 2023

    In this classic whodunnit, crime-solving teacher Hildegarde Withers discovers a dead body while on a trip to the New York Aquarium with her third-grade class

Also By: Otto Penzler View all by author...

Paperback

9781613161043

135 x 203 mm • 216 pages

£8.99

Add to Basket