Malice Domestic - Woods, Sara

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Résumé :
I will not take a case involving an insanity plea. As you very well know. When old Uncle William Cassell returned home to England for the first time in nearly twenty years, he arrived just in time for afternoon tea, followed by his own late evening murder-in his own brother Ambrose's study, no less! Police arrest William's great-nephew, Paul Herron, who was found outside the study's open French window with a dazed look on his face and a smoking gun in his hands. It is thought Paul mistook the dead man for his tyrannical grandfather Ambrose, whom he had reason to hate. In the face of the determination of most of his own family to have him declared insane and put away in an institution, Paul is defended by Antony Maitland and his celebrated Uncle Nick-though not without grumbling from the latter man about a case which is stuffed like a fatally fruity plum pudding with somnambulism, inherited insanity, two sets of twins and a trio of mysterious deaths in the past. Huffs Sir Nicholas Maitland: In the best storybook tradition, I make no doubt! This gripping courtroom drama from 1962 features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans. Clever plot...

Biographie:
Sara Woods, the pen name of Eileen Mary Lana Hutton Bowen Judd, was bornin 1916 in Bradford, Yorkshire. She was the daughter of Francis Burton Hutton, a garage proprietor and Sara Roberta Woods, the daughter of a buyer for an engineering firm.In 1946 she married electrical engineer Anthony George Bowen Judd. Following a dozen years of farming in rural Yorkshire, the couple moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada in 1958, where Sara began her prolific mystery writing career. She became well-known for her detective series featuring canny barrister Antony Maitland - a character inspired by her beloved older brother, Antony Woods Hutton, a promising young solicitor who was tragically killed in 1941 at the age of 33 when as a Royal Air Force pilot in the Second World War his plane was shot down during action in Egypt.Sara Woods' detective novels were celebrated for their intricate plots and the authenticity of their courtroom settings and they garnered a longtime, loyal readership. Sara passed away at the age of 69 on November 6, 1985, leaving behind her a rich legacy of four dozen Antony Maitland mysteries....

Sommaire:
excellent study of needlenoses at work. - Nicholas Blake, London Sunday Telegraph...