A grave discovery...

It’s very bad luck for a murderer that Detective Superintendent Masters’ car happens to break down just outside a derelict country churchyard in the wilds of Lincolnshire, and that Masters and Detective Inspector Green take a stroll among the graves. They come upon a body, and at once this high-powered team from Scotland Yard swings into action.

They find much to investigate: the disappearance of no less than three prominent men from the locality in the past few weeks; a strange outbreak of arson, which may or may not have relevance; the behind-the-scenes struggle to purchase the remote and redundant church—which began before the murder or any of the fires or disappearances.

The tale provides another of Mr Clark’s fascinatingly baffling puzzles, and Masters is again revealed to be fiendishly knowledgeable about the action of highly unusual poisons. Unfortunately, so is the killer...

Douglas Clark was born in Lincolnshire, 1919. He wrote over 20 crime novels and under other names, including James Ditton and Peter Hosier.