Hachette India

The Crossword Mystery

ER Punshon

Puzzled to death...

What could be more innocuous than a crossword puzzle? And yet apparently it could be turned to a sinister purpose. The strange crossword devised by George Winterton turned out to be more than what met the eye. When Detective-Constable Owen arrives in the picturesque village of Suffby Cove, he is faced with the mystery of a baffling murder one which may prove to have international ramifications.

"What is distinction? The few who achieve it step plot or no plot unquestioned into the first rank. We recognized it in Sherlock Holmes, and in Trent's Last Case, in The Mystery of the Villa Rose, in the Father Brown stories and in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time." Dorothy L. Sayers

ER Punshon

E.R. Punshon started work at the age of fourteen in an office. On being told by his employer that he wasn't cut out to be a clerk, he agreed and spent the next few years drifting about Canada and the United States, before working his way home on a cattle boat. During that voyage, he decided to try his hand at writing. And was greatly rewarded. He contributed to many magazines and periodicals, wrote plays, and published nearly 50 novels (with 35 Bobby Owen mysteries), among which his detective stories proved the most popular and enduring.