Hachette India

Dead Letter

Seeley Regester

Can a dead letter hold a clue to a murder years ago?

Richard Redfield, a clerk in the dead letter office in Washington, is stunned when he opens and reads a cryptic undelivered letter.

Rewind two years to the murder of Henry Moreland in New York.

Henry Moreland, was found stabbed just a few steps from the home of John Argyll, Esq. father of his fiancée Eleanor, and suspicion soon falls upon the lawyer's protégé, Richard Redfield, himself in love with Eleanor. Desperate, Redfield seeks the help of Mr. Burton, a famous New York City detective to clear his name but the case has more twists and complications than either of the two men were prepared for.

"Another triumph with this pioneering crime novel." Publishers Weekly

Seeley Regester

Seeley Register was the pen name of Metta Victoria Fuller Victor (18311885), a fabulously prolific dime novelist whose sagas combined adventure, crime, sensation, and the supernatural in varying proportions. credited with authoring of one of the first detective novels in the United States. She wrote more than 100 dime novels, pioneering the field.

Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, she grew up in Wooster, Ohio in 1839, where she and her elder sister Frances (who also became a famous writer) attended a female seminary; they both published stories in local newspapers and, later, in the Home Journal. The sisters moved to New York City together in 1848, where they continued their literary pursuits.

Metta married editor and publishing pioneer Orville James Victor in 1856. Her sister Frances would later marry Victor's brother. Metta served as editor for the Beadle & Company monthly Home and for Cosmopolitan Art Journal, and later anonymously published dime novels for her husband's series for Beadle. She died of cancer on 26 June 1885, in New Jersey.