Murder on haunted ground ... classic crime in stunning new retro package.

Mary Stokes was walking through Dead Man's Copse one evening when she saw, in the beam of a torch, the corpse of a young woman dressed in a black coat, black gloves, no hat and an eternity ring set with diamonds in her ear. But when she and Detective Sergeant Frank Abbott went back to the wood the body had vanished.

This would have been mystery enough for Miss Silver to solve if a woman had not also reported that her lodger had gone out on Friday dressed in a black coat, black beret, black shoes and large hoop earrings 'set all round with little diamonds like those eternity rings.' She never came back...

"Miss Wentworth is a first-rate storyteller" - Daily Telegraph

"'Miss Silver is marvellous'" - Daily Mail

"Miss Silver has her place in detective fiction as surely as Lord Peter Wimsey or Hercule Poirot" - Manchester Evening News

"I like Wentworth very much - she captures the mores of pre-war middle class England perfectly, and she writes rather better than Christie. They are romantic cosies, of course, but with an edge to them and an intelligence to the writing that has lasted." - Andrew Taylor

"You can't go wrong with Maud Silver" - Observer