← Back to discovery

Cold Steal

Phoebe Atwood Taylor

1939287 pagesabout 4–7 hours
1939
first published
  • 1940Collins The Crime Club · ENG
  • 1968Popular Library · ENG
  • 1981Foul Play Press · ENG
  • 1981Backcountry PubnsISBN 9780914378549
  • 1939W W Norton & Co Inc · ENGISBN 9789997533272
  • 1999DUMONT Literatur und Kunst VerlagISBN 9783770149872
  • 1993Foul Play Pr · 287 pages · ENGISBN 9780881502695

It's a winter day in Dalton (a New England town near Boston) and Leonidas Witherall, "the man who looks like Shakespeare", is returning to his new house, which he's never seen. He's inherited money from an uncle and toured the world, and left plans for his home to be built while on his travels, but now he must return home and produce the next volume of the adventures of Lieutenant Haseltine. On the train to Dalton, he meets a mousy woman named Miss Chard (known to all as Swiss Chard) and a beautiful young woman with a brown paper package and a secret. His new home proves a delight, and it includes a kitchen filled with red appliances, a library with ladders, and a garage complete with the pickaxed corpse of Medora, the crabby next-door neighbor. Leonidas assembles a gang of assistants, including dotty housewife Cassie Price and former car thief Cuff (who has reformed and joined the police force). Together, they defend Witherall's new red refrigerator against thieves, track down the missing envelope of money and bring the murderer to justice.

How do you feel?