"Death at Crane's Court"

Eilis Dillon was a respected and prolific Irish author, whose books included quite a bit of both regular and historical fiction. Early in her career, in the 1950s, she wrote three excellent mysteries, which are said to be among the first of that genre to be set in Ireland. The first of them, "Death at Crane's Court," has just been republished by the Rue Morgue Press, and it is very much worth reading. The full audio review on our Classic Mysteries podcast can be heard here.

The story is set in a residential hotel near Galway. The central character, George Arrow, is a fairly young man who has been told that he has a weak heart. He decides to move to Crane's Court, a hotel where elderly people live out their lives as invalids. Soon after he moves there, the owner of the hotel is found murdered, and George finds himself coming under the suspicious eye of the local detectives. Befriended by another hotel resident, a retired professor, George works with the police detective in charge of the case to find the real culprit. All this is done quite fairly, with the clues to the puzzle well hidden throughout. There is also a good deal of humor, some of it quite bizarre, and the Irish setting helps to make the book thoroughly enjoyable. It's a pity she never wrote more mysteries after the first three.