Stuart Palmer

"Hildegarde Withers is just your average school teacher -- with above-average skills in the art of deduction. The New Yorker often finds herself investigating crimes led only by her own meddlesome curiosity, though her friends on the NYPD don't mind when she solves their cases for them. After plans for a grand tour of Europe are interrupted by Germany's invasion of Poland, Miss Withers heads to sunny Los Angeles instead, where her vacation finds her...

A comedian is dead, a witness is missing, and only Miss Withers can set things right In comedy, timing is everything. If Tony Fagan were a better comic, perhaps he would've known when to keep his mouth shut. After weeks of jokes at the expense of businessman Winston H. "Junior" Gault, the sponsor of Fagan's television show, Fagan is found with his head bashed in, and Gault is charged with the murder. The case seems open and shut, but Gault has the...

Miss Withers has nine days to save a press agent from death row On a steamy day on Staten Island, a speeding car tears past a couple of beat cops and smashes into a delivery truck. In the front seat is Andy Rowan, pale and unconscious. In the back is a blonde-beautiful, naked, and dead.   She was an aspiring Miss America, minted in the wilds of Brooklyn, and he was the press agent who wanted to make her a star. Now she will never walk a runway again....

A woman is murdered in her hotel room-and she is only the first to die With a seven-hundred-dollar inheritance in her pocket, small town librarian Harriet Bascom went to the track. By the time she left she had thousands-enough to live life the way she had always wanted: with champagne, music, and love. The champagne and music flow freely once she arrives in New York City, but it's love that brings trouble. When she discovers her beloved has a terrible...

A newspaperman investigates the strange case of a murdered society clown Howie Rook does not care for the police. After a long career in newspapers, he has seen too many cases loused up by unimaginative detectives to have any faith in by-the-book investigation. Recently retired, he spends his leisure hours writing letters to the editor regarding police stupidity. He's so good at pointing out the department's screw-ups that it has decided to reach...

On vacation in California, Miss Withersdiscovers that a twenty-minute plane ride is long enough for murder Because of the fog, the man in the brown suit arrives five minutes late for the ferry to Catalina Island. If he wishes to reach his destination today, his only option is the Dragonfly, a twelve-seat prop plane that makes up in speed what it lacks in comfort. The ride is bumpy, and all of the passengers-including a honeymooning couple, a film...

In the heat of a Central American summer, Miss Withers investigates murder on the Mexico Express Oscar Piper doesn't belong on Mexican trains. A New York City detective, he's in the Dominican Republic as part of an international delegation come to cut the ribbon on a new transcontinental highway. This grants him the honor of a trip to Mexico City on the hottest, dustiest train in North America-a crowded slow coach that's about to become a crime scene....

Retired in Los Angeles, Miss Withers investigates a Tinseltown poisoning At Hollywood's most renowned cartoon studio, there are a few things you simply do not draw: snakes, cows with udders, violence, and death. So when Janet Poole finds a doodle of the studio's famous cartoon penguin with a noose around its neck, she takes the drawing as a threat. Someone at the studio has murder on the mind.   The top brass reach out to Hildegarde Withers, a retired...

Curtain rises on a lonely deserted dock on the Long Beach waterfront, where the schooner Carma has just been moored that afternoon. The date is December 6, 1932; the hour 9:30 of a dank and dripping evening. The scene is set for murder...

"Sometimes, the police aren't the best suited to solve a crime. Depending on the case, you may find that a retired magician, a schoolteacher, a Broadway producer, or a nun have the necessary skills to suss out a killer. Or, in other cases, a blind veteran, or a publisher, or a hard-drinking attorney, or a mostly-sober attorney... or, indeed, any sort of detective you could think of might be able to best the professionals when it comes to comprehending...