Latter End

Miss Silver investigates an unhappy family whose brightest beauty has just been poisoned

Lois has always dreamed of being a Latter. The Latter brothers are both so attractive—nearly as handsome as their stately manor, Latter End. After she spoils her relationship with one brother, she succeeds with the other, winning his heart with her good looks and the sizeable fortune she had won in her first marriage. But even after they’ve wed, she never quite fits in with the family. Still, she hardly expects them to kill her.

But that’s just what the psychic Memnon warns her of: poison. She laughs it off and so does everyone else, but then, like clockwork, she is dead. The police call it murder. The weapon? Poison, of course. It is a tantalizing case, complicated by the bitterness that infests Latter End, and only the brilliant Maud Silver, once a governess, now a detective, is up to the challenge.

“Miss Wentworth is a first-rate storyteller.” —Daily Telegraph

“. . . some of the best examples of the British country-house murder mystery.” —Alfred Hitchcock‘s Mystery Magazine

“Miss Wentworth’s plot is ingenious, her characterization acute, her solution satisfying.” —The Scotsman

Patricia Wentworth (1878–1961) was one of the masters of classic English mystery writing. Born in India as Dora Amy Elles, she began writing after the death of her first husband, publishing her first novel in 1910. In the 1920s, she introduced the character who would make her famous: Miss Maud Silver, the former governess whose stout figure, fondness for Tennyson, and passion for knitting served to disguise a keen intellect. Along with Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, Miss Silver is the definitive embodiment of the English style of cozy mysteries.