The Chinese Shawl

Miss Silver must intervene when an age-old family feud returns with fatal effect

All London loves Tanis Lyle. A beautiful amateur who happened accidentally on a career in the theater, she has just finished filming her first motion picture. Though hardly beautiful, the young woman has electric charm, and seems to hypnotize all who meet her. This is the effect she has on Laura Fane, a distant cousin who has long heard rumors of the great beauty who, because of a long-standing family feud, she has never been allowed to meet.

When Tanis’s life is cut short by an unknown hand, Miss Silver hunts for the killer. As she and Laura quickly learn, great beauty invites hate just as readily as it does love.

“Miss Silver has her place in detective fiction as surely as Lord Peter Wimsey or Hercule Poirot.” —Manchester Evening News

“Patricia Wentworth has created a great detective in Miss Silver, the little old lady who nobody notices, but who in turn notices everything.” —Paula Gosling, author of the Jack Stryker mystery series

“You can’t go wrong with Miss Maud Silver.” —The Observer

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.