The Dark Garden: A Bobby Owen Mystery

Late in the afternoon a man, unidentified, had been seen to throw a glove into the Midwych, Wychshire and Southern Canal…

Osman Ford said he would kill the lawyer Mr. Anderson. So when the latter is found dead, with a bullet in the back, the disagreeable Mr. Ford is top suspect. But the lawyer’s office was also a cauldron of repressed feelings, and not all the staff are sorry to see the lawyer’s demise. In particular, Inspector Bobby Owen fears the dark, brooding clerk Anne Earle. Will her quest for justice lead her to a terrible fate of her own, amid family secrets and lies? The novel combines a satisfying whodunit with elements of the fantastic and macabre, and contains some of Punshon’s best set-pieces.

The Dark Garden was first published in 1941. It is the sixteenth of the Bobby Owen mysteries, a series including thirty-five novels. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

“What is distinction? … in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time.” Dorothy L. Sayers