George Arrow is a bachelor of independent means who, when diagnosed with a weak heart, is urged to live out his days at Crane’s Court, a comfortable hotel on the Bay of Galway. On the train he chances to meets the hotel’s new owner, John Burden, who has just inherited the property and announces his intentions to shake things up a bit. And so he does. He quickly makes enemies of all the guests and staff, except for Eleanor Keane, the ambitious office manager who means to marry him. Meanwhile George makes friends with the amiable Professor Daly, one of the many old people who reside permanently on the premises. When Burden is stabbed through the heart, Daly’s old friend Inspector Mike Kenny soon discovers that practically everybody at the hotel has good reason to want him dead, particularly Barbara Henry, the previous owner’s widowed niece who now stands to inherit Crane’s Court. And it turns out that her uncle may have been murdered as well. Told with gentle wit and charm, this first detective novel by a renowned Irish writer of children’s and literary fiction was originally published in 1953 and was followed by two others before she gave up crime writing for good. With a new introduction by her son.

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