‘Anything doing?’
‘Maybe, ’ he said guardedly, and then as a kind of afterthought: ‘Just slipping along to Hampstead. Charles Manfrey’s dead.’
Ludovic Travers is on army leave in London when actor and theatrical impresario Charles Manfrey is murdered, so it is not surprising that Superintendent Wharton – ‘the General’ to the initiated – pulls him in to help investigate the crime. All the suspects are examined – the rival actor, the housekeeper, the beautiful and calculating secretary – all seem to have a watertight alibi, yet there is a clue which Travers and Wharton have overlooked.
It is only months later, while investigating a case of blackmail, that something very unexpected happens – and gives Travers a second chance of finding the killer of Charles Manfrey.
The Case of the Second Chance was originally published in 1946. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.
“Bush gets better and better . . . And Ludovic Travers is becoming one of our favourite sleuths” San Francisco Chronicle
A propos de l’auteur
Christopher Bush was born Charlie Christmas Bush in Norfolk in 1885. His father was a farm labourer and his mother a milliner. In the early years of his childhood he lived with his aunt and uncle in London before returning to Norfolk aged seven, later winning a scholarship to Thetford Grammar School.
As an adult, Bush worked as a schoolmaster for 27 years, pausing only to fight in World War One, until retiring aged 46 in 1931 to be a full-time novelist. His first novel featuring the eccentric Ludovic Travers was published in 1926, and was followed by 62 additional Travers mysteries. These are all to be republished by Dean Street Press.
Christopher Bush fought again in World War Two, and was elected a member of the prestigious Detection Club. He died in 1973.