Henry Gamadge Mysteries Books

The discovery of young Amberly Cowden's body at the base of a cliff, as well as the strange events apparently related to the impoverished acting troupe at the Cove, disrupt Gamage's restful golf retreat. Reprint.

Henry Gamadge investigates the death of a state trooper and the poisoning of three children by nightshade, proving that the murders are all related and, in the process, unearthing a few scandals as well.

One hundred years earlier, a beautiful guest had disappeared from the wealthy Vauregard household, along with the second volume in a set of the collected works of Byron. Improbably enough, both guest and book seem to have reappeared, with neither having aged a day. The elderly Mr. Vauregard is inclined to believe the young woman's story of having vacationed on an astral plane. But his dubious niece calls in Henry Gamadge, gentleman-sleuth, expert in rare books, and sufficiently well-bred to avoid distressing the Vauregard sensibilities. As Gamadge soon discovers, the household includes an aging actress with ties to a spiritualist sect and a shy beauty with a shady (if crippled) fiance. As always in this delightful series, Gamadge comes up trumps, but only after careful study of the other players' cards.

Acquitted of murdering her husband, Mrs. Vina Gregson remains essentially a prisoner, trapped in her elegant New York apartment with occasional furtive forays to her Connecticut estate. A jury may have found her innocent, but Mrs. Gregson remains a murderess in the eyes of the public and of the tabloid journalists who hound her every step. She has recently begun receiving increasingly menacing letters written, she is certain, by the person who killed her husband. Taking the matter to the police would heighten her notoriety, so she calls on Henry Gamadge, the gentleman-sleuth who is known for both his discretion and his ability to solve problems that baffle the police.

In the sticky summer of 1943, a secluded cottage in the Berkshires sounds just the ticket to the newly married Clara Gamadge. The resident ghost, a slender woman in a sunbonnet who died just one year ago in the cottage Clara is now renting, merely adds to the local color. It's all nothing more than a spooky game, until the woman's sister is strangled while Clara dozes in a chair by her bed. The only clue: Clara's panicked memory of a woman in a sunbonnet standing at the door. Happily, Henry Gamadge arrives in time to calm his wife and solve the mystery (though not without some stellar help from Clara!).

In mid-1943, and up to his elbows in war work, Henry Gamadge is longing for a quiet weekend. But when a half-forgotten classmate requests assistance, Gamadge is unable to refuse the tug of an old school tie. The problem, says Sylvanus, concerns his Aunt Florence'a giddy socialite terrified of Nazi bombs. Florence has moved her extensive household of hangers-on to the family mansion in upstate New York. But menace seems to have followed them, in the form of threatening messages inserted into the manuscript of Florence's painfully bad novel in progress. Several members of the household are convinced the messages are emanating from Another World, but the politely pragmatic Gamadge suspects a culprit rather closer to home.

Enigmatic notes convince Henry Gamadge, an amateur detective, that someone may be a prisoner inside the home of a wealthy and secretive New York family

The hospital sees nothing to question about the death of the reclusive Mr. Crenshaw, and it's not as though he had any friends to press the issue. He did, though, have one casual acquaintance, who happens to pick up Mr. Crenshaw's battered old edition of The Tempest'and happens to pass that book on to Henry Gamadge. Gamadge, of course, is not only an expert in solving pesky problems but also an expert in rare books, and his two sets of expertise combine to uncover the extraordinary puzzle of Mr. Crenshaw, which began in California and ended on the other side of the country, at a chilly New England rendezvous.

Just about any of the guests at Johnny Redfield's party seems to have a good reason to have killed the guest of honor, Johnny's Californian aunt who, with her astral name and vague pretensions of mysticism, does not exactly blend in the elegant New York atmosphere that surrounds her. And what's more, no one has a solid alibi. It will take all of Henry Gamadge's ingenuity to figure out this closed-room mystery.

Charming bibliophile and occasional sleuth Henry Gamadge is asked to cope with some greedy Clayborn relatives awaiting an inheritance and to find a valuable button collection and becomes involved in a case of murder

An etching in the Ashbury mansion has suddenly acquired an inscription dated 1793. Miss Julia Paxton knows there was never anything written on that portrait until the visit of professional medium Iris Vance. Are the dead sending messages' And will Henry Gamadge, who is pretty certain the answer does not lie in the supernatural realm, solve the mystery before a murder occurs'

Frazer's Mills, in upstate New York, is a small, isolated village, where everyone knows everyone else and things haven't changed much (and the mills have been closed for quite some time). When murder suddenly intrudes upon this sedate rural backwater, Henry Gamadge arrives to solve the mystery and restore order.

It should be a fairly routine job for Henry Gamadge: Examining the papers of a dead poet and playwright with some early promise but not much commercial success. But it's not so much the life and letters as the death of the author (murdered in Central Park) that interests Gamadge. Add in a dead witness and the odd behavior of the family, and Gamadge decides something criminal is afoot.

Alice Dunbar was a very proper upper East Side woman with a very boring life. There is, in fact, absolutely no reason anyone can think of for Alice to go missing, and yet that’s exactly what she does, shortly after the death of an elderly aunt. Henry Gamadge thinks there’s more to the story, and as he tracks down Alice’s last trip, he turns up a secret life no one suspected. Originally published in 1949.

After Glendon Coldfield, head of a powerful Hudson River family, apparently commits suicide, his widow, against her will, is mysteriously confined to her own house

This last mystery in the Henry Gamadge series set in 1940s New York was originally published in 1951. Henry must help Rena Austen, newly wed, who has decided her marriage was a big mistake, and has fled her husband's gloomy Upper East Side house in fear for her life.