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Alexis Mortensen rose from his chair in the first-class Pullman and walked into the corridor.
None of the remaining occupants noticed that he had left them until after Death, travelling at 60 miles an hour, had reached out for him . . .
Seven men and a woman were in the first-class coach of a train from London to Brighton. They had travelled together each evening for months. That night one of them, Alexis Mortensen, editor of a scurrilous newspaper, died from strychnine poisoning. Strychnine acts inside fifteen minutes, but Mortensen had had nothing which could have contained the poison for an hour before his death. An unbelievably grotesque story from the past was to be uncovered before the case was solved.
"Tip-top form" Coventry Evening Telegraph
"One of their best books" Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers
About the author
Edwin Isaac Radford (1891-1973) and Mona Augusta Radford (1894-1990) were married in 1939. Edwin worked as a journalist, holding many editorial roles on Fleet Street in London, while Mona was a popular leading lady in musical-comedy and revues until her retirement from the stage.
The couple turned to crime fiction when they were both in their early fifties. Edwin described their collaborative formula as: "She kills them off, and I find out how she done it." Their primary series detective was Harry Manson who they introduced in 1944.
The Radfords spent their final years living in Worthing on the English South Coast. Dean Street Press have republished six of their classic mysteries: Murder Jigsaw, Murder Isn't Cricket, Who Killed Dick Whittington?, The Heel of Achilles, Death of a Frightened Editor, and Death and the Professor.
