The Green Ace

By Stuart Palmer

Miss Withers has nine days to save a press agent from death row.

On a steamy day on Staten Island, a speeding car tears past a couple of beat cops and smashes into a delivery truck. In the front seat is Andy Rowan, pale and unconscious. In the back is a blonde -- beautiful, naked, and dead.

She was an aspiring Miss America, minted in the wilds of Brooklyn, and he was the press agent who wanted to make her a star. Now she will never walk a runway again. Police, judge, and jury all consider the case open and shut, and a year later, Andy's awaiting his turn in the electric chair. But Hildegarde Withers, a retired schoolteacher with a zest for crime, believes the frightened little man innocent of the killing. She has nine days to save his life. It will take a miracle, but Miss Withers has worked miracles before.

The Green Ace is part of the Hildegarde Withers Mysteries series, which also includes The Penguin Pool Murder and Murder on the Blackboard.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784087678

Stuart Palmer

Stuart Palmer (1905–1968) was an American author of mysteries. Born in Baraboo, Wisconsin, Palmer worked a number of odd jobs—including apple picking, journalism, and copywriting—before publishing his first novel, the crime drama Ace of Jades, in 1931. It was with his second novel, however, that he established his writing career: The Penguin Pool Murder introduced Hildegarde Withers, a schoolmarm who, on a field trip to the New York Aquarium, discovers a dead body in the pool. Withers was an immensely popular character, and went on to star in thirteen more novels, including Miss Withers Regrets (1947) and Nipped in the Bud (1951). A master of intricate plotting, Palmer found success writing for Hollywood, where several of his books, including The Penguin Pool Murder, were filmed by RKO Pictures Inc.