Rook Takes Knight

By Stuart Palmer

A violent man is killed in a hit and run, and his wife is accused of the crime.

In the inky Los Angeles twilight, a man takes his dog for a walk. They are crossing the street when a station wagon comes charging around the curb, crashing into man and beast. Both are killed. The dog might have been innocent, but the man had it coming.

It only takes a day for the district attorney to accuse the dead man's wife of the crime. Deirdre Charteris, a former starlet who has lost none of her looks, had every reason to want her husband dead: He was psychotic, violent, and refused to agree to a divorce. But Dee swears her innocence, and Howie Rook believes her. A retired newspaperman with a detective's sixth sense, he will do whatever he can to prove her innocence. But he will find that asking questions can be just as dangerous as going for a walk in the dark.

Rook Takes Knight is part of the Howie Rook Mysteries series, which also includes Unhappy Hooligan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784087753

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.