Joseph Smith Fletcher

Dead Men's Money Annotated Joseph Smith Fletcher

Dead Men's Money is a true classic of the murder mystery genre. Written by J. S. Fletcher, one of the most prolific, leading writers of the Golden Age of detective fiction and first published in 1920, the novel still enjoys great popularity among fans of quick-paced stories that involve complicated mysteries and pure-hearted amateur investigators. The narrator of the story is a young man called Hugh Moneylaws, a clerk in the office of a lawyer called Mr. Lindsey in Berwick-Upon-Tweed, a small and quiet town on the border between England and Scotland. Hugh is on an errand that he undertakes from a mysterious lodger in his mother's boarding house in order to supplement his salary when he comes across a dead body - the first in the line of many, the story featuring a high body count. As the investigation goes on, Hugh travels to all sorts of places by train, by ship and other vehicles and gets into all sorts of dangerous situations that he manages to escape miraculously, very often with the help of his employer who is also the brains behind the entire investigation. The mystery is complicated, but also predictable to a certain extent. However, that does not make the novel less enjoyable - the plot comes with beautiful, remote places, closely-knit communities that have their own rules and laws, excellently-penned characters, principal and minor alike, lots of humorous events and adventures that will make the reader laugh out loud and a romantic story line that makes it all even more exciting.