Take one grand house, stuff it with staff, and make it home to several generations. If they send their sons to Oxford and occasionally knock each other off, you've got a country-house murder mystery, the delight of classic English crime fiction. But if the boys are instead at Yale, odds are that you're reading its American counterpart, the New York mansion mystery--a genre largely invented and perfected by Elizabeth Daly. Daly does take Henry Gamadge, her gentleman-sleuth, on the occasional jaunt to the country, but in Arrow Pointing Nowhere they're both back on the Upper East Side, where Gamadge has been receiving missives suggesting that all is not right at the elegant Fenway mansion. He will ultimately, of course, unravel the mystery, but even more delightful than the solution is the peek at what the New York Times called New York at its most charming....

“New York at its most charming” (New York Times) is the setting for Volume 2, first published in 1941. 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 – it is hoped -- to avoid distressing the Vauregard sensibilities. As Gamadge soon discovers, sensibilities abound chez Vauregard, where the household includes an aging actress with ties to a spiritualist sect and a shy beauty with a shady, crippled fiancé. As always in this charming series, Gamadge comes up trumps, but only after careful study of the other players’ cards....

Mrs. Vina Gregson should be sitting pretty. Acquitted of murdering her husband, she has inherited all his money, and can afford to dress in the height of 1940s style. Unfortunately, her fashionable clothing and coiffure go unseen, and much of her money unspent, as the Widow 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 murderer in the eyes of the public, and of the tabloid journalists who hound her every step. Worse, she has recently begun receiving increasingly menacing letters – letters written, she is certain, by the person who killed her husband. Taking the matter to the police would only heighten her notoriety, so she calls on Henry Gamadge, the gentleman-sleuth known both for his discretion and for his ability to solve problems that baffle the police. Originally published in 1942, The House Without the Door is the epitome of the charmingly civilized mystery, offering ample proof as to why Ms. Daly was Agatha Christie’s favorite writer. A Henry Gamadge mystery...

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 form Another World, but the politely pragmatic Gamadge suspects a culprit rather closer to home....