Plot summary and comments: HILDEGARDE IS BACK!

Hildegarde Withers, the creation of Stuart Palmer (1905-1968), is the original schoolmarm detective. After she first appeared in The Penguin Pool Murder in 1931, she was so popular that a series of movies starring Edna Mae Oliver and James Gleason followed, and Palmer wrote short stories about Miss Withers for Mystery, a slick-paper magazine sold only in Woolworth's stores between 1933 and 1935. These stories, filled with the sights and sounds of New York during the depression – museums, flea-circuses, burlesque shows, Latin gigolos – are genuine forgotten classics. The introduction is by Stuart Palmer's widow, Jennifer Venola.

This is the 4th volume is "Crippen & Landru Lost Classics."