The Bat
About this audiobook
An older woman of the elite class has lots of money and abundant courage and determination. Miss Cornelia Van Gorder wants some adventure in her life, so she rents a large mansion to see what she can stir up. She moves in with her niece and an unpredictable Irish maid and is confronted by an embezzlement problem at the owner’s bank. But that’s just the beginning of troubles, because a murderous masked criminal known as the Bat is using the mansion as a hideout.
All this becomes more than a mere summer vacation for Miss Cornelia during a stormy night when she more or less stumbles across a corpse, an apparent victim of the deadly Bat. In addition, her niece’s boyfriend is considered a suspect in the bank embezzlement case.
This literary combination of events had actually begun as a play that evolved into novel form conceived by noted author Mary Roberts Rinehart. Her credentials for conceiving such a mystery with murderous mayhem resulted in her often being called “America’s Agatha Christie.”
Let’s listen now to a story that contains some comedy in addition to its dire circumstances.
About the author
Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958) was a novelist and playwright best known for her mystery stories, which combined humor with ingenuity. The success of her novels The Circular Staircase and The Man in Lower Ten established her reputation as an important American mystery writer. At one time she was the highest paid writer in America. In addition to mysteries, she wrote comic tales, plays, romances, and travel books, some of which reflected her experiences as a correspondent during World War I. One critic called her autobiography, My Story, her finest book.
John Rayburn, veteran of sixty-two years in broadcasting, served as a news and sports anchor and show host, and his television newscast achieved the largest share-of-audience figures of any major-market television newscast in the nation. He is a member of the Broadcast Pioneers Hall of Fame.
