The Haunted Lady

Mary Roberts Rinehart

Mar 2019 · The Hilda Adams Mysteries Book 2 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

A dowager is being scared to death in this classic whodunit by a #1 New York Times–bestselling master who “helped the mystery series grow up” (The New York Times).
 
It’s enough to stop Eliza Fairbanks’s heart. At least that’s what the elderly widow claims is being done to her. First, someone unleashes a cloud of bats in her locked bedroom. When that doesn’t do the trick, next comes a pack of rats to claw at her toes. Special duty nurse Hilda Adams, aka “Miss Pinkerton” to the Homicide Bureau, believes Eliza’s every rattled fear is true. She may be frail—but she’s not batty.
 
What Eliza is, is very, very rich. Out of the shady and oddball assortment of relatives swarming the mansion, someone clearly has an eye on the Fairbanks fortune. Now it’s Hilda’s job to keep an eye on Eliza before a potential killer resorts to more definitive means. And considering all the bad blood running through the heart of the Fairbanks family, it might already be too late to save her charge.
 

Ratings and reviews

The Haunted Lady by Mary Roberts Rinehart is the 2nd novel in The Hilda Adams Mysteries. Hilda Adams is looking forward to a relaxing evening after her latest assignment ends. Unfortunately, Hilda receives a call asking her to take on a special assignment. Eliza Fairbanks claims there have been bats in her sealed bedroom as well as other creatures. Eliza is making some outrageous claims. Dr. Brooke wants Hilda to investigate. Hilda quickly packs a bag and heads to the Fairbanks home. Hilda meets Eliza and finds the elderly woman to be quite sane. Eliza believes someone is trying to kill her. Unfortunately, Eliza is soon proven correct when she is found dead in her room. Can Hilda find Eliza’s killer? The Haunted Lady was originally written in 1942. I enjoy reading these older mystery novels. I thought it was well-written with an interesting cast of characters. I quickly found myself drawn into the story. I liked Nurse Hilda Adams who is a keen observer. The mystery was well-done and there were some clever details. I appreciated that it had a nice wrap-up with the strange happenings explained in an easy to understand manner. The mystery was fun to solve. I did find the ending to be a little odd and unsatisfying. I appreciated the introduction written by Otto Penzler with information about Mary Roberts Rinehart writing career and her style of writing. The Haunted Lady is a pleasing historical mystery with baffling bats, a fighting family, a secure room, a nosey nurse, and a mysterious murder.

About the author

Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958) was one of the United States’s most popular early mystery authors. Born in Pittsburgh to a clerk at a sewing machine agency, Rinehart trained as a nurse and married a doctor after her graduation from nursing school. She wrote fiction in her spare time until a stock market crash sent her and her young husband into debt, forcing her to lean on her writing to pay the bills. Her first two novels, The Circular Staircase (1908) and The Man in Lower Ten (1909), established her as a bright young talent, and it wasn’t long before she was one of the nation’s most popular mystery novelists.
Among her dozens of novels are The Amazing Adventures of Letitia Carberry (1911), which began a six-book series, and The Bat (originally published in 1920 as a play), which was among the inspirations for Bob Kane’s Batman. Credited with inventing the phrase “The butler did it,” Rinehart is often called an American Agatha Christie, even though she began writing much earlier than Christie, and was much more popular during her heyday.