Death of a Fellow Traveller

New York: Rinehart & Company, Inc.. Very Good in Good dj. (c.1950). First Edition. Hardcover. [light bumping to lower corners, minor wear at spine ends, a good sound copy; jacket is edgeworn, and has been internally reinforced with brown paper tape along all edges and folds] Mystery novel set along the Cornwall coast, featuring "that delightfully zany pair of amateur sleuths, Jane and Dagobert Brown," who were (of course) vacationing in the area. (Because don't all amateur sleuthing couples, zany or not, always get involved with murders when they're on vacation?) Although American-born, the author spent much of his writing life in England, which pretty much infused his fiction -- one critic called the Dagobert and Jane books (of which there were ultimately a dozen) "at times exasperatingly British, even when they take place in France, Switzerland, or America." It's interesting that this book is cover-blurbed as "a new Dagobert Brown story," when in fact it's Jane who is both the narrator and, in some measure, the driving force of the books. Generally speaking (per critic Ellen A. Nehr), their adventures involve "Jane [doing] all the work and Dagobert wander[ing] through vague attempts at scholarly occupations," as befits a "black sheep of an entitled family." (This was the fourth book in the series, most titles in which seem to have been published simultaneously in England and America, with the American editions generally less common.) .