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Death of a Doll

Hope House, a female boarding house in Manhattan, helps young women gain a respectable toehold in the city. But when its newest resident, Ruth Millar, attends a rag doll party, she falls from a seventh-floor window.

While the police declare her death a suicide, private detective Mark East finds evidence to undermine this conclusion.

East is ably assisted by two formidable elderly spinsters, Miss Beulah and Miss Bessy, who infiltrate Hope House in their search for clues. Soon it’s clear that Ruth had a dark past which had at last caught up with her.

Someone at Hope House knows the truth. But whoever killed Ruth is an expert at hiding in plain sight . . .

A treasure of a mystery novel

New York Times Book Review

About Hilda Lawrence

Hilda Lawrence (1906–1976) was an American author of classic mysteries. Born in Baltimore and educated in New York, she worked in the clippings department of Macmillan Publishing. She wrote four novels across a brief writing career that spanned the 1940s. The first, Blood on the Snow, published in 1944, introduced her three main series characters: Manhattan private investigator Mark East and a pair of New England spinsters, Miss Beulah and Miss Bessy. The trio allowed her to uniquely blend the hard and soft-boiled styles of detective fiction, while her witty writing ensured her books were hits. Death of a Doll is considered her best work. Lawrence died in Manhattan, New York, in 1976 at the age of 70.
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