A Gentle Murderer

Dorothy Salisbury Davis

Mar 2023 · Sourcebooks, Inc.

About this ebook

Hailed by critic Anthony Boucher as "one of the best detective stories of modern times," this classic tale by Grand Master Dorothy Salisbury Davis combines suspense and psychological insight as a priest and a police detective both race to find a self-confessed murderer before he is compelled to kill again.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned ..."

Father Duffy has heard many confessions through the years, but none quite so disturbing as the one he's heard tonight. A young man enters the confessional just as the priest is readying to leave for the evening; he's distraught that he has killed a woman in a paroxysm of uncontrollable rage—and he's still wielding the hammer he used to do the deed. Father Duffy tries to convince the young man to turn himself in to the police, but he flees just as suddenly as he had appeared.

When the priest learns the next day that an escort was found bludgeoned to death on the East Side, he sets out to search for the troubled confessor. Meanwhile, Sergeant Ben Goldsmith of the NYPD is drawn deep into the official investigation. Neither is aware that the other is searching for the murderer, and both hope against hope that they're able to find the killer before he strikes again.

"A simmering tour de force of detection from both ends of the trail."— Kirkus Reviews

About the author

Dorothy Salisbury Davis (1916 - 2014) was born in Chicago, and worked there in advertising, as a research librarian and as an editor of The Merchandiser before she began writing crime fiction. Her novels explore psychological suspense, and she was nominated for the Edgar Award eight times. She also served as President of the Mystery Writers of America in 1956 and was declared a Grand Master by the MWA in 1985. She was on the initial steering committee of Sisters in Crime.

LESLIE S. KLINGER is the two-time Edgar® winning editor of New Annotated Sherlock Holmes and Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s. He has also edited two anthologies of classic mysteries and, with Laurie R. King, five anthologies of stories inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon. Klinger is the series editor of Library of Congress Crime Classics, a partnership of the Library of Congress and Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks. He is a former Chapter President of the SoCal Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America and lives in Malibu, California.