The Cuckoo Line Affair

Andrew Garve

Mar 2012 · Pan Macmillan

About this ebook

When Edward Latimer is accused by a pretty girl of assaulting her in a train, and two unimpeachable witnesses say they saw him do it, he’s in deep water. This is only the beginning of his troubles, for a few days later the girl’s dead body is found in the lonely nearby saltings and all the evidence points to Edward as her killer. It takes all the intelligence of his sons, Quentin and Hugh, and the wit of Hugh’s fiancée, Cynthia, to produce an alternative theory about the murder—and an alternative suspect. With persistence and unshakeable faith they unravel the plot and in a dramatic reconstruction demonstrate the incredible truth.

About the author

Andrew Garve is the pen name of Paul Winterton (1908-2001). He was born in Leicester and educated at the Hulme Grammar School, Manchester and Purley County School, Surrey, after which he took a degree in Economics at London University. He was on the staff of The Economist for four years, and then worked for fourteen years for the London News Chronicle as reporter, leader writer and foreign correspondent. He was assigned to Moscow from 1942 to 1945, where he was also the correspondent of the BBC’s Overseas Service.

After the war he turned to full-time writing of detective and adventure novels and produced more than forty-five books. His work was serialized, televised, broadcast, filmed and translated into some twenty languages. He is noted for his varied and unusual backgrounds – which have included Russia, newspaper offices, the West Indies, ocean sailing, the Australian outback, politics, mountaineering and forestry – and for never repeating a plot.

Andrew Garve was a founder member and first joint secretary of the Crime Writers’ Association.