A Pocket Full of Rye

First published in 1953 and first issued by Fontana Books in 1958. This copy is the fourteenth impression, printed March 1973.

Cover painting by Tom Adams

Sergeant Hay looked up at Inspector Neele from the bottom of the stairs. He was panting.

"Sir," he said urgently. "We've founf her!"

"Found who?"

"Gladys, sir, the maid. Strangles she was, with a stocking around her throat - been dead for hours, I'd say. And, sir, it's a wicked kind of joke - there was a clothes peg clipped on her nose..."

A Pocket Full of Rye

A Pocket Full of Rye was first published in 1953. Fontana fisrt issued it in 1958, and this copy is the third impression, published December 1959.

"An unusual sound pentrated through the almost sound-proof door if Mr. Fortescue's office. Muffled, it was yet fully recognisable, a strangled agonised cry...."
Even as Miss Grosvenor, Mr. Fortescue's secretary, came up to him, his body was convulsed in a painful spasmodic movement.
Words came out in jerky gasps.
"Tea - what the hell - you put in the tea - get help quick get a doctor - "