: Mary Roberts Rinehart
: When a Man Marries
: Seltzer Books
: 9781455332243
: 1
: CHF 0.70
:
: Erzählende Literatur
: English
: 570
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
According to Wikipedia: 'Mary Roberts Rinehart (August 12, 1876-September 22, 1958) was a prolific author often called the American Agatha Christie.[1] She is considered the source of the phrase 'The butler did it', although she did not actually use the phrase herself, and also considered to have invented the 'Had-I-But-Known' school of mystery writing.... Rinehart wrote hundreds of short stories, poems, travelogues and special articles. Many of her books and plays, such as The Bat (1920) were adapted for movies, such as The Bat (1926), The Bat Whispers (1930), and The Bat (1959). While many of her books were best-sellers, critics were most appreciative of her murder mysteries. Rinehart, in The Circular Staircase (1908), is credited with inventing the 'Had-I-But-Known' school of mystery writing. The Circular Staircase is a novel in which 'a middle-aged spinster is persuaded by her niece and nephew to rent a country house for the summer. The house they choose belonged to a bank defaulter who had hidden stolen securities in the walls. The gentle, peace-loving trio is plunged into a series of crimes solved with the help of the aunt. This novel is credited with being the first in the 'Had-I-But-Known' school.'[3] The Had-I-But-Known mystery novel is one where the principal character (frequently female) does less than sensible things in connection with a crime which have the effect of prolonging the action of the novel. Ogden Nash parodied the school in his poem Don't Guess Let Me Tell You: 'Sometimes the Had I But Known then what I know now I could have saved at least three lives by revealing to the Inspector the conversation I heard through that fortuitous hole in the floor.' The phrase 'The butler did it', which has become a cliché, came from Rinehart's novel The Door, in which the butler actually did do it, although that exact phrase does not actually appear in the work.'

When A Man Marries By Mary Roberts Rinehart


 

published by Samizdat Express, Orange, CT, USA

established in 1974, offering over 14,000 books

 

Other mysteries by Mary Rinehart:

 

  • The Man in Lower Ten
  • The Circular Staircase
  • Where There's a Will
  • The Case of Jennie Brice
  • Street of Seven Stars
  • The After House
  • K
  • Long Live the King!
  • The Amazing Interlude
  • Dangerous Days
  • Love Stories
  • A Poor Wise Man
  • The Bat
  • The Confession
  • Sight Unseen
  • The Breaking Point

 

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I     At Least I Meant Well

II    The Way It Began

III   I Might Have Known It

IV    The Door Was Closed

V     From The Tree  Of  Love

VI    A Mighty Poor Joke

VII   We Make An Omelet

VIII  Correspondents'  Department

IX    Flannigan's Find

X     On The Stairs

XI    I Make A Discovery

XII   The Roof Garden

XIII  He Does Not Deny It

XIV   Almost, But Not Quite

XV    Suspicion and Discord

XVI   I Face Flannigan

XVII  A Clash and A Kiss

XVIII It's All My Fault

XIX   The Harbison Man

XX    Breaking Out In A New Place

XXI   A Bar of Soap

XXII  It Was A Delirium

XXIII Coming

 

Needles and pins

Needles and pins,

When a man marries

His trouble begins.

 

Chapter I. AT LEAST I MEANT WELL 


 

When the dreadful thing occurred that night, every one turned on me. The injustice of it hurt me most. They said I got up the dinner, that I asked them to give up other engagements and come, that I promised all kinds of jollification, if they would come; and then when they did come and got in the papers and every one--but ourselves--laughed himself black in the face, they turned on ME! I, who suffered ten times to their one! I shall never forget what Dallas Brown said to me, standing with a coal shovel in one hand and a--well, perhaps it would be better to tell it all in the order it happened.

 

It began with Jimmy Wilson and a conspiracy, was helped on by a foot-square piece of yellow paper and a Japanese butler, and it enmeshed and mixed up generally ten respectable members of society and a policeman. Incidentally, it involved a pearl collar and a box of soap, which sounds incongruous, doesn't it?

 

It is a great misfortune to be stout, especially for a man. Jim was rotund and looked shorter than he really was, and as all the lines of his face, or what should have been lines, were really dimples, his face was about as flexible a