Duck Season Death

June Wright wrote this lost gem in the mid-1950s, but consigned it to her bottom drawer after her publisher foolishly rejected it. Perhaps it was a little ahead of its time? Because while it?s a tour de force of the classic country-house murder mystery, it?s also a delightful romp, poking fun at the conventions of the genre. When someone takes advantage of a duck hunt to murder publisher Athol Sefton at a remote hunting inn, it soon turns out that virtually everyone, guests and staff alike, had a good reason for shooting him. Sefton?s nephew Charles thinks he can solve the crime by applying the “rules of the game? he?s absorbed from his years as a reviewer of detective fiction — only the killer evidently isn?t playing by those rules. Duck Season Death is a both a fiendishly clever whodunit and a marvelous entertainment.