12 h 5 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 12 h 5 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · 297 pagesHardcover · 6 × 9 in · 297 pagesAbout this book
A magistrate lies murdered in his locked library, and a soot-smudged handprint turns a quiet household into a circle of suspects.
In Arthur J. Rees’s The Hand in the Dark, the English countryside offers little shelter from fear. A respected magistrate’s death draws investigators into a household burdened by old grudges and hidden truths. From the grieving widow to the watchful butler, everyone has something to protect—and secrecy can look very much like guilt.
The investigation advances through clues, doubt and careful reasoning. Appearances mislead, motives overlap, and each discovery raises fresh questions about whom to trust. Rees invites you to weigh what people reveal against what they conceal. The stakes reach beyond finding a murderer: how can justice emerge when nobody tells the whole truth?
What you’ll discover
- A locked library Consider a seemingly impossible crime whose enclosed setting makes every clue feel close at hand.
- Secrets that resemble guilt Watch private fears and old resentments complicate the search for a killer.
- A shadowed country household Enter a quiet world where familiar rooms and guarded conversations take on menace.
- A puzzle for patient readers Follow the slow gathering of evidence and test your suspicions as the investigation unfolds.
- Motive beneath appearances Look beyond respectable surfaces to questions of deception, responsibility and what justice demands.
Who will love it
You will enjoy this if you love country-house puzzles, rival detectives, wartime England, old family curses and a trail of clues that keeps changing direction until the last chapters.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- An old house with a bloody past waits
- Aunt Alethea rules the household and dislikes its new bride
- Vincent Musard holds the dinner table in his hands
- A tale of a ruby and two skeletons fills the dinner hour
- A scream and a shot shatter the evening
- Two detectives with opposite methods take over
- A housekeeper's secret turns suspicion on her daughter
- Phil hires Colwyn, and the case begins to open
- What the story is really about
Who’s who
- Miss Alethea HeredithThe proud, practical aunt who rules the moat-house and wants her family's name kept spotless.
- Phil HeredithThe lame, bookish son of the house who loves his wife and cannot believe his old friend Hazel is guilty.
- Vincent MusardAn explorer and jewel expert, old friend of the family, who takes command in a crisis.
- Detective CaldewAn ambitious Scotland Yard man from the village who wants one big case to win his promotion.
- Superintendent MerringtonA huge, suspicious senior detective who trusts experience and bullying over subtle clues.
- Hazel RathThe housekeeper's daughter, raised at the moat-house, who is arrested and stays stubbornly silent.
- ColwynA calm private detective who refuses to accept an answer just because it fits.
Formats and delivery
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- Audiobook
- 12 h 5 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 7 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in, 297 pages: USD 11.95 when you start free, USD 17.95 on its own.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in, 297 pages: USD 20.95 when you start free, USD 26.95 on its own.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in, 448 pages: USD 17.95 when you start free, USD 23.95 on its own.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in, 448 pages: USD 25.95 when you start free, USD 31.95 on its own.
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The Hand in the Dark
by Arthur J. Rees · 1920
A scream and a gunshot interrupt a dinner party while a house full of guests sits downstairs at the table.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
A scream rings through an English country house, and a gunshot follows while a whole dinner party sits at table below. The Hand in the Dark is a detective novel by Arthur J.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
An old house with a bloody past waits
The book opens on the moat-house in Sussex, an old brick house ringed by water, in the autumn of 1918. Rees starts with its history, a record of killings that reaches back to Saxon times. The founder, Philip Heredith, burned a royalist owner alive, and the dead man's ghost swore that a family begun in horror would end in horror.
Philip built a church and prayed for the man he killed. He also left a stone tablet listing his own virtues, so that later Herediths would admire him. Centuries on, the house still stands, its roof sagging and its ivy hiding the cracks, with peacocks on the terrace and marble nymphs in the garden.
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What is The Hand in the Dark about?
It is a detective novel about the shooting of a young wife during a dinner party at an old Sussex house. Two Scotland Yard men and a private detective try to find who did it.
Who is Colwyn in The Hand in the Dark?
Colwyn is a private detective with rooms above Ludgate Circus in London. Phil Heredith hires him because he does not believe the police have the right person, and he reasons by doubting appearances rather than trusting them.
When is The Hand in the Dark set?
The story takes place in the autumn of 1918, near the end of the First World War.
The author
Arthur J. Rees
1872–1942 · Australian mystery novelist
Arthur J. Rees (1872–1942) was an Australian writer of detective fiction. He was born in Melbourne and later lived in England. He wrote The Hand in the Dark, published in 1920, and The Moon Rock, published in 1922. He also worked as a journalist.
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