Sweet Poison — Douglas Clark

The death of Fay Partridge, a young widow who ran the very select Throstlecombe Holiday Camp on the north coast of Devon, presented the police with a singular problem. Her death posed the question, first of all, of how rather than who...

For Mrs Partridge died very suddenly of a liver complaint most unlikely in a woman of her age. And her two poodles, whom she had taken to the vet on the day of her death, expired the same day from the same cause. Toxic necrosis was the verdict on each, but neither the doctor who conducted the post-mortem on Mrs Partridge, nor the veterinary surgeon who examined the poodles, could find any trace of poison to account for the condition.

For Detective Chief Inspector George Masters and his team, the assignment was something of a relaxation. The Holiday Camp in high summer was a very pleasant place in which to work, the accommodation unusually attractive. But how to find a murderer without knowing the means by which the murder was committed presented Masters with a considerable challenge to his ingenuity...

Douglas Clark was born in Lincolnshire, 1919. He wrote over 20 crime novels and under other names, including James Ditton and Peter Hosier.