A SUDDEN VENGEANCE

Arthur Bayliss is the owner of a successful textile business in the north of England and a newly endorsed member of the Icarus Club. He is also a tyrant and a bully. When Everett Carr accepts an invitation to stay at Darton House, Bayliss’ country house in the Lancashire mill town of Darton Vale, he knows instantly that he has made a mistake.

No sooner has Carr arrived in the town than he begins to learn of acts of sabotage against Bayliss’ mill, the beginnings of a personal campaign of hate against him, and a mixture of buried secrets and lies, all seemingly linked to Bayliss himself. Carr begins to suspect that Bayliss’ life is in danger, but his warnings to the potential victim go unheeded.

When murder does strike, however, Carr’s predictions are proved wrong – because Arthur Bayliss is not the victim.

Faced now with a seemingly motiveless crime, Everett Carr must use all his wits to discover the truth. Because Carr knows that when a killer seemingly strikes at random, nobody is safe.

Not even Everett Carr himself…

. . .

“Everett Carr makes an excellent detective. He has his own sufferings, which make him compassionate as well as a shrewd judge of human nature, and he’s observant of every unexplained detail. … The Serpent’s Fang is everything you want in a ‘Golden Age’ mystery: a country house, stolen poison, a missing will, and the denouement in the library where Carr reveals the final shocking twist. I couldn’t put it down, and such is the dastardly ingenuity of Matthew Booth that I didn’t guess whodunnit.” 

~ Jean Briggs, author of the Charles Dickens Mysteries