The Worried Widow
By Gerald Hammond
Keith Calder-ex-poacher, gunsmith, and sometime sleuth-returns to solve a sinister crime.
The worried widow is Jenny Hendrickson, whose husband has just been found fatally shot, apparently by his own hand. Jenny doesn’t believe that Sam Hendrickson would have committed suicide, and pleads with Keith to look into the case.
Against his better judgement-he was no great admirer of the deceased, a hard-nosed union boss-Keith allows his wife Molly to persuade him to heed the widow’s request. Soon he begins to think that Jenny may be right and the coroner’s verdict wrong. When his old enemy, Inspector Munro, hints the police aren’t entirely satisfied with the verdict, Keith is far too intrigued to let the matter drop.
But he runs up against a seeming dead end: While several people were nearby when the fatal shot was heard, no one apparently had the opportunity to kill Hendrickson. Calder’s natural stubbornness prevails, however, and the outcome is a puzzle skilfully solved.
Gerald Hammond’s many readers have come to expect from him a wealth of ballistic expertise, witty entertainment, and a satisfying mystery. The Worried Widow will not disappoint them.
Born in 1926, Gerald Hammond lived in Scotland, where he retired from his profession as an architect in 1982 to pursue his love of shooting and fishing and to write full time. After his first novel, Fred in Situ, was published in 1965, Gerald became a prolific author with over 70 published novels. Most of his novels were published under his own name, but he also wrote under the pseudonyms Arthur Douglas and Dalby Holden.
