"What happens," Bobby asked, "when a woman with an irresistible attraction for men, and the man with an irresistible attraction for women, meet? When glamour meets glamour . . . ?" "Lummy," said the superintendent. A seemingly innocent young woman has disappeared, presumably to elope with an unscrupulous lothario. Despite his wife Olive's urging, Met Commander Bobby Owen is originally reluctant to get involved in a seemingly personal matter. But he soon finds his professional whiskers twitching when he discovers the cad in the case is a former suspect in a knife murder. Before long Bobby discovers a new murder scene – plenty of blood, but strangely no corpse ... So Many Doors, a classic golden age whodunit, is the twenty-sixth novel in the Bobby Owen Mystery series, originally published in 1949. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans, and a selection of E.R. Punshon's prolific Guardian reviews of other golden...

That evening the down train from London deposited at the little country station of Ramsdon but a single passenger, a man of middle height, shabbily dressed, with broad shoulders and long arms and a most unusual breadth and depth of chest. Of his face one could see little, for it was covered by a thick growth of dark curly hair, beard, moustache and whiskers, all overgrown and ill-tended, and as he came with a somewhat slow and ungainly walk along the platform, the lad stationed at the gate to collect tickets grinned amusedly and called to one of the porters near.

Perhaps the victim had not been unconscious but had known her fate, had sent upwards from the black pit a cry that none but murderers had heard.Bobby takes the rare opportunity for a holiday - albeit a working one. Prompted by his fiancée Olive, he sets off to France, charged with finding out what happened to Miss Polthwaite's diamonds - and why her dead body was discovered at the bottom of a well. The local police have a ready-made suspect, it appears, but Bobby soon forms theories of his own regarding what happened to the unfortunate spinster.Murder Abroad, originally published in 1939, is the thirteenth novel in the Bobby Owen mystery series. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans."What is distinction? The few who achieve it step - plot or no plot - unquestioned into the first rank... in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time." Dorothy L. Sayers