Hildegarde Withers is just your average school teacher--with
above-average skills in the art of deduction. The New Yorker often finds
herself investigating crimes led only by her own meddlesome curiosity,
though her friends on the NYPD don't mind when she solves their cases
for them. After plans for a grand tour of Europe are interrupted by
Germany's invasion of Poland, Miss Withers heads to sunny Los Angeles
instead, where her vacation finds her working as a technical advisor on
the set of a film adaptation of the Lizzie Borden story. The producer
has plans for an epic retelling of the historical killer's patricidal
spree--plans which are derailed when a screenwriter turns up dead. While
the local authorities quickly deem his death accidental, Withers
suspects otherwise and calls up a detective back home for advice. The
two soon team up to catch a wily killer.
At once a pleasantly complex locked room mystery and a hilarious look at
the foibles of Hollywood, The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan finds
Palmer, a screenwriter himself, at his most perceptive. Reprinted for
the first time in over thirty years, this riotously funny novel shows
why Hildegarde Withers was among the most beloved detectives of the
Golden Age American mystery novel.