Hildegarde Withers: Uncollected Riddles

Hildegarde Withers, the creation of Stuart Palmer (1905–1968), is the original schoolmarm detective. After she first appeared in The Penguin Pool Murder in 1931, she was so popular that a series of movies starring Edna Mae Oliver and James Gleason followed, and Palmer wrote short stories about Miss Withers for Mystery, a slick-paper magazine sold only in Woolworth’s stores between 1933 and 1935. These stories, filled with the sights and sounds of New York during the depression — museums, flea-circuses, burlesque shows, Latin gigolos — are genuine forgotten classics.

Hildegarde Withers: Uncollected Riddles is the third volume in “Crippen & Landru Lost Classics,” a series of short-story volumes by authors of the past who wrote excellent detective and mystery stories. Rediscovered in the crumbling archives of pulp, digest, and slick magazines, these previously uncollected stories will delight a new generation of readers.