Book cover featuring a dark, rainy urban scene with a silhouetted figure looking down at a man lying dead in the street, face-up on the wet cobblestones beneath a glowing street lamp.
An informational graphic featuring a black-and-white photograph of Major Cecil Street on the left and biographical text on the right, with an ornate gold border.
Book cover featuring a dark, rainy urban scene with a silhouetted figure looking down at a man lying dead in the street, face-up on the wet cobblestones beneath a glowing street lamp.
An informational graphic featuring a black-and-white photograph of Major Cecil Street on the left and biographical text on the right, with an ornate gold border.

The Murders in Praed Street

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Book #4 of 72 in the Dr. Priestley Mysteries series.

 

Fog-shrouded streets. A succession of seemingly random violence. A calculating serial killer who always appears to be one step ahead. 

When a respectable greengrocer is lured from his home by a mysterious telephone call and murdered on the shadowy London lane of Praed Street, the police can find neither a convincing motive nor a meaningful clue. Then another local resident dies after being cut by a poisoned fragment of glass, and then yet another seemingly impossible death occurs inside a locked room. Though the victims and methods appear unconnected, each crime is marked by the discovery of a strange numbered counter. Baffled by the killer’s changing methods and cryptic calling cards, Scotland Yard turns to Dr. Lancelot Priestley, the formidable mathematician and gentleman detective whose powers of logical deduction have solved the most perplexing crimes. But this time, the investigation is more than just an intricate puzzle filled with red herrings and hidden connections—the mounting danger will force the normally unflappable sleuth directly into the murderer’s path!

 

First published in 1928, The Murders in Praed Street by John Rhode is one of the best-known early novels in the long-running Dr. Priestley mystery series. Combining an atmospheric urban setting with serial murder, coded clues, and ingeniously varied methods of death, this vintage detective novel demonstrates why John Rhode—the pen name of prolific British mystery writer and former intelligence officer Cecil Street—became celebrated as the Golden Age’s “Master of Murder Means.” Perfect for fans of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, Anthony Berkeley, John Dickson Carr, Freeman Wills Crofts, and R. Austin Freeman, as well as readers who enjoy classic British whodunits, gentleman detectives, serial-killer mysteries, locked-room puzzles, scientific detection, police procedurals, and Golden Age crime fiction. Ideal for libraries, book clubs, and collectors alike.

Book cover featuring a dark, rainy urban scene with a silhouetted figure looking down at a man lying dead in the street, face-up on the wet cobblestones beneath a glowing street lamp.
An informational graphic featuring a black-and-white photograph of Major Cecil Street on the left and biographical text on the right, with an ornate gold border.

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