The Cottage Murder by E.R. Punshon First Edition Houghton Mifflin Company 1932. Boston & New York. A very fine copy, no marks and appearing unread. In original bright VG dust jacket.

In the tranquil yet treacherous village of Chalgrove, a midnight intruder is shot dead in the modest cottage of retired actor James Martin, his body sprawled amid shattered teacups and a fortune in hidden banknotes. Superintendent Bobby Owen, the urbane Oxford graduate turned detective, arrives to probe a labyrinth of alibis: Martin's flustered daughter, a spurned suitor with a grudge, and a mysterious neighbor peddling cryptic clues from a locked diary. As village gossip swirls and a second corpse surfaces in the lily pond, Owen's keen intuition unravels a web of blackmail, buried scandals, and theatrical facades. Punshon's novel crackles with rural suspense, witty dialogue, and ingenious twists, transforming pastoral peace into a deadly drama of deception and discovery.

The Cottage Murder beguiles collectors as a charming rarity in E.R. Punshon's Bobby Owen series, its village vignette a quintessential Golden Age cozy amid his procedural prowess. Readers savor its pastoral puzzles and Owen's gentlemanly grit, akin to Ngaio Marsh's rural riddles or Margery Allingham's quirky countrysides. Its cultural charm captures interwar English idylls and small-town sins, alluring whodunit enthusiasts. Collectors prize its scarcity among Punshon's works, while readers prowl the pond-side perils and diary-driven deceptions, deeming it a thatched-roof essential for devotees of village mysteries and Owen's evolving sleuthing saga.