The Dartmouth Murders / The Wailing Rock Murders

Book excerpt: The Dartmouth Murders: The Dartmouth Hall clock strikes a "cold, damp six" as student Ken Harris awakens to the ominous sound of muffled rhythmic raps against a dormitory window. Upon rising and looking out the window, Ken finds to his horror that the eerie noise is coming from the two bare feet of his roommate, Byron Coates, whose rain-slicked, pajama-clad body hangs suspended from a rope fire escape. Initially it is believed that Byron committed suicide, but soon it is established that the moody Dartmouth student was the victim of a foul play. As strange events unfold and yet more unnatural deaths follow, a bewildered Ken finds himself questioning the motives of everyone around him. Even his officious attorney and author father, on hand and helping the floundering police with their investigation, comes under suspicion. When will this nightmare rampage of murders at Dartmouth end? The Wailing Rock Murders: Perched above the rocky coast near Ogunquit Beach, Maine, are two identical mansions, Victorian monstrosities with cupolas like travesties of crowns, "fashioned of rusty iron and set with blind isinglass." In the cupolas of both houses murder strikes, in most savage fashion. On the hunt for the killer is the brilliant, elderly amateur detective Spaton "Spider" Meech, whose ward, lovely Garda Lawrence, is, to his profound horror, the first of the victims. Over the course of one hagridden evening and morning, Meech confronts the most challenging-and horrendous-case in his celebrated crime-fighting career. Local legend says that when the rock wails death will follow-a claim chillingly borne out repeatedly as a remorseless "Spider" strives to ensnare a murderer in his web of detection.