Flying Red Horse

The only problem Jean Abbott anticipated as she drove to Dallas to meet her detective husband Patrick. was what to do with their dachshund Pancho. They left him with Sally, the daughter of Iles Dollahan, a wealthy oil man, and that night Pancho discovered the body of Juliana Willoz, Mrs. Dollahan's younger sister, on the Dollahan lawn.

But who would kill Juliana, the docile, unambitious, dowdy Juliana-especially when it was the youngest sister, Rosemary Willoz, who fished for trouble?

The interference with the Abbotts' detecting is a little rough in Dallas, for despite their lavish wealth the Dollahans came up the hard way, and they all know how to handle a gun. The contrast between the nice manners of new money and the old direct-action methods of the oil fields provides grim comedy as the Abbotts, working on their own, outface the Dollahans and outguess the police-but just barely.

This is another top-flight example of Frances Crane's mastery of the suspense-till-the-end novel of murder. Others have been Black Cypress, the Cinnamon Murder, The Indigo Necklace, etc.