From the front flap of the dust jacket of the first edition of Dead for a Ducat by Leo Bruce, published by Peter Davies (London, 1956):
Readers will be delighted to be advised that it seems unlikely that
Carolus Deene will ever be allowed by fate to complete a term of his
duties as Senior History Master at Queen’s School, Newminster, without
having constant calls on his indubitable brilliance at criminal
investigation.
The calm of this particular term is ruffled one evening when he is rung
up shortly before midnight and asked by old Lady Pipford—one of the
School Governors, incidentally—to come up to her home, Mincott House,
where her son-in-law Darryl Montaccord had apparently just shot himself.
The clouds begin to appear when Carolus—differing from the
police—becomes convinced it’s a case of murder: the storm is upon us
when another dead body is found—and then another—the work of a homicidal
maniac?
Suspicion falls on this character and then on that as the extremely
ingenious plot develops; and what memorable characters they are! If
one selects as the choicest, Alicia Crick, with her loud cracked laugh
and her passion for bottling and pickling every kind of garden produce,
others may prefer the precocious schoolboy Rupert Priggley, the taciturn
semi-gamekeeper Swillow, the big jocular Vicar the Reverend Selwyn
Fleece, or the ubiquitous Mr Monty Boater.
In Dead for a Ducat there is ideal entertainment: laughter, suspense
and intense satisfaction at the close as the final piece goes into a
brilliantly variegated jigsaw puzzle.
On page 1 of the same edition:
It seems unlikely that Carolus Deene will ever be allowed by fate to complete a term of his duties as Senior History Master at Queen’s School, Newminster, without having constant calls on his indubitable brilliance at criminal investigation.
The calm of this particular term is ruffled one evening when he is rung up shortly before midnight and asked by old Lady Pipford—one of the School Governors, incidentally—to come up to her home, Mincott House, where her son-in-law Darryl Montaccord had apparently just shot himself. The clouds begin to appear when Carolus—differing from the police—becomes convinced it’s a case of murder: the storm is upon us when another dead body is found—and then another. . . .
