The Bat
Rinehart Mary Roberts, Hopwood AveryAn infamous thief hides in the countryside—where cunning Cornelia Van Gorder picks up the trail—in a mystery from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author.
For months, the city has lived in fear of the Bat. A master criminal
hindered by neither scruple nor fear, he has stolen over one million
dollars and left at least six men dead. The police are helpless, the
newspapers know nothing—even the key figures of the city’s underworld
have no clue as to the identity of the Bat. He is a living embodiment of
death itself, and he is coming to the countryside.
There, he will
encounter the only person who can stop him: adventurous
sixty-five-year-old spinster Cornelia Van Gorder. Last in a long line of
New York society royalty, Cornelia has found old age to be a bore, and
is hungry for a bit of adventure. She’s going to find it—in a lonely old
country house where every shadow could be the Bat.
An elite, rich, and
spunky older lady rents a country house for the summer along with her
skittish Irish maid and her niece. Some servants sort of come with the
property but most soon abandon their new matron due to happenings within
this large mansion. A converging plot concerns the homeowner (a banker)
who has recently died and whose bank has just coincidentally failed --
the suspicion falls upon a youthful bank clerk who is the heart-throb of
the old lady's niece.
The central plot revolves around a
mysterious and effective murder/burglar dubbed by the frustrated police
as The Bat and who has been operating in the vicinity of this country
home. The subsequent happenings in the house are almost slapstick in
nature, in the old lady's efforts in solving the mystery of both the
infamous Bat's activities and the bank embezzlement.