Wilders Walk Away

Rating:
Summary: Good reading for "locked room" fans
Review: A well written story and fine mystery make Brean's book a great read, and one to reread again in a few years. Interesting setting, and likable characters are set against some really clever disappearances.

Rating:
Summary: Good reading for "locked room" fans
Review: This 1948 novel is a well written story and a fine mystery. It's a great read, and one to reread again in a few years. Interesting setting (rural Vermont), and likable characters are set against some really clever disappearances.

The IPL Library of Crime Classics (1987)edition's back cover blurb:

"A WALK ON THE WILDERS SIDE -- Other people die of mumps, Or general decay. Of fevers, chills or other ills; But Wilders walk away.

That's the little ditty they all sing in the quaintly picturesque New England village of Wilder's Lane. That's part of the mystery too, of course. You see, from pre-Revolutionary War times on, members of the Wilder family never die; they walk away -- disappear into thin air -- forever. Footprints on a deserted beach may simply stop. A man who enters an office building is never seen again.

Teen-aged Ellen Wilder is waiting for a bus when she walks away. Well, not quite. Reynold Frame, a photojouranlist on assignment from Life, finds a fresh grave with the murdered girl in it.

Frame begins an investigation. And then he too disappears!

One thing is certain. Wilders may wander off as they please, but readers will be riveted by this marvelous tour-de-force."