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Okay, maybe someone can help me with this. It's plagued me for years and so far nobody's come up with a solution. This is a book I read from the library when I was about 11 or 12, but that's not really relevant. I'll break everything down into segments, lest anyone has trouble following my vague memories. Title: Something generic along the lines of "Mysteries for Young People." Genre: Anthology of mystery stories, all by different authors. Appearance: Library binding, and the cover painting was vaguely sinister and mysterious. All I remember is a man in a top hat standing near/below a flight of stairs. There were a lot of shadowy figures. Stories: I remember a few of the stories pretty well. While I'd be ecstatic to find out the titles or authors of any of them, I'd be even happier if someone can identify the actual anthology that I read. Story #1: I believe this one is somewhat well-known. It involved someone burying a Thermos full of money underground, and a tree was planted over it at some point. Eventually the money was dug up and discovered to have rotted away (old-style thermos). I think it's called "The Money Tree" but I'm not having any luck on Google. Story #2: A Sherlock Holmes-style tale, featuring an eccentric detective and his duller sidekick. The detective was European, I believe, possibly Hungarian or French. The mystery involved a woman who had been killed and somehow dropped in a lake at the bottom of a large hill, at the top of which a man lived in a cabin. The body was discovered in the spring thaw, and they determined that the woman had been killed sometime over the winter. The man would have been the perfect suspect, except he had a very weak heart and couldn't possibly have lugged a body down the hill to drop it in the lake. The detective finally realized that the man had used a frozen sheet as a makeshift sled to send her body onto the frozen lake, and in the thaw she sunk to the bottom. When confronted with this theory, the suspect immediately had a fatal heart attack. The detective's sidekick asked him if he was disappointed that he couldn't get a confession, but he insisted that the man dying of shock was as good as any confession. Story #3: More Agatha Christie style, but I'm pretty sure it's not by her. The story involves several people in a large mansion. At some point, they all get trapped in a vault with the air running out. I believe there is a recorded/amplified voice speaking to them at one point, and the rhyme "hickory dickory dock" plays a part in the story. Once again, I'm looking for either the anthology itself (which might not exist outside of libraries) or the title/author of any of these stories. And no, it's not Scary Stories to Read in the Dark or whatever the gently caress, which people always seem to suggest blindly without reading the description carefully. I swear it's not. I'd remember.
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Apr 15, 2008 02:43
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sonofming posted:Mystery and more mystery by Robert Arthur? That's it. I love you.
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May 24, 2008 02:04
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