The Girl in the Cellar (Miss Silver #32) by Patricia Wentworth

The Girl in the Cellar - Miss Silver #32.

The Girl in the Cellar first published in 1961.

Miss Silver helps a woman with no memory reconstruct a terrible crime.

She awakes in a dark place. A young woman with a shattered memory, she knows neither who she is nor how she came to be in this abandoned house. All she possesses is a faint sense that someone is lying dead at the foot of the stairs. Horrifyingly, she is correct. In the cellar lies a young woman, her body broken, her head split, her life undone by a revolver's shell. The amnesiac flees and finally has a stroke of luck: She meets Maud Silver. A dowdy governess turned daring detective, Miss Silver sees immediately that something is wrong. She comforts the confused young woman, and coaxes out of her what little story she can tell. The memory of the body sets Miss Silver on a fantastic adventure--the last written by Patricia Wentworth, and one of the most thrilling of them all.

Patricia Wentworth--born Dora Amy Elles--was a British crime fiction writer.

She wrote a series of 32 classic-style whodunnits featuring Miss Silver. The first of which published in 1928, and the last in 1961, the year of her death.

Miss Silver, a retired governess-turned private detective, sometimes compared to Jane Marple, the elderly detective created by Agatha Christie. She works closely with Scotland Yard, especially Inspector Frank Abbott and is fond of quoting the poet Tennyson.