''Mr. Westerby Missing'' is a 1940

detective novel Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as spec ...

by the British writer

Cecil Street Cecil John Charles Street (3 May 1884 – 8 December 1964), who was known to his colleagues, family and friends as John Street, began his military career as an artillery officer in the British Army. During the course of World War I, he becam ...

, writing under the

pen name A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen na ...

of Miles Burton. It was the twenty-second in a series of books featuring the detective Desmond Merrion and Inspector Arnold of Scotland Yard. It was published in the United States by Doubleday the same year.Reilly p.1259 In ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper Sunday editions, published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group, Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. ...

Maurice Richardson Maurice Richardson (1907–1978) was an English journalist and short story writer. Life and career Richardson was born to a wealthy family."Odd Man Out", Mary Manning,''Irish Times'', 4 August 1978 (p.11) Review of ''Fits and Starts''. As a c ...

considered it as "another of Mr. Burton’s sound patient investigations" while in his ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' review Isaac Anderson noted "Miles Burton has written many good mystery stories, and this is one of his best".

Synopsis

John Westerby, a keen

ornithologist Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the "methodological study and consequent knowledge of birds with all that relates to them." Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and th ...

living in a peaceful village, goes missing one November evening with a large sum of money in his possession. The case perplexes Inspector Arnold who can't work out if Westerby has suffered an accident, committed suicide, has been murdered, or is still alive. As so often it takes the assistance of his friend Merrion to crack the case.

References

Bibliography

* Evans, Curtis. ''Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961''. McFarland, 2014. * Herbert, Rosemary. ''Whodunit?: A Who's Who in Crime & Mystery Writing''. Oxford University Press, 2003. * Reilly, John M. ''Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers''. Springer, 2015. 1940 British novels Novels by Cecil Street British mystery novels British detective novels Collins Crime Club books Novels set in England {{1940s-novel-stub