The Quiet Woman

"The Quiet Woman" begins when two people conspire to steal a fortune in cash. It ends in double murder. The payroll of the Jauncey Engineering plant is missing. According to the guard, found bound and gagged at the scene, two trusted employees, Harold Graham and Yvonne Marshall, are responsible for the crime, and the police proceed as if this were just another payroll theft. To crime reporter Quinn it sounds like the usual story of a married man and a younger woman who plot to steal the money in order to finance a new life together. He and his friend, insurance assessor Piper, question the missing woman's husband and the missing man's wife and her sister. Soon they are patching scattered clues together, and Quinn sets out to investigate the possibility that Yvonne may have already double-crossed Harold.

Then the first corpse is discovered. All clues point in the same direction, but when the second body is found in a watery ditch, that theory must also be discarded. Another hypothesis is then proposed and painstakingly investigated. It, too, turns into a blind alley. A third cul-de-sac, equally convincing and just as false, makes the action by turns frustrating or suspenseful, but always gripping. And Quinn, who wanted only a human-interest angle for his column, becomes more and more intimately involved in the case. A telephone call from the police provides him with further evidence and leads Quinn reluctantly but inevitably to the conclusion of this fast-paced novel. "The Quiet Woman" is a story of ordinary people engulfed in frightening events. It will challenge even the most astute.