[Desmond Merrion 40] • Look Alive

How can an elderly lady, discovered lying dead in a hammock by her great-niece and companion, be sitting up and calmly giving an interview with reporters only minutes later? That is the perplexing question that comes to the ears of debonair sleuth Desmond Merrion in this 1950 mystery from the prolific pen of Major John Street, writing under his Miles Burton pseudonym. Merrion is on the scene with alacrity, investigating the old woman’s history, including the estranged nature of her relationships with her surviving family. Soon his inquiries lead him to unearth not one but two dead bodies in a secluded boat house – one of which has been there a matter of days but the other has been reduced to a skeleton.