Who Killed The Curate?

When Lady Lupin turned her back on the gay society life to marry the Vicar of Glanville, she didn't expect she'd have to turn detective in this comic detective novel first published in England in 1944 and set at Christmas 1937.

Meet Lady Lupin Lorrimer Hastings, the young, lovely, scatterbrained and kind-hearted newlywed wife to the vicar of St. Marks Parish in Glanville, Sussex. When it comes to matters clerical, she literally doesn't know Jews from Jesuits and she's hopelessly at sea at the meetings of the Mothers' Union, Girl Guides, or Temperance Society but she's determined to make husband Andrew proud of her -- or, at least, not to embarass him too badly. So when Andrew's curate is poisoned, Lady Lupin enlists the help of her old society pals, Duds and Tommy Lethbridge, as well as Andrew's nephew, a British secret service agent, to get at the truth. Lupin refuses to believe Diane Lloyd, the 38-year-old author of children's and detective stories could have done the deed, and casts her net out over the other parishioners. All the suspects seem so nice, much more so than the victim, and Lupin announces she'll help the killer escape if only he or she confesses. Imagine Gracie Allen of Burns and Allen or Pauline Collins of No, Honestly as a sleuth and you might get a tiny idea of what Lupin is like. Set at Christmas 1937 and first published in England in 1944, this is the first American appearance of Who Killed the Curate?