Death by Two Hands: A Golden Age Mystery

by Peter Drax

'One brown mouse. Victim of foul play.'

Chalk Street, Camden Town, is the busy scene for all kinds of commercial activity - some legal, some a little less so. By day, local crime boss Mr. Rivers works as a market trader, but gladly turns his attention to the potentially lucrative theft of fox-skins in the countryside. However, what should have been a simple robbery leads to a string of murders, and a Scotland Yard investigation, led by Chief-Inspector Thompson. A case in which one of the clues is no fox, but a fat brown mouse ...

Death by Two Hands was first published in 1937, and has remained out of print until this new edition. It includes an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

'Little people in [the] grip of tragic destiny ... brilliantly done' Saturday Review of Literature

'I have the highest opinion of Peter Drax's murder stories ... The secret of Peter Drax's success is his ability to make the circumstances as plausible as the characters are real' Sunday Times

Genres: Mystery

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1937

About the author

Eric Elrington Addis was born on 19 May 1899 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the youngest child of the marriage formed by Emily, the daughter of an officer in the British Indian Army, and David F. Addis, a retired Indian civil servant. Drax attended Edinburgh University, and served in the Royal Navy. In 1926, she married with Hazel Iris Wilson. By his job, the couple lived in New Zealand until his retirement in 1928. They moved to Norfolk, where they had their two children: Valerie A. in 1929 and Jeremy Cecil in 1931, before moved to Charlwood. He studied law and he began practising as a barrister to the Admiralty bar. He recalled to the Navy upon the outbreak of the Second World War, he served on HMS Warspite and was mentioned in dispatches. Her family moved to New Zealand, and his wife started to wrote novels under the pseudonyms Hazel Adair, H. I. Addis and A. J. Heritage, he also started to write under the pseudonym of Peter Drax. He was killed during the war on 31 August 1941, at 42. Between 1936 and 1939, he published six crime novels, his later novel, Sing a Song of Murder, unfinished by him on his death, was completed by his wife, and published in 1944.