The Chuckling Fingers
Rediscover one of the great mystery authors of the twentieth century in this Depression-era tale of a wealthy family's dark secrets turned deadly on their secluded lakeside estate.
 
An urgent note from a friend spurs Ann Gay to visit her recently married cousin, Jacqueline Heaton. Upon her arrival at Fiddler's Fingers, a remote, pine-grown estate on Lake Superior, Ann immediately senses her cousin's fear-someone has been playing increasingly malicious tricks on the Heatons, a proud family of Minnesota lumber tycoons, and worse yet, they seem determined to frame Jacqueline.
 
Ann quickly resolves to take Jacqueline and her young daughter, Toby, away from the danger. But what began as seemingly trivial pranks-ruined clothes, a burnt bed, a smashed boat-escalates to direct attacks and ultimately murder. Dangerous waters crash against the finger-like rocks on the lakeshore, making a sound like a guttural chuckle, one that seems to mock the murder that took place there-but no one is laughing when everyone on the estate becomes a suspect. Potential motives are revealed as Ann learns more about the Heaton family, and with no chance of anyone leaving Fiddler's Fingers until the killer is caught, Ann realizes that the only way to prove her cousin's innocence is by snaring the murderer herself.
 
The trap is set; with herself as bait, Ann's door creaks open in the night as a cloaked figure moves silently toward her bed....
"1003152628"
The Chuckling Fingers
Rediscover one of the great mystery authors of the twentieth century in this Depression-era tale of a wealthy family's dark secrets turned deadly on their secluded lakeside estate.
 
An urgent note from a friend spurs Ann Gay to visit her recently married cousin, Jacqueline Heaton. Upon her arrival at Fiddler's Fingers, a remote, pine-grown estate on Lake Superior, Ann immediately senses her cousin's fear-someone has been playing increasingly malicious tricks on the Heatons, a proud family of Minnesota lumber tycoons, and worse yet, they seem determined to frame Jacqueline.
 
Ann quickly resolves to take Jacqueline and her young daughter, Toby, away from the danger. But what began as seemingly trivial pranks-ruined clothes, a burnt bed, a smashed boat-escalates to direct attacks and ultimately murder. Dangerous waters crash against the finger-like rocks on the lakeshore, making a sound like a guttural chuckle, one that seems to mock the murder that took place there-but no one is laughing when everyone on the estate becomes a suspect. Potential motives are revealed as Ann learns more about the Heaton family, and with no chance of anyone leaving Fiddler's Fingers until the killer is caught, Ann realizes that the only way to prove her cousin's innocence is by snaring the murderer herself.
 
The trap is set; with herself as bait, Ann's door creaks open in the night as a cloaked figure moves silently toward her bed....
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The Chuckling Fingers

The Chuckling Fingers

by Mabel Seeley

Narrated by Tavia Gilbert

Unabridged — 10 hours, 23 minutes

The Chuckling Fingers

The Chuckling Fingers

by Mabel Seeley

Narrated by Tavia Gilbert

Unabridged — 10 hours, 23 minutes

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Overview

Rediscover one of the great mystery authors of the twentieth century in this Depression-era tale of a wealthy family's dark secrets turned deadly on their secluded lakeside estate.
 
An urgent note from a friend spurs Ann Gay to visit her recently married cousin, Jacqueline Heaton. Upon her arrival at Fiddler's Fingers, a remote, pine-grown estate on Lake Superior, Ann immediately senses her cousin's fear-someone has been playing increasingly malicious tricks on the Heatons, a proud family of Minnesota lumber tycoons, and worse yet, they seem determined to frame Jacqueline.
 
Ann quickly resolves to take Jacqueline and her young daughter, Toby, away from the danger. But what began as seemingly trivial pranks-ruined clothes, a burnt bed, a smashed boat-escalates to direct attacks and ultimately murder. Dangerous waters crash against the finger-like rocks on the lakeshore, making a sound like a guttural chuckle, one that seems to mock the murder that took place there-but no one is laughing when everyone on the estate becomes a suspect. Potential motives are revealed as Ann learns more about the Heaton family, and with no chance of anyone leaving Fiddler's Fingers until the killer is caught, Ann realizes that the only way to prove her cousin's innocence is by snaring the murderer herself.
 
The trap is set; with herself as bait, Ann's door creaks open in the night as a cloaked figure moves silently toward her bed....

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Praise for The Chuckling Fingers

“Satin-smooth mystery novel in a family fracas which starts with acts of malignant mischief and leads to murder. Young Ann Gay finds her cousin and closest friend, Jacqui, framed in guilt for diabolical doings and double murder. Ann turns detective and solves the crimes. Ingenuous manner for some ingenious matter — expert timing and mechanics and pleasant romantic asides. Velvet.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review (September, 1941)

Praise for the novels of Mabel Seeley
 
“What a find! I’m so happy to have discovered Mabel Seeley. You will love her feisty heroine and the delightful cast of characters who live in the mysterious Listening House. I changed my mind a dozen times about who I thought the killer was, but I was wrong every time!”—Victoria Thompson, USA Today Bestselling Author of Murder on Wall Street on The Listening House
 
"So packed with weird thrills that it grips from first page to last . . . should take its place as one of the best thrillers of the season."—National Newsagent on The Listening House
 
“First rate whodunit, with enough of romance to give it a Mary Roberts Rinehart appeal…This is a newcomer in the field—a good 'un.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review (September, 1938) on The Listening House
 
“Beautifully told by a writer who is expert at finding horror in commonplace settings. Recommended for highest honors.” —The New Yorker on The Crying Sisters
 
The Crying Sisters is the Crime Club selection for this month, and it is an excellent mystery novel of the ‘atmospheric’ type….it holds its interest from the beginning as it rises in crescendo toward climax.”—The New York Times on The Crying Sisters

Library Journal

11/01/2021

Called to the aid of her cousin Jacqui who is newly married to a widowed lumber tycoon, intrepid heroine Ann Gay arrives at the family estate (map provided!) upon Minnesota's picturesque North Shore. There Ann finds a welter of distrust, as a series of malicious pranks—a tripwire, slashed clothing, a vandalized boa—swiftly escalate to murder. Refusing to accept the mounting evidence of her cousin Jacqui's criminal insanity, Ann sifts her way through a profusion of colorful suspects (cast list provided!) on her way to solving this elaborate, not-quite-fair-play puzzler. Adapting Golden Age conventions to middle-class, middle-American settings, Seeley (1903–91) enjoyed great popularity during her brief career, and this skillfully calibrated and cleverly appointed 1941 entertainment shows why. VERDICT From its foreboding had-I-but-known opening to the suspenseful and romantically satisfying climax (more Douglas Sirk than Alfred Hitchcock), this stylish time capsule, together with Seeley's also newly reissued The Listening House, represents the cream of plush, popular mid-century crime fiction.

Kirkus Reviews

2021-06-16
An extended family’s post-nuptial celebration at its Lake Superior estate is turned upside down by a killer who’s almost certainly a beloved relative in this acclaimed 1941 whodunit.

Stenographer Ann Gay was already close to her cousin Jacqueline Heaton before they were both orphaned by a drowning accident. Now their friendship will be sorely tested by Jacqui’s second marriage to wealthy older lumberman Bill Heaton after the death of her first husband, Pat Sallishaw, left her almost 3-year-old daughter, Toby, without a father from the moment she was born. Bill’s son, Fred, is clearly resentful of the new wife he considers an interloper at Fiddler’s Fingers, the estate owned by Myra Heaton Sallishaw, Bill’s cousin and the late Pat’s mother. Myra’s brother, Phillips Heaton, can’t stop sowing catty remarks in every direction; Cecile Granat seems to be trolling for a suitable man; and an escalating series of pranks—a tripwire that trips up Toby, a smashed motorboat belonging to neighbor Ed Corvo, a robe of Ann’s slashed to pieces—clearly heralds darker doings. The fatal shooting of one of the assembled party brings out Cook County sheriff Paavo Aakonen and his helpers (and inevitably attracts the unwelcome attention of the local press), but their conscientious detective work, which largely involves establishing alibis, breaking them down, and dipping into the family’s troubled past, seems if anything to spur the murderer to ever greater heights of industry and ingenuity as Ann does her best to defend Jacqui from a mounting pile of evidence and glances disbelievingly from one of her relatives to the next, wondering which of them could possibly be behind the mayhem instead.

A model of construction, cascading revelations, and controlled hysteria that will still fool most readers 80 years on.

Product Details

BN ID: 2940173340481
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Publication date: 09/07/2021
Edition description: Unabridged
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