Annie Haynes Books In Order

Publication Order of Inspector Furnival Mysteries Books

Publication Order of Inspector Stoddart Mysteries Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Annie Haynes was an English author of mystery books best known for her Inspector Stoddart Mysteries and Inspector Furnival Mysteries series. She was born in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, United Kingdom, in 1865 and very little is known of her life. After abandonment by her father, Annie family moved to Beaumont farmhouse. In 1908, she moved to London to embark on her literary career after making contacts with Ada Heather-Bigg, a feminist leader of the time.
Interested in crafting crime and detective novels, Annie Haynes would often visit murder scenes or attend murder trials to get first information about killers and their victims. She published her standalone novel The Bungalow Mystery in 1923. She wrote at least twelve books and the last in Inspector Stoddart mystery series, Crystal Beads Murder was published posthumously, and it’s suspected that Dorothy L. Sayers or Agatha Christie completed it.

The Abbey Court Murder

The Abbey Court Murder is the first book in the Inspector Furnival series by Annie Haynes. The novel opens up with an unidentified man getting the shock of his life after when he notices a familiar but unexpected face at a wedding, he’s attending. The familiar face is Lady Judith Carew who several years ago wedded Sir Anthony Carew. Upon introducing himself, its Judith who gets the shock of her life, she’d thought that the man was already dead.

In efforts to prevent her husband from discovering the truth, Judith agrees to meet the man at his home in Abbey Court. But the meeting with the man, Cyril Stanmore does awfully badly. The man claims that she is his wife but she doesn’t agree and this angers him. He disarms her of the revolver she had carried along. Now locked in a room with a monster, Judith’s defeat is investable. Fortunately, this cat and mouse game turns to her advantage as she accidentally knocks the lights out. Now in darkness, she plots to escape, but before she can escape from the room, she hears gunshots and the next minute Cyril is dead on the floor. Shocked that she will be blamed for the murder, she flees the murder scene only to bump into an old friend who knows of her previous relationship with Cyril. Unaware that someone of following her, she tries to get rid of her bloody stained clothes, but this plan is doomed to failure.

Things get even worse for Judith as murder investigations begin. It turns out that she wasn’t the only person in the wrong place that fateful night. It revealed that Anthony never went out for the dinner engagement that fateful night as he already suspected that something was wrong with his wife. When Judith finds out that her husband knew where she was that night, she concludes that she already knows who the killer is. And with husband and wife suspecting each other of the crime, their marriage also becomes tense and full of unvoiced questions and accusations.

If you’re familiar with Lady Audley’s Secret by Elizabeth Brandon, you’ll figure out the similarities the novel shares with Annie Hayne’s book. Meanwhile, you might be wondering where the heck is inspector Furnival, but you will have to wait for a while before the inspector enters the story in person and even after he does, he does it in incognito, and as his counterpart Inspector Stoddart, he is quite comfortable with courting people to get information. However, unlike Inspector Stoddart, Furnival is a married man and if he’s any negate thoughts about women he keeps them to himself. For Judith, life has never been fair for her, and the author doesn’t either show mercy to her as well. With almost everything conspiring against her, and the cops breathing down on her and her husband, there seems to be a single exit left for her.

Overall, The Abbey Court Murder is a great novel with a mystery maintained by the readers who seem to have something to hide. The allusion from Elizabeth Brandon’s book Lady Audley’s Secret is well executed- in this novel, the reader already knows that Judith is innocent but painted black with the circumstantial evidence.

The Bungalow Mystery

The Bungalow Mystery was Annie Haynes debut novel first published in 1923 same year as the first book in Inspector Furnival series, The Abbey Court Murder. The main character is Doctor Lavington, a recent addition to the small village of Sutton Boldon. He is invited by his neighbor’s housekeeper who informs that her master is dying. Unfortunately after arriving he discovers that the reclusive old artist is already dead, with a brain in his brains. There is no sign of any gun in the room, and the position of the bullet entry indicates that the injury could never be self-inflicted and concludes that it was a murder. He informs the housekeeper to summon the cops for further investigation.

During the period the doctor is in the room alone, he sees a young woman hiding against the wall. The young woman doesn’t want to be founded and begs the good doctor to let her escape undetected. He sends her to his home and tells her to pretend that she’s his actress cousin who’s just arrived in town. This might sound like a hasty decision by the doctor, but he’s no fool because we later learn that he suspects the woman to be the killer. This marks the starting point of The Man with Dark Beard which falls in between the sensation fiction and detective mystery. For the greater part of the novel, we follow the doctor and his perception of the events but given the fact that he already believes the woman isn’t innocent. At different scenes, we see police at work, giving the reader a glimpse of the case progress for them to make their own deduction on exactly what happened.

The integration of these two styles is uniquely done, and the author balances each element quite well. Annie Haynes writes in an engaging and entertaining style with interesting three-dimensional characters with rich backstories and relationships.