Stuart Palmer has 13 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 6 narrators, with an average listener rating of 3.5★ across 2 ratings. The most-rated is The Penguin Pool Murder.
The Penguin Pool Murder
Summary
Although the Stock Market had crashed recently, it was too early for most people to predict that the Great Depression was about to get underway. For 39-year-old spinster schoolteacher Hildegarde Withers, it’s business as usual. And part of her usual business is taking her class for an outing to the aquarium to see the penguins. Instead, she spots the floating corpse of Wall Street broker Gerald Lester and quickly realizes that Inspector Oscar Piper of NYPD Homicide isn’t up to solving this tricky case, especially when he appears ready to accept he confession of an obviously innocent young man. Red herrings, not penguins, abound. Miss Withers has a number of questions that need answers before she’s willing to reel in the real murderer: Who did Lester’s wife meet behind the stairs? What did the pickpocket see? Who was the man in the fedora? And just how did Miss Withers’ hatpin turn into a lethal weapon? First published in 1931, The Penguin Pool Murder was as big a hit with book lovers as it was with moviegoers when it was filmed the following year starring Edna May Oliver as Miss Withers and James Gleason as Inspector Piper.
©1931 Brentano's, Inc. Copyright renewed. (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Puzzle of the Red Stallion
Summary
Odds for murder... Top model Violet Feverel should be a pretty picture riding the big red thoroughbred Siwash - but the front page photo on the tabloids is ugly as death. The police dub the tragedy an unfortunate accident. But Miss Hildegarde Withers, who stumbled across the girl's body on the Central Park bridle path, knows they are, unfortunately, wrong. Just plain horse sense tells her it was murder. Who was the stranger in the too-small overcoat? What caused the spot of blood on the stallion's flank? What obvious clue at the scene of the crime was a red herring? Joining forces with New York's grumpiest homicide inspector, Oscar Piper, Miss Withers is once again off and running after a killer. Then a day at the races ends with another dead body, and Miss Withers must play a deadly game of sleuth where the stakes are high and odds are growing higher.
©1935, 1936 Stuart Palmer (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla
Summary
Hildegarde Withers heads down Mexico way where the death in the afternoon involves neither a matador nor a bull. Inspector Oscar Piper is off on a junket to Mexico in the summer of 1937 (surrounded by a bunch of Democrats, huffed Miss Withers) when a customs inspector on a train headed for Mexico City sniffs a very potent bottle of cheap perfume and promptly drops dead. Quite naturally, Oscar telegraphs Hildegarde in Manhattan about the perfume and quite naturally Miss Withers packs her bags and heads south of the border, figuring Oscar is out of his depth if he has to rely on deductive reasoning rather than a rubber hose. Why any of the occupants of the train should want to kill a harmless Mexican customs inspector is so puzzling that everyone assumes that the real intended victim is a self-made rich american woman who seemingly has rededicated her life to shopping. Her husband ought to be the prime suspect but he seems devoted to her, although he was spotted giving cash to a pretty young redhead when he thought no one was looking. Then there were the two American fast buck artists who figured they could get rich buying up all the gasoline-powered generators in Mexico on the eve of a strike by utility workers. They looked especially guilty when their shady, double-crossing associate - a somewhat accomplished ladies' man - becomes the second person to die. A blue banderilla, usually used to slow bulls down, is driven through his back during a Sunday afternoon bullfight in Mexico City. Miss Withers borrows a technique from Sherlock Holmes himself to show that a banderilla makes for a lousy murder weapon, a conclusion also reached by a rather odd young Mexican man whose English seems to come and go. First published in 1937, this lighthearted mystery displays all the charm that made Miss Withers Anthony Boucher's favorite female sleuth as well as a favorite of moviegoers during the early days of the talkies.
©1937, 1965 Stuart Palmer (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan
Summary
Hildegarde Withers is on the hunt again, as a vacation in California lands her a movie job and two dealers to clear up. Her own death brings Inspector Piper to the scene, and her resurrection cuts through Hollywood red tape as she becomes a target for the killer.
©1941 Stuart Palmer (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Puzzle of the Silver Persian
Summary
Crusty schoolteacher/sleuth Hildegarde Withers can't escape mysterious deaths, even on a trans-Atlantic crossing on an ocean liner. En route to England she spends part of her time (when not feeling queasy) sizing up her fellow passengers. Her intuition helps when passengers and crew start dropping over the side, or just dropping, period.
©1934 Stuart Palmer (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Green Ace
Summary
A young man is stopped by the police, a body is found in his backseat, and he is convicted of murder. While he awaits execution, he makes out a will leaving all his money to the police lieutenant who handled his case. The lieutenant learns of this when Hildegarde Withers, schoolteacher and hard-boiled private eye, stops by. She determines to clear the man in the few days left before his execution. The opening paragraphs bear comparison with the opening of Chandler's short story "Red Wind".
©1950 Stuart Palmer (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Miss Withers Regrets
Summary
When Inspector Oscar Piper asks his old friend Hildegarde Withers to stop meddling in murder, she surprisingly agrees. But old habits die hard and Hildy soon finds herself back in harness, investigating suspects and snooping for clues. Oddly enough, she spots a vital clue while looking at her own tank of tropical fish.
©1947, 1975 Stuart Palmer (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Murder on the Blackboard
Summary
Hildegarde Withers, schoolteacher and amateur detective, stumbles onto the corpse of Jefferson Grammar School's attractive young music teacher. When Miss Withers goes for help, the body plays hooky, and when Homicide Inspector Oscar Piper starts to investigate, somebody tries to brain him with a shovel. The rest of the cops want to throw the book at the school janitor, who has flunked their pop quiz. But Miss Withers disagrees and decides to stay after school to ask her own questions.
©1932, 1960 Stuart Palmer (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Murder on Wheels
Summary
Thick flakes of snow are falling on Fifth Avenue at twilight - and then the body of a young man suddenly falls among them, mysteriously out of the sky. Momentarily the wheels of traffic are halted, but other wheels spin relentlessly on - the wheels of death, the wheels on which bloody murder moves silently through Manhattan’s streets. Once again Miss Hildegarde Withers, the schoolteacher-detective, matches her wits against an unknown X, armed only with the precious gift of common sense and a cotton umbrella. One youth is dead, and his twin brother moves under a cloud. Then death rolls past again, like a swifter Juggernaut, while Miss Withers faces the problem of the Driverless Roadster, the Man Who Wore Two Neckties, and the Symptoms of Bathtub Hands. Murder on Wheels is a fast moving mystery, packed with thrills for the fan who likes to play detective.
©1932 Brentano's, Inc. (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Four Lost Ladies
Summary
No use to scream. No use at all. One of the proudest boasts of the Hotel Grandee was that its thousand rooms were all completely soundproof. She could shriek until she was blue in the face, but nobody would hear her. Nobody but the man who blocked her way to the door, to the phone. Love-starved Harriet Bascom was dressed for the occasion…unmentionables trimmed with Chantilly lace; the sheerest of dark, flattering nylons; a daringly décolleté gown with a Paris label.... It was her armor. She was dressed to kill but instead - someone killed her! And she was only the first victim in Four Lost Ladies by Stuart Palmer.
©1949 Stuart Palmer (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Cold Poison
Summary
Miss Hildegarde Winters, accompanied by her poodle, Talleyrand, is ready, willing, and able when nasty valentines upset a cartoon studio. With one murder down and three to go, Miss Withers and New York's Inspector Piper delve into poison ivy and a fantasy land when snooping around a school.
©1954 Stuart Palmer (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Nipped in the Bud
Summary
When pretty little Ina Kell arrived in Manhattan full of foolish dreams about making it big in show business, she had no idea how quickly she’d be in the headlines. But when TV personality Tony Fagan is murdered in the apartment building where she’s staying and she disappears shortly thereafter, the search is on, led by Inspector Oscar Piper and his long-time friend Hildegarde Withers. The chief suspect is playboy Junior Gault, whose company sponsored Fagan’s show and who was the target of some intemperate remarks Fagan made on the air. Hildy and her beloved poodle Talleyrand soon find themselves in Tijuana, where a clever street urchin named Vito becomes her right-hand man. She’s soon joined by Oscar, Junior’s socialite fiancée Dallas Trempleau, and other refugees from the Big Apple. And while Hildy may be retired from teaching, she’s clearly not ready to put her career as an amateur sleuth extraordinaire behind her just yet.
©1951, 1979 Stuart Palmer (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree
Summary
“I don’t want to die,” said the man in the brown suit, who was the last passenger to board the little airplane, but he did. The other passengers thought he was just airsick and the pilots of the Dragonfly assumed it was a heart attack, but when they landed on Catalina Island where Miss Hildegarde Withers was enjoying her first vacation in five years, they bowed to her insistence that the body be examined by the island doctor as well as the chief of police. And they eventually were forced to agree with her suggestion that the man might have been murdered - but how, in midair in plain view of eight other passengers? It turns out that Hildy’s old friend Inspector Oscar Piper has an interest in the case, as the dead man was scheduled to testify in a New York City graft investigation and it was worth $15,000 to someone to keep him from doing so. While she’s waiting for Oscar to show up, Hildy befriends the other passengers, particularly Phyllis La Fond, an aspiring actress with a taste for adventure, and together they go snooping around the island. With its colorful Southern California background and ingenious plot, it’s one of Hildy’s most enjoyable adventures.
©1933, 1971 Stuart Palmer (P)2013 Audible, Inc.