Discover your new favourite forgotten female classics with the Mermaid collection - No 7- Henrietta Hamilton's Answer in the Negative with a foreword by Sophie Hannah Frank Morningside, assistant at The National Press Archives on Fleet Street, is receiving nasty poison pen letters. His superior Toby Lorn wants to put a stop to it, so he calls on his friends Sally and Johnny Heldar. Married amateur sleuths, the Heldars agree to go undercover, posing as researchers to scout out the many suspects in the Archives. After all, Fleet Street is home to plenty of seedy types. But, soon after they begin, they find a body - bludgeoned to death by a box of glass negatives. Suddenly, the genteel world of the archives is a tangled web of suspicion. When another murder swiftly follows, the Heldars worry that one of them maybe next . . .

Details

ISBN13: 9781405991032
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 240
Edition:
Publication Date: 16 Jun 2026
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 19.7(H)x13.1(L)x1.8(W)218
Weight (gm): 218

Author Biography

Henrietta Hamilton is the pseudonym for Hester Denne Shepherd who was born in Dundee in 1920 and educated at St Hugh's College, Oxford, earning an honours degree in Modern Languages. During the Second World War, Hamilton served in the Wrens. Afterwards, she worked in a London bookshop, gaining first-hand experience of antiquarian bookselling - the background of her crime-solving duo, Sally and Johnny Heldar. During her life, Hamilton enjoyed writing and hill-walking. She died in 1995 in Hastings, East Sussex.

Reviews

Reader praise for Answer in the Negative * : *
A classic whodunnit, well written and engrossing -- Reader Review *****
Hugely enjoyable classic crime -- Reader Review *****
A gem! -- Reader Review *****