Lorac, the pen name of the British writer Edith Caroline Rivett.

[1][2] It was the thirty third entry in her long-running series featuring Chief Inspector MacDonald of Scotland Yard.

It was published in the United States by Doubleday using the alternative title And Then Put Out the Light.

[3] Reviewing the novel in The Observer Maurice Richardson wrote "Tense throughout, this is Mr. Lorac’s best book and reminds us how much life—despite the claims of the tough school—there is in the old provincial English whodunnit yet."

In Paulborough, a Midlands market town dominated by its Norman abbey, a notorious local gossip is found dead after spreading gossip about prominent figures in the town.