Vegetable Duck is a 1944 detective novel by John Rhode, the pen name of the British writer Cecil Street. It is the fortieth in his long-running series of novels featuring Lancelot Priestley, a Golden Age armchair detective. The title refers to a dish including a Marrow stuffed with minced beef, which features in the plot. It has been described as "one of the oddest titles for a detective novel in the genre". Although written during wartime, the setting was post-war. It was published in America by Dodd Mead under the alternative title Too Many Suspects.
Synopsis
At the London service flat where she lives with her husband, dies after eating a meal which later analysis shows was infused with digitalis. Scotland Yard at first suspect her husband, who had been called away by a telephone call of murdering her. However, with the assistance of Priestley, the investigating officer is able to prove this is a long-premeditated crime by someone else.
References
Bibliography
Herbert, Rosemary. Whodunit?: A Who's Who in Crime & Mystery Writing. Oxford University Press, 2003. Magill, Frank Northen . Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction: Authors, Volume 4. Salem Press, 1988. Reilly, John M. Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers. Springer, 2015.