The Desert Lake Mystery - Kay Strahan Cleaver

"I had dark forebodings. I had evil premonitions. Naturally, Adam Oakman being the high type of man he was, and his visitors being his relatives, mannerly and well educated, I didn't predict anything so uncouth as murders and dead bodies disappearing like the morning dew all over the place. But I had forebodings, just the same, and the difference between mine and most forebodings was that I stated mine far in advance."

So the Sheriff of Oakman County, in southern Nevada, begins his story. Blustering old Adam was ex-senator and millionaire and boss of the county and most of the state. When he got his guests together at the deserted resort on the shore of Memaloose Lake-a community house in the center, a long row of little cottages on either side of it-there were many cross currents of feeling among them. That was to be expected. But murders, and disappearing bodies-well, you can't blame the Sheriff for being surprised and terribly upset and horribly bewildered. And all the clues seemed contradictory, a tangled skein impossible to unravel. Of course these people were isolated. Of course the slayer had to be one of the little group. But which one? Wasn't murder unthinkable of them all?

The Sheriff, you'll agree, was a pretty good detective himself. His mind did not move as fast as Lynn MacDonald's, but he and Brigid had worked like fury on the case from the beginning, and the fact that they arrived at the same conclusion as the best of all women detectives was a feather in their caps. Are you as clever? Can you unravel the skein?

The Desert Lake Mystery was published in 1936.