"Why should anyone want to pinch the dagger—except to do somebody in?"

No one answered this question.

Item: one anonymous phone call reporting a murder at a historic country house – but no body is to be found. Item: one ornate antique knife, discovered in a village call-box, blood-stains on the blade.

Rather than identifying a corpse, Bobby Owen of the Yard has to find out who, if anyone, has actually been killed. Two persons, one a best-selling author, the other no-one's cup of tea, are missing but a particular kind of hat keep turning up in the case – which also involves a haunted wood, a hatchet-wielding secretary, and a curious abundance of writers.

The Golden Dagger is the twenty-ninth novel in the Bobby Owen Mystery series, originally published in 1951. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans, and a selection of E.R. Punshon's prolific Guardian reviews of other golden age mystery fiction.

"What is distinction? ... in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time."—Dorothy L. Sayers