Call After Midnight

A woman battles to protect her ex-husband from a murder charge. The phone rings just after twelve. Jenny Vleedam knows it cannot be anyone but Peter, and she tries to let it ring. He left her for another woman - a vicious trollop called Fiora - and Jenny has too much self-respect to let him kick her around anymore. But she answers anyway, and hears the words she has been longing for: Fiora has been shot. But as often as she has fantasized about something happening to the woman who stole her husband, now Jenny feels only fear - fear that the police might not believe Peter's story that Fiora was the one holding the gun. Not knowing if the woman is dead or alive, Jenny rushes to Peter's side. Guilty or innocent, they will never be apart again. Review Quote. "[Eberhart is] number one ... Engrossing." - New York Herald Tribune "Old pro Mignon G. Eberhart tells one of her better mystery-romances in Call After Midnight." - The New York Times "One of the best mystifiers in America." - Gertrude Stein Biographical note. Mignon G. Eberhart (1899-1996) wrote dozens of mystery novels over a nearly six decade-long career. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, she began writing in high school, trading English essays to her fellow students in exchange for math homework. She attended Nebraska Wesleyan University, and in the 1920s began writing fiction in her spare time, publishing her first novel, The Patient in Room 18, in 1929. With the follow-up, While The Patient Slept (1931), she won a §5,000 Scotland Yard Prize, and by the end of the 1930's was one of the most popular female mystery writers on the planet. Before Agatha Christie ever published a Miss Marple novel, Eberhart was writing romantic crime fiction with female leads. Eight of her books, including While the Patient Slept and Hasty Wedding (1938) were adapted as films. Made a Mystery Writers of America grandmaster in 1971, Eberhart continued publishing roughly a book a year until the 1980s. Her final novel Three Days for Emeralds, was published in 1988.