Death Comes to Perigord / John Ferguson 1931

DEATH Comes to Perigord is a detective story concerned with the disappearance and subsequent death of a man while under the care of a young doctor in the absence of the usual medical attendant. The story is set in the Channel Islands, among a mixed population of French and English, but its interest first lies in the discovery by the young locum of certain peculiarities in the dead body which flatly contradict each other. And the doubts thus raised are reinforced by the detective's discovery of a small peculiarity about the dead man's watch. Subsequent clues include a ship's figurehead, a perfumed handkerchief, a knife blade, a barking dog, a scrap of seaweed and a tennis ball that had been gilded, and these apparently dis- connected objects Detective McNab, with the help of Dr. Dunn, builds up into a connected and coherent sequence which, step by step, reveals the part played by each article in the murder and leads to the identifi- cation of the real criminal.

Francis MacNab Detective Series

Scottish author John Ferguson wrote a mystery in 1921, The Dark Geraldine, which featured a Scottish policeman by the name of FRANCIS MacNAB.

And then seven years later, in The Man in the Dark (1928), he resurrected the name for another detective, but this time MacNab was a private detective based in London… who just happens to be the son of the original MacNab.

MacNab solves one complex mystery after another, chock full of surprising twists, oddball situations and intriguing characters, working with—and sometimes against—various other crime solvers: reporters, busybodies and detectives both public and private. The clues are abundant and often surprising, and Ferguson plays fair with the reader. In other words, typically Golden Age fare, full of shooting parties, country houses, visiting vicars and the like. 

Ferguson wrote other mysteries, as well. His standalones include The Grouse Moor Mystery (1934, Mr. Kello (a 1924 fictionalized true crime novel), Night in Glengyle (1933) and Terror on the Island (1942), which was set in Germany.