This book is a collection of insightful essays about investigations involving missing persons and manipulated identities which are discussed in literary masterpieces by Agatha Christie, Dorothy Bowers, and E. C. R. Lorac. Each of the investigators in these cases shows the same vital and exemplary moral courage as Miss Marple in Nemesis who, when threatened by an adversary, presents herself effectively as "an emissary of justice." These exceptionally intelligent, honest, perceptive, and ethical investigators solve various crimes because they examine the evidence carefully and thoroughly, because they conduct interviews and gather information fairly and without prejudice, and because they search heroically and intensively for the truth about the abduction, disappearance, or murder of any individual in the spirit of Hercule Poirot’s assertion in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd that he will pursue the case to the end and seek meticulously for the whole truth.


"Hugo Walter’s Emissaries of Justice presents an innovative and compelling analysis of the novels of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Bowers, and E. C. R. Lorac. This fascinating comparative study focuses on the genre of the missing person mystery, chronicling the search for truth in ways that equally pertain to the world outside of these classical fictions."


—Alexandra K. Wettlaufer, University of Texas at Austin