The Pelham Murder Case (1930) by Monte Barrett

Percy Montgomery "Monte" Barrett was an American author, newspaperman and cartoon writer from Mitchell, Indiana, who co-created with artist Frank Ellis the original "spunky girl reporter" character, Jane Arden – cited as the prototype for similar characters like Lois Lane. More importantly than having co-created an internationally syndicated daily comic strip, Barrett had a brief stint as a mystery novelist during the early 1930s.Barrett wrote three novels, The Pelham Murder Case (1930), Murder Off Stage (1931) and The Wedding March Murder (1933), starring a professional mystery writer and sometimes amateur sleuth, Peter Cardigan, who closely works together with Lieutenant Murphy. A standalone mystery, Murder at Belle Camille (1943), appeared a decade later. Barrett's detective fiction has been out-of-print for nearly a century, only Murder at Belle Camille was reprinted in 1954 under the title A Scream in the Night, but the Peter Cardigan novels have not been reprinted in over 90…