A Gentle Murderer Author:Dorothy Salisbury Davis Before Father Duffy of St. Timothy's realizes that his soft-spoken, gentle confessioner has just admitted to the cardinal sin of murder, the man leaves the church -- still carrying the hammer he used in the crime. With only a half-muttered name to go on, Duffy is led half-way across the country in his attempt to find the man he realizes will kil... more »l again. With its compelling pictures of Manhattan, its fine suspense, and its compassionate insight into the tortured spirit of the guilty man, A Gentle Murderer rose to become a standard mystery writing and is considered a classic of the genre to this day.
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Dorothy-Salisbury-DavisDorothy Salisbury Davis (who turned 96 in April 2012), was born in Chicago and raised as a Roman Catholic but left the church when she married her husband, actor Harry Davis. Now considered one of the Grand Dames of crime fiction, she didn't start out as a writer, working first in advertising and as a librarian, publishing her first novel in 1949 with the encouragement of her husband. Since then, her 20 novels and numerous short stories have received seven Edgar Award nominations; the novel A Gentle Murderer was chosen as one of the Haycraft-Queen cornerstones of detective fiction; and Davis appeared on the "CBS News Nightwatch" program along with Robert Parker and Nicholas Meyer discussing Sherlock Holmes. Her novel Broken Vows was also made into a 1987 TV movie starring Tommy Lee Jones.« less