The Swimming Pool

Introduction by Otto Penzler
Published by American Mystery Classics
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

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About the Book

Two reclusive sisters. A crumbling mansion. A dead doppelgänger. The final novel from the bestselling author known as the American Agatha Christie.

The Birches was one of the grand mansions of the 1920s, with a ballroom, tennis courts, and, of course, a swimming pool. But after the crash of '29, when Lois and Judith's father killed himself to escape his debts, the family turned the summer home into a fulltime retreat from the world. Decades later, Judith is the queen of New York society, a fast-living beauty whose nerves are beginning to fray, while Lois still lives in the dilapidated old mansion, writing mystery novels to pay the bills. She is about to encounter a mystery of her own.

To stave off a nervous breakdown, Judith moves in with her kid sister. Terrified of an unnamed threat, she nails her windows shut and locks the door. Soon, a woman is found dead in the pool—a stranger who bears a shocking resemblance to Judith. In a family with a history of tragedy, a chilling new chapter is about to be written.

The Swimming Pool was the last of over forty novels published by Mary Roberts Rinehart over the first half of the twentieth century.

About the Author

Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958) was the most beloved and best-selling mystery writer in America in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Pittsburgh to the owner of a sewing machine factory, she wrote fiction in her spare time until a stock market crash sent her and her husband into debt, forcing her to lean on her writing to pay the bills. Her first two novels, The Circular Staircase (1908) and The Man in Lower Ten (1909), established her as a bright young talent, and it wasn’t long before she was a regular on bestseller lists. Among her dozens of novels were The Amazing Adventures of Letitia Carberry (1911) and The Bat (1932), which was among the inspirations for Bob Kane’s Batman. Today, Rinehart is often called an American Agatha Christie, even though she was much more popular than Christie during her heyday.

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Product Details

  • Publisher: American Mystery Classics (May 4, 2027)
  • Length: 336 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781613169971

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“[Rinehart’s] literary distinction lies in the combination of love, humor and murder that she wove into her tales. . . . She helped the mystery story grow up.”—New York Times

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