Phelps, John

John Phelps

A new company secretary, brought in by the proprietor to tackle a seaside newspaper’s ailing finances, is found battered to death under a disused pier. It soon becomes apparent that the victim, Hubert Weaving, was utterly ruthless in the way he tackled his task and that he had made a lot of enemies. Yet who the killer is remains a mystery. A private detective, Willard Shakespeare, is hired by relatives who want answers. He encounters various suspects, many of them journalists, and soon learns why Weaving, also known as The Vulcan, became such a hate figure.

Willard soon learns that Weaving seemed to have a particular hatred for journalists. Among the characters we meet are Lord Perryman, the proprietor with a love of newspapers, a middle aged deputy editor who returns to work after recovering from a serious illness and finds he has lost his parking space, a feature writer with mental health issues who commits suicide after being sacked for a minor expenses infringement, a photographer who indulges in extra-marital liaisons in the darkroom, a chief reporter who settles arguments with his fists, a female advertising rep from the opposition who Weaving seduces and then spurns, and Willard’s ostensibly prim and proper assistant who is anything but.

Soon each murder suspect is cleared of the crime one by one until an unexpected turn of events uncovers who the culprit really is…