Accident by Design

Accident by Design is a 1950 detective novel by E.C.R. Lorac, the pen name of the British writer Edith Caroline Rivett.^[1][2] It is the thirty fourth in her long-running series featuring Chief Inspector MacDonald of Scotland Yard.^[3] Like a number of Lorac's works it takes the form of a country house mystery, a popular branch of the genre during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Maurice Richardson in a review in The Observer wrote "The usual carefully constructed, rural family murder case which we expect from this eminently trustworthy exponent of the English school of whodunnit."

Accident by Design

First edition
Author	E.C.R. Lorac
Language	English
Series	Chief Inspector MacDonald
Genre	Detective
Publisher	Collins Crime Club (UK) Doubleday (US)
Publication date	1950
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print
Preceded by	Policemen in the Precinct
Followed by	Murder of a Martinet

Synopsis

Living in the grand Templedean Place in the Cotswolds, the Vanstead family are riven by mistrust and conflict. This is particularly directed towards the heir Gerald, returned from a Japanese internment camp in Malaya along with a brash Australian wife Muriel. When they died in a car crash, MacDonald has to investigate whether this was an accident or by deliberate intent.