"There's always a good murder around if ye know where to look for it," declares Professor John Stubbs. "It may be masqueradin' as accidental death or suicide," he solemnly adds, "but once ye start rootin' around ye'll find that it's murder." And murder it is, on public display in London's controversial new modern art museum. When the unveiling of a contemporary masterpiece reveals the body of a prominent art dealer dangling from a picture hook, Professor Stubbs is faced with a rogue's gallery of suspects: librarian Douglas Newsome, an aspiring poet with a desperate thirst for alcohol; Alec Carr, an avant-garde interior decorator tied to the apron strings of his gin-soaked mother; Dr. Cornelius Bellamy, a pompous windbag of an art critic; and Miss Emily Wallenstein, nervous patron of the arts.
Originally published in 1948, and never before in the U.S., Swing Low, Swing Death is one of a series of seven novels featuring Professor Stubbs, the beer-swilling, pipe-smoking amateur detective. Poet and art historian Ruthven Todd, writing as R. T. Campbell, vividly recaptures the atmosphere of postwar London and his brisk, humorous narrative is brightened with many droll allusions to the works of T. S. Eliot, Kipling, Shakespeare, and other poets.