The Paliser case

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About this book

New York's breakfast tables buzz with news of Monty Paliser's death. Edgar Saltus follows the public excitement with a look at the wealthy family behind the headlines. Monty's father has houses, a yacht and a racing stable, but his concern is the continuation of the Paliser name. With war threatening to take his son away, he presses Monty to marry and transfers property to him.

Family wealth gives the elder Paliser a means of enforcing his wishes. In a later conversation, he threatens to change his will unless Monty offers assurance that he will marry. Monty makes the promise and mentions a dinner with the Austens. The novel's crime setting brings together newspaper curiosity, fashionable Manhattan and arguments over inheritance. Readers encounter sharp social observation in the contrast between the family's public standing and the calculations that shape its private conversations.

About the author

Edgar Saltus

Edgar Saltus (1855-1921) was an American writer known for elegant, cynical prose and a gloomy philosophy drawn from Schopenhauer. A fixture of literary New York in the Gilded Age, he produced novels, essays, and histories before turning to mysticism late in life.