This image is the cover for the book Clue in the Clay, The Lt. Stephen Mayhew Mysteries

Clue in the Clay, The Lt. Stephen Mayhew Mysteries

A San Francisco police detective becomes obsessed with a sculptress’s apparent suicide—and hounds his new wife into helping him solve the case . . .

When Officer Charles confronts a man acting erratically early in the morning on a quiet residential street in San Francisco, he presumes it’s a case of public intoxication—until the man blurts out that Mabel Edwards has hanged herself. The sculptress, who’d been working on a menacing-looking Druid statue, is indeed dead. And when the shaken officer briefly leaves the scene, his only witness disappears.

When Det. Lt. Stephen Mayhew, on his honeymoon in San Francisco, hears about the death from his old pal Charles, he’s not convinced it was suicide—especially after he hears the nasty comments made by Mabel’s elderly neighbors. To his new bride’s dismay, he’s soon obsessed with his hunch, peppering everyone with questions and asking poor Sara to help him re-create the crime scene. How can she say no? That’s what she gets for marrying a policeman . . .

Previously published under the name D.B. Olsen

Dolores Hitchens

Dolores Hitchens (1907–1973) was a highly prolific mystery author who wrote under multiple pseudonyms and in a range of styles. A large number of her books were published under the moniker D. B. Olsen, and a few under the pseudonyms Noel Burke and Dolan Birkley, but she is perhaps best remembered today for her later novel, Fool’s Gold, published under her own name, which was adapted into the film Bande á part directed by Jean-Luc Godard.

Open Road Media