The Mystery of Burnleigh Manor

For years, historic Burnleigh Manor had been shunned by na­tives of Norfolk. Deserted, its once lovely walls and grounds had gradually taken on a wild beauty in harmony with the rough North Sea above which it stood in somber glory. Within its walls Lord Edward Burnleigh had taken his own life one Christmas Eve following the mysterious disappearance of Lady Burnleigh and the vanishing of Robert, the youngest heir. Lord Cecil, its present owner and only survivor of the family, believed it to be haunted, and driven to desperation by a weird series of events, determined to solve its mystery even though every stone in its walls be torn down.Engaging Riker, a young American architect, the Manor was re-opened and the harrowing details of what happened to the violators of the castle’s silence form the basis for a most exciting tale. In Lord Cecil, proud, reticent and eccentric yet burdened with the desire to fathom the mystery of his ancestral home; Riker, young and enthusiastic in the ap­plication of his brilliance to the discovery of the Manor’s secret; Hooper, old family servant who knew far more than he would ad­mit of the castle’s secret; and Edith Lowry, the caretaker’s lovely daughter, seemingly in­volved in much of the grim hap­penings attendant to the re-opening of the Manor, Walter Living­ston has provided a group of char­acters well worthy of the reader’s sympathy and imagination.Published in 1930, The Mystery of Burnleigh Manor was Walter Livingston Faust’s first mystery novel, followed the next year by The Mystery of the Villa Sineste. Faust was a vice-president at the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company (today, ExxonMobil), writing avocationally.