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For Murder Will Speak

1938 novel

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ125314979 ↗
Source-derived summary

For Murder Will Speak is a 1938 detective novel by the British author Alfred Walter Stewart, published under his pseudonym J.J. Connington. It is the thirteenth in a series of novels featuring the Golden Age Detective Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield. The title references a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet. It was released in the United States by Little, Brown and Company under the alternative title Murder Will Speak.

After the novel Connington took a brief break from Driffield and produced two books The Counsellor and The Four Defences with a new detective, radio personality Mark Brand, as the lead character.

Synopsis

A series of poison pen letters disrupt the harmony of an English town. An embezzling manager at a financial company, spending his spare time trying to conduct multiple romantic affairs, comes under scrutiny. However it is the unexplained death of a young woman in Scotland that slowly begins to unravel the case. When the cheating manager is then found dead, the two cases begin to merge.

References

Bibliography

Evans, Curtis.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “For Murder Will Speak” as 1938 novel. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1938—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Murder, Will and Speak can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1938 novel. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q125314979. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1938.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “For Murder Will Speak”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow For Murder Will Speak primary sources, For Murder Will Speak archive and Murder research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “For Murder Will Speak”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “For Murder Will Speak” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.