The Scarlet Button is a 1944 mystery thriller novel by Anthony Gilbert, the pen name of British writer Lucy Beatrice Malleson.Reilly p.660 It is the fourteenth in her series featuring the London solicitor Arthur Crook, one of the more unscrupulous detectives of the Golden Age.Murphy p.120 It was published in the United States, initially under the same name and later with the alternative title Murder is Cheap.
Synopsis James Chigwell a prolific blackmailer is discovered bludgeoned to death. The murderer may be any one of his large number of victims.
References
Bibliography Magill, Frank Northen . Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction: Authors, Volume 2. Salem Press, 1988. Murphy, Bruce F. The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery. Springer, 1999. Reilly, John M. Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers. Springer, 2015.