Deep in bucolic Wychshire something dreadful is stirring ...

The disappearance of a club-footed and inquisitive youth leads to a tangle involving two instances of stolen jewels, a water-colour which may be the most remarkable picture ever painted ... and eventually to the discovery of a body in a forest with 'a smell of rotting, a smell of things decaying'. The scene abounds with the intense, the afflicted, and the darkly humorous in classic Punshon style. But the murderer himself is on a collision course with fate - aided of course by Inspector Bobby Owen.

Secrets Can't be Kept was first published in 1944, the twentieth of the Bobby Owen mysteries, a series eventually including thirty-five novels. This edition features a new introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

"What is distinction? ... in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time." Dorothy L. Sayers

"A fine example of sound detective work without sensationalism." New York Times Book Review