In the five blissful years of its existence, Hope House, a shelter for young working women in New York City, has met and vanquished but one single emergency - a fire in a waste basket. Now, on the eve of the Christmas holiday season, the cosseted residents face a real and shocking tragedy - the death of one of their own.

Ruth Miller is the latest unattached young female to be drawn to Hope House to begin a new chapter in her life. Yet within three days her crumpled body is found in the courtyard. Nobody knew Ruth well enough to guess if she was ready to take her own life. But did someone know her just enough to be ready to kill her?

In one of the finest murder mystery novels of the post-war years, Hilda Lawrence leads the reader on a journey through Hope's darkest corners, through a house where nobody can escape suspicion. Haunting, claustrophobic and grimly satisfying, Death of a Doll is one of the great 'lost treasures' of crime writing.