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The Golf Course Mystery — cover
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Aeneas Press edition

The Golf Course Mystery

by Chester K. Steele

The book, and the century it came out of.

A millionaire drops dead on the eighteenth green with no mark on him, in front of three witnesses. Chester K. Steele was never a person: it was a house name of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, the fiction factory behind Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, used on adult mysteries written to order. Read it as what it is — a machine-made puzzle, competently built, from the firm that industrialized American storytelling. Illustrated with 60 full-page plates — paintings by Renoir and Manet among them.

There was nothing in that clear, calm day, with its blue sky and its flooding sunshine, to suggest in the slightest degree the awful tragedy so close at hand—that tragedy which so puzzled the authorities and which came so close to wrecking the happiness of several innocent people.
The first sentence of The Golf Course Mystery
A note on this edition

The Golf Course Mystery, by Chester K. Steele, complete and unabridged. Spelling and punctuation follow present-day American usage; the sentences, the paragraphs and the voice are the author’s, word for word.

It was written in another era and may carry attitudes a reader today will find dated. They are kept for the sake of the work and do not reflect the views of this house.

The edition
Format
Ebook
Extent
about 192 pages
Reading time
about 4 hours
Illustrations
Full-page plates, credited
Text
Complete, unabridged
Language
en
This edition
2026
ISBN
9785486155888
The plates

60 paintings are bound into this edition

Six of them are shown here, taken from the volume itself. Each is reproduced full page and named with its painter and year.

Oarsmen at Chatou, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Oarsmen at Chatou Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1879
Cat’s Lunch, Victor Gilbert
Cat’s Lunch Victor Gilbert 1879
A Corner of the Salon in 1880, Édouard Joseph Dantan
A Corner of the Salon in 1880 Édouard Joseph Dantan 1880
Parisian View, Frits Thaulow
Parisian View Frits Thaulow 1879
Skag Rock, Pembrokeshire, John Brett
Skag Rock, Pembrokeshire John Brett 1879
Purple Heather, Christopher Shearer
Purple Heather Christopher Shearer 1879
The setting

A page from this edition

Not a mock-up: this page is taken from the finished volume. The ornament above the chapter belongs to its shelf and to no other, the opening letter is set as a drop capital, and the plate below carries the name of the painter and the year.

A page of The Golf Course Mystery as set for this edition
The opening of a chapter
A page of The Golf Course Mystery as set for this edition
A page where a plate falls

Both photographed from the finished volume.

Colophon

The Golf Course Mystery, issued in this edition by Aeneas Press in 2026 on the Mystery & Crime shelf. Newly set, with the ornament of its series above each chapter and a drop capital on the opening page. Illustrated with full-page plates, each named with its painter.

Published as an ebook and not issued in print by this house; it carries one ISBN, 9785486155888, and is supplied worldwide. This edition — its setting, its ornament, its cover art, and the selection and attribution of its plates — © 2026 Aeneas Press.

Before you buy

Questions readers ask

Is this the whole of The Golf Course Mystery?
Yes — complete and unabridged. Nothing is cut, condensed or paraphrased. This is the book, not a summary of it.
What exactly did you change?
The spelling and the punctuation follow present-day American usage. Chester K. Steele's sentences are untouched — same words, same order, same rhythm.
Are the pictures really in the book?
Yes. The edition carries full-page plates bound into the text, each one named with its painter and the year it was made. Six of them are shown on this page.
How long is it?
About 192 pages, which is roughly about 4 hours of reading.
What do I actually get?
An illustrated ebook with its own ISBN, sold worldwide. One file, yours to keep, readable on any device.
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The Golf Course Mystery
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