Accident by Design

{{Short description|1950 novel}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

{{infobox book

| name = Accident by Design

| title_orig =

| translator =

| image =File:Accident by Design.jpg

| caption = First edition

| author = E.C.R. Lorac

| illustrator =

| cover_artist =

| country = United Kingdom

| language = English

| series = Chief Inspector MacDonald

| genre = Detective

| publisher = Collins Crime Club (UK)
Doubleday (US)

| release_date = 1950

| english_release_date =

| media_type = Print

| pages =

| isbn =

| preceded_by =Policemen in the Precinct

| followed_by = Murder of a Martinet

}}

Accident by Design is a 1950 detective novel by E.C.R. Lorac, the pen name of the British writer Edith Caroline Rivett.Nichols & Thompson p.476Hubin p.254 It is the thirty fourth in her long-running series featuring Chief Inspector MacDonald of Scotland Yard.Reilly p.260 Like a number of Lorac's works it takes the form of a country house mystery, a popular branch of the genre during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Maurice Richardson in a review in The Observer wrote "The usual carefully constructed, rural family murder case which we expect from this eminently trustworthy exponent of the English school of whodunnit."