Plot summary
Ross Harte, publicity writer, is investigating the person behind a classified ad seeking a haunted house for sale. When it turns out to be his old friend The Great Merlini, Harte drops by his store, The Magic Shop, looking for an explanation. Harte and Merlini are soon swept up into a complex and bizarre plot involving the death of Linda Skelton, an agoraphobic heiress, at her home on Skelton Island, a tiny island in the East River of New York City. The plot soon expands to involve a psychic researcher and his favourite medium, a group of treasure hunters seeking a sunken treasure, counterfeit golden guinea coins, a man with blue skin (argyria), a gangster named Charles Lamb, a second murder by "the bends", and a murder scene with a set of neat footprints marching across the ceiling. Merlini survives more than one attempt on his life before he can call in the police and conclusively bring the crimes home to the guilty.
Paul Charles Dominic Doherty is an English author, educator, lecturer and historian. He is also the Headmaster of Trinity Catholic High School in London, England. Doherty is a prolific writer, has produced dozens of historical novels and a number of nonfiction history books.
Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple's Last Case is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in October 1976 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed for £3.50 and the US edition for $7.95.
The Hardy Boys, brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, are fictional characters who appear in several mystery series for children and teens. The series revolves around teenagers who are amateur sleuths, solving cases that stumped their adult counterparts. The characters were created by American writer Edward Stratemeyer, the founder of book-packaging firm Stratemeyer Syndicate. The books themselves were written by several ghostwriters, most notably Leslie McFarlane, under the collective pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon.
The Sign of the Four (1890), also called The Sign of Four, is the second novel featuring Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories featuring the fictional detective.
Clayton Rawson was an American mystery writer, editor, and amateur magician. His four novels frequently invoke his great knowledge of stage magic and feature as their fictional detective The Great Merlini, a professional magician who runs a shop selling magic supplies. He also wrote four short stories in 1940 about a stage magician named Don Diavolo, who appears as a minor character in one of the novels featuring The Great Merlini. "Don Diavolo is a magician who perfects his tricks in a Greenwich Village basement where he is frequently visited by the harried Inspector Church of Homicide, either to arrest the Don for an impossible crime or to ask him to solve it."
Death from a Top Hat (1938) is a locked-room mystery novel written by Clayton Rawson. It is the first of four mysteries featuring The Great Merlini, a stage magician and Rawson's favorite protagonist.
A mystery film is a genre of film that revolves around the solution of a problem or a crime. It focuses on the efforts of the detective, private investigator or amateur sleuth to solve the mysterious circumstances of an issue by means of clues, investigation, and clever deduction.
The Secret of Chimneys is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by The Bodley Head in June 1925 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. It introduces the characters of Superintendent Battle and Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00.
The Great Merlini is a fictional detective created by Clayton Rawson. He is a professional magician who appears in four locked room or impossible crime novels written in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as well as in a few short stories.
Footprints Under the Window is Volume 12 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap.
John Robert Francis Wild, known as Frank Wild, was an English sailor and explorer. He participated in five expeditions to Antarctica during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, for which he was awarded the Polar Medal with four bars, one of only two men to be so honoured, the other being Ernest Joyce.
Gwenddoleu ap Ceidio or Gwenddolau was a Brythonic king who ruled in Arfderydd. This is in what is now south-west Scotland and north-west England in the area around Hadrian's Wall and Carlisle during the sub-Roman period in Britain. Carwinley near Longtown north of Carlisle is thought to represent Caer Wenddolau or Gwenddolau's Fort. The earthworks at Liddel Strength is also another contender for Caer Wenddolau.
Michael Garnet Stewart is an American author. A native of Vredenburgh, Alabama, Stewart attended Tabor Academy, Massachusetts for the first two years of high school but graduated from Wilcox Academy in Camden, Alabama. He received his undergraduate degree from Auburn University. In between school terms, he spent the summers working as a forest technician and farmhand. After graduating from college, he worked as a copy editor for the Atlanta Journal and assisted on a friend's unsuccessful gubernatorial.
The Headless Lady (1940) is a whodunnit mystery novel written by Clayton Rawson. A character in the novel, a detective story writer named Stuart Towne, has the same name as a pen name of Rawson. This is the third of four mysteries featuring The Great Merlini, a stage magician and Rawson's favorite protagonist.
No Coffin for the Corpse (1942) is a whodunnit mystery novel written by Clayton Rawson.
A to Z Mysteries is a popular series of mysteries for children, written by Ron Roy, illustrated by John Steven Gurney, and published by Random House. The series is generally considered among the best "easy readers" for young children. There are twenty-six books in the original series; one for each letter of the alphabet. The series begins with The Absent Author (1997) and ends with The Zombie Zone (2005).
Swing, Brother, Swing is a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh; it is the fifteenth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn, and was first published in 1949. The plot concerns the murder of a big band accordionist in London; the novel was published as A Wreath for Rivera in the United States.
Shhh! is a 1993 Indian Kannada-language horror thriller film written and directed by Upendra. It stars Kumar Govind, Kashinath and Suresh Heblikar, with N.B. Jayaprakash, Baby Rashmi, Megha and others in support roles. The film also stars Kashinath and introduced Kumar Govind as mainstream hero. It has a cameo by Upendra as a wannabe actor in police costume. This film went on to be a major commercial success. It created a new trend of thriller movies in Kannada cinema. It was also the debut movie of Sadhu Kokila as an actor and music director. The central part has striking similarities with Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Khamosh 1986, where series of murders start occurring on the film set which is set in Pahalgam Hotel Kashmir and here it is in Onti Mane Estate.
Horror Island is a 1941 American mystery and horror film directed by George Waggner. It was based on the short story "Terror of the South Seas" by Alex Gottlieb. It stars Dick Foran, Peggy Moran, Leo Carrillo, Eddie Parker, Dale Van Sickle, John Eldredge, Lewis Howard, Hobart Cavanaugh, Iris Adrian and Fuzzy Knight. Foy Van Dolsen plays the monstrous villain "Panama Pete", alias "The Phantom". The plot has assorted colorful characters going to a mysterious island to seek a pirate's hidden fortune.
Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island is an American animated direct-to-video supernatural comedy mystery film produced by Warner Bros. Animation and distributed by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. It is the thirty-third entry in the direct-to-video series of Scooby-Doo films and a direct sequel to the 1998 direct-to-video animated film Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, the first film in the Scooby-Doo direct-to-video franchise. The film premiered at the San Diego Comic-Con on July 21, 2019, followed by a digital release on September 3, 2019, and a DVD release on October 1, 2019.
