Warwick Robthorne is found dead on Guy Fawkes Night in the greenhouse of his twin brother's country home, apparently having committed suicide. This coincides with a police operation in London led by Inspector Hanslet against a gang of drug smugglers. It falls to the gifted criminologist Dr. Priestley to tie the evidence between the two cases together.
Literary significance
Reviewing the book for The Sunday Times, Dorothy L. Sayers wrote, "One always embarks on a John Rhode book with a great feeling of security. One knows that there will be a sound plot, a well-knit process of reasoning, and a solidly satisfying solution with no loose ends or careless errors of fact."[3]
Isaac Anderson in The New York Times remarked that "no one who has ever read a Dr. Priestley story will be surprised to learn that this is a genuinely baffling crime puzzle of the first quality".[4]
Evans, Curtis. Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961. McFarland, 2014.
Herbert, Rosemary. Whodunit?: A Who's Who in Crime & Mystery Writing. Oxford University Press, 2003.
Reilly, John M. Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers. Springer, 2015.
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