Gregg Press mystery fiction series

This is a book about a group of sherlock homes fans, the baker street irregulars. There is also a murder with a disappearing corpse, cryptograms and a couple of cock-eyed adventurers

xix, 187 p. ; 21 cm

William Powell stars as detective Philo Vance in this suspenseful locked-room murder mystery.

A frightening confession leads a priest to hunt down a murderer in Grand Master of crime fiction Dorothy Salisbury Davis's bestselling novel, which critic Anthony Boucher called "one of the best detective stories of modern times." On a hot Saturday night in Manhattan, Father Duffy sits in a confessional, growing alarmed as he listens to the voice of a distraught young man who speaks of bloody hair and a dead woman and a compulsion to do things with a hammer that he does not understand. Before the priest can persuade the man to confess to the police, the killer flees, still clutching the hammer. The next day, Father Duffy learns that a high-class call girl on the East Side has been savagely murdered, and no suspect has been found. As he searches for the disturbed young man who he fears will kill again, cerebral New York Police detective Sergeant Ben Goldsmith takes the lead in the investigation of the call-girl murder, racing against the clock to catch a very clever killer who, when enraged, cannot control his need to swing a hammer.

From the NY Times: "A PROSTITUTE who plied her trade in London's foreign quarter has been murdered, and Arthur Groome is on trial for his life. The chain of circumstantial evidence against him is exceptionally strong, although it has a few weak links."

> In 1930s London, actress Estella Lamare is discovered dead on the cutting-room floor of a film studio. The next day, Cameron McCabe finds himself at the centre of a police investigation. There are multiple suspects, multiple confessors, and as the murder count rises, McCabe begins his own amateur sleuth-work, followed doggedly by the mysterious Inspector Smith. Then, abruptly, McCabe's account ends, but The Face on the Cutting Room Floor is not finished with us yet. >Originally published in 1937, The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor has gained legendary status. So layered and mysterious that even its publication story and authorship have been questioned, this genre-bending, meta-fictional noir crime novel toys with all the rules of detective fiction - and indeed, writing itself - to create a dark, intriguing and utterly original book.