Nels Lundberg, special duty fireman, started to make his rounds after the intermission on the opening night of *Rebel Rose*, at the New Netherlands Theatre. In the men’s lounge, underneath the staircase, were three telephone booths. In one of them sat a slight man with iron-gray hair. Nels waited for the man to leave, but he sat there, motionless. Finally Nels opened the door—the man toppled out, dead! Discovering a murdered man, an important newspaper critic, is just the start of Nels’ night, as he finds himself carried along by a rapid-fire murder investigation. Will those long evenings reading detective novels pay off for Nels? The husband-and-wife newspaper journalists behind ‘Lawrence Saunders’ (John Burton Davis and Clare Ogden Davis) infused their second mystery novel with the charm and foibles of the New York theater district. There is no reliance on a superior detective here, just the tenacity and skill of the New York City police department as they investigate the life of the deceased Tommy Twitchell. *The Columnist Murder* was published in 1931.