Forty-fifth in the long-running mystery series with Dr Launcelot Priestley. > The author, whose mysterious death is investigated in this book, was a certain Mr. Nigel Ebbfleet, who after years of writing without success produced a “best seller” and then astonished his publisher by announcing that he had quite decided never to write another line and was retiring to a country cottage to live a quiet life. His subsequent murder might lead some readers to suspect the publisher; but Jimmy Waghorn and Dr. Priestley, proof against such hasty assumptions, reached a very curious conclusion.