There are strange goings-on at St. Asprey’s, an expensive boys’ preparatory school: footsteps in passages at night . . . strange lights . . . rabbits with battered skulls. Carolus Deene has some spine-tingling experiences before he solves the mystery.

Carolus Deene is enjoying himself on a holiday cruise. On the first night aboard the Summer Queen, he hears a shout of “Man Overboard!” From that point on to the moment of Deene’s unexpected revelations, the reader will find that unique mixture of artless fun and grim terror Leo Bruce devotees savor.

Richard Hoysden’s body is discovered in his country flat, a revolver beside him, and a bullet through the head, apparently a suicide. Missing from the room is a tape of Hoysden’s last moments on which he confesses ti the murder of a young woman. Lady Drombone, a member of Parliament and the dead man’s aunt, hires Carolus Deene to help suppress the evidence. He must reconstruct the confusing circumstances in order to solve this baffling crime.

In the cleverly plotted Case for Sergeant Beef, Mr. Wellington Chickle, a retired watchmaker, plans the perfect murder, but he chooses the wrong victim. The dead man’s sister refuses to accept the idea that her brother committed suicide and calls in the unprepossessing Sgt. Beef who unravels the plot with the aid of the local police. Meanwhile, Townsend, Beef’s indefatigable chronicler, comes to a completely different—and completely wrong—conclusion. A delightful read by one of the best mystery plotters who ever lived.