Orange-Yellow Diamond

A struggling novelist needs money desperately, so he accepts a peculiar commission: ghostwrite the memoir of the wealthy and eccentric Mr. Levendale. But when he arrives at the man's estate, he finds his client dead and the legendary orange-yellow diamond vanished. Suddenly the writer is the detective, navigating a house full of suspects with secrets to hide. Martin Gardiner, the commission agent who hired him, seems too eager to help. The servants know more than they say. And the clues pile up like a master puzzler's cruel joke, each one designed to mislead as much as illuminate. J.S. Fletcher was a master of the Golden Age puzzle mystery, and this is detection at its most gleefully devious. The diamond is the bait; the solution is the prize. What makes this one sing is the detective: not a brilliant professional but an ordinary man forced into brilliance by circumstance. He stumbles, deduces, stumbles again, and earns his final revelation. For readers who love clever puzzles wrapped in period atmosphere, this is a hidden gem waiting to be discovered.