The Luminous Face

A wealthy Seattle businessman is found dead in his locked New York apartment, a revolver at his side. Suicide, the police conclude. But the facts tell a different story: Robert Gleason was shot through the temple, the wound that killed him instantly. And yet he called his doctor afterward, claiming he'd been shot. How does a dead man make a phone call? Carolyn Wells constructs her puzzle with surgical precision, layering in a cast of suspicious characters: the pompous physician who discovered the body, a mysterious man with a hidden connection to the victim, and a woman whose relationship with Gleason was anything but simple. When detective Pennington Wise and his enigmatic assistant Zizi enter the case, every alibi crumbles under scrutiny and every clue seems to point in contradictory directions. The pleasure here is not in shock but in deduction, in watching a clever mind untangle what seems impossible. For readers who cherish the golden age of puzzle mysteries, where every detail matters and the solution, when it arrives, feels both surprising and inevitable.