The Golden Age mystery author of the Mr. Fortune series introduces Joshua Clunk, a chipper yet cunning criminal lawyer and sleuth.
Joshua Clunk may appear on the wrong side of the law as a defense attorney, but he's always on the right side of justice. Something that his nemesis, Superintendent Bell of the Criminal Investigation Division, is about to find out . . .
It all begins with young Anthony Wisberry and his attempt to solve his father's disappearance. More than twenty years ago, his chemist father worked out a process for making hard steel with vanadium. He then went on a business trip and was never seen again. Around the same time, the steel firm of Garston & Garston started using the same process with great success, which Anthony finds suspicious.
A long-time friend of the Wisberry family, Clunk investigated the case years ago and came up with nothing. But his attempts to stop Anthony from confronting Henry Garston—now Lord Croyland—fall on deaf ears.
The Garston's seaside estate has kept its secrets for years, and Lord Croyland seems to have nothing to fear from the upstart Wisberry. But two murders in the matter of one night prove otherwise. In the investigation that follows, Clunk stays one step ahead of the police, proving to Scotland Yard that they're better off working with Clunk than against him . . .
"H. C. Bailey is as near being a king of them all as it is polite for me to say." —Ogden Nash
"To my notion, that man who has come nearest to the mark (the Sherlock Holmes stories) is H. C. Bailey." —Alexander Woollcott
