DEATH FROM A TOP HAT: The First Great Merlini Mystery (An American Mystery Classic)
Language: English
Published by American Mystery Classics / Otto Penzler, N.Y., 2018
- First Edition
- Softcover
- Used
Seller: MURDER BY THE BOOK, Warwick, RI, U.S.A.MURDER BY THE BOOK
AbeBooks seller since April 23, 1997
Condition: Used - Near fine
£ 8.76
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
First printing, thus. (Originally pub in 1938). Cover by Andy Ross. Introduction by Otto Penzler. Light notations at title page by previous owner and minor underlining throughout. A detective steeped in the art of magic solves the mystifying murder of two occultists. Now retired from the tour circuit on which he made his name, master magician The Great Merlini spends his days running a magic shop in New York’s Times Square and his nights moonlighting as a consultant for the NYPD. The cops call him when faced with crimes so impossible that they can only be comprehended by a magician’s mind. In the most recent case, two occultists are discovered dead in locked rooms, one spread out on a pentagram, both appearing to have been murdered under similar circumstances. The list of suspects includes an escape artist, a professional medium, and a ventriloquist, so it’s clear that the crimes took place in a realm that Merlini knows well. But in the end it will take his logical skills, and not his magical ones, to apprehend the killer. Reprinted for the first time in over twenty years, Death from a Top Hat is an ingeniously-plotted puzzle set in the world of New York stage magic, which was at its pinnacle in the early twentieth century. In 1981, the novel was selected as one of the top ten locked room mysteries of all time by a panel of mystery-world luminaries that included Julian Symons, Edward D. Hoch, Ellery Queen’s co-creator Frederic Dannay, and Otto Penzler.…
Seller Inventory # 021156
- Title
- DEATH FROM A TOP HAT: The First Great Merlini Mystery (An American Mystery Classic)
- Author
- Rawson, Clayton
- Publisher
- American Mystery Classics / Otto Penzler, N.Y.
- Publication year
- 2018
- Condition
- Near Fine
- Dust jacket
- No Jacket
- Book Type
- Book
- Binding
- Pictorial Wrappers
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 1613161018
- ISBN 13
- 9781613161012
- Illustrator
- Ross, Andy
- Edition
- First Printing.
- Series
- Book 1 of 4: The Great Merlini Mysteries
- Seller catalogs
- Impossible Crime, Locked Room, Mystery and Detective, New York City, Paperback, PyB 1
A detective steeped in the art of magic solves the mystifying murder of two occultists.
Now retired from the tour circuit on which he made his name, master magician The Great Merlini spends his days running a magic shop in New York's Times Square and his nights moonlighting as a consultant for the NYPD. The cops call him when faced with crimes so impossible that they can only be comprehended by a magician s mind. In the most recent case, two occultists are discovered dead in locked rooms, one spread out on a pentagram, both appearing to have been murdered under similar circumstances. The list of suspects includes an escape artist, a professional medium, and a ventriloquist, so it's clear that the crimes took place in a realm that Merlini knows well. But in the end it will take his logical skills, and not his magical ones, to apprehend the killer.
Reprinted for the first time in over twenty years, Death from a Top Hat is an ingeniously-plotted puzzle set in the world of New York stage magic, which was at its pinnacle in the early twentieth century. In 1981, the novel was selected as one of the top ten locked room mysteries of all time by a panel of mystery-world luminaries that included Julian Symons, Edward D. Hoch, Ellery Queen s co-creator Frederic Dannay, and Otto Penzler.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
MURDER BY THE BOOK
Warwick, RI, U.S.A.
AbeBooks seller since April 23, 1997
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