The Big Bow Mystery

In the very first locked-room mystery, a wealthy man dedicated to helping London's working classes is brutally murdered On a gloomy December morning in the East End, a landlady asks former police inspector George Grodman to help rouse her unresponsive tenant, Arthur Constant. Forced to break down the labor activist's door, Grodman discovers Constant's body, his throat gruesomely slit. With every window securely latched and the front door locked from the inside, no one could have entered or exited the room. But the instrument that did the bloody deed is nowhere to be found. Reluctantly joining forces with his rival, Edward Wimp of Scotland Yard, Grodman quickly becomes tangled in a sticky mess of lies, betrayals, and political chicanery. The Big Bow Mystery's conclusion is shockingly unexpected and fiendishly clever, and it served as an inspiration to such masters of the locked-room mystery as Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr.