Ellery Queen is a legendary amateur detective and writer of crime novels. Under his name, cousins Frederick Dannay (1905-1982) and Manfred Lee (1905-1971) wrote a series of fascinating books that rank with the works of detective genre luminaries A. Christie, E. S. Gardner, R. Stout and J. D. Carr.

Having agreed to help Howard Van Horn, Ellery finds himself drawn into a chain of strange events that ends in a tragedy that Quinn will have to solve twice. This case belongs to the so-called "Wrightsville cases" of Mr. Queen, and in chronological order it immediately precedes "The Cat with Many Tails".