Take Karen Leith's house. It faced Washington Square, meeting place for poets and painters. It was tall, skinny, and filled with exotic Japanese art objects. It also held a corpse -- Karen Leith's corpse.

Ellery Queen knew that Karen was a Village character...a silent, unhappy woman who found escape only when she was working on one of her brilliant novels. As he penetrated deeper and deeper into Karen's past, he learned her hideous secret. He became certain that this strange woman, living in New York's strangest neighborhood, had been murdered . . . but how? And by whom?