THESE NAMES MAKE CLUES

An invitation to a “treasure hunt” open to thriller writers and lesser mortals confronts Scotland Yard’s Chief Inspector Macdonald with two baffling deaths.

Though Macdonald doesn’t really want to attend publisher Graham Coombe’s party, he feels certain he’ll look equally foolish if he declines. So he braces himself, goes off to Caroline House, where Coombe lives with his sister, Susan, and accepts a tag identifying him as Izaak Walton The other pseudonymous guests include Ben Jonson, Madame de Sevigné, Thomas Traherne, Samuel Pepys, Laurence Sterne, Fanny Burney, Anna Seward, Jane Austen, and Mrs. Gaskell. All the players are immersed in various stages of deciphering individually dispensed clues when Caroline House is plunged into darkness. When Susan Coombe finally finds enough candles to provide minimal lighting, they realize that Samuel Pepys has disappeared, and he’s shortly found dead in the telephone room. Although one of the guests reports having seen a gray-haired man lurking in the vicinity, Macdonald, condemned to playing who’s-on-first with suspects who spent the evening flitting from one room to the next, considers himself lucky to figure out how Pepys, who’s actually the mystery writer Andrew Gardien, was killed. A visit the next day to Gardien’s agent, Mardon-Elliott, reveals that he’s been shot dead, the name “Gardien” scrawled on a nearby sheet of paper. This golden age curiosity, previously out of print since shortly after its initial publication in 1937, proceeds from one head-scratching riddle to the next. But alert fans will recognize a late-blooming clue as pivotal and share honors with Macdonald for identifying the culprit.

Crime and punishment as the ultimate parlor game, aimed at readers who’ll keep its title front and center.