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Death from a Top Hat
A Great Merlini Mystery
Series: An American Mystery Classic
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Check link for latest rating. ( 370 ratings, 76 reviews)
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Format: Paperback / softback
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A detective steeped in the art of magic solves the mystifying murder of two occultists.
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
still learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Description
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.
Series: An American Mystery Classic
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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
Death from a Top Hat by Clayton Rawson is praised as an exceptional work within detective fiction. Reviews highlight its entertaining narrative filled with clever red herrings and label it as a classic cornerstone of the genre. It's also considered one of the greatest impossible murder mysteries, offering an engaging challenge for enthusiasts of crime and thriller novels.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781613161012
Publisher: Penzler Publishers
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 02 October 2018
Country: United States
Imprint: American Mystery Classics
Contributors:
- Introduction by Otto Penzler
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 20.0mm
Width: 135.0mm
Height: 203.0mm
Weight: 345g
Pages: 312
About the Author
Clayton Rawson (1906–1971) was a novelist, editor, and magician. He is best known for creating the Great Merlini, an illusionist and amateur sleuth introduced in Death from a Top Hat (1938). Rawson followed the character through three more novels, concluding the series with No Coffin for the Corpse (1942). In 1941 and 1943 he published the short-story collections Death out of Thin Air and Death from Nowhere, starring Don Diavolo, an escape artist introduced in the Merlini series.
Otto Penzler, the creator of American Mystery Classics, is also the founder of the Mysterious Press (1975), a literary crime imprint now associated with Grove/Atlantic; Mysterious Press.com (2011), an electronic-book publishing company; and New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop (1979). He has won a Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, two Edgars (for the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, 1977, and The Lineup, 2010), and lifetime achievement awards from Noircon and The Strand Magazine. He has edited more than 70 anthologies and written extensively about mystery fiction.
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