QUINTET: The Cases of Chase and Delacroix

Norfolk, VA, U.S.A.: Crippen & Landru, 2008. 1st printing. A fine, unread copy of the trade paperback, still in shrinkwrao, published simultaneously with the limited edition. The Era of Wonderful Nonesense was over, replaced by the grimmer, grittier world of the Great Depression. But millionaire autodidact polymath Akhenaton Beelzebub Chase and his brilliant, lissome associate Claire Delacroix, live on comfortably in their neo-Tudor mansion in the hills above Berkeley, California. It is a milieu reminiscent of the surrondings of Philo Vance, young Ellery Queen, and other amateur sleuths of that bygone era. But their luxuriant lives are interrupted when the head of the San Francisco Police Dept.'s detective bureau, calls on them to solve bafflling cases. They must unravel the mysteries of a famous Hungarian actor found dead in his dressing room, two tiny puncture wounds in his neck; a deep-water explorer who disappears from his diving suit forty feet beneath the surfface of Monterey Bay; a test pilot who flies an experimental fighter plane into a cloud with a passanger on board and emerges seconds later, alone. The author plays fair with the reader, providing every clue needed to solve each case before its solution is revealed. Six cases with a new introduction by the author.. 1st Prtg. Pictorial Wrappers. As New/No Jacket. Illus. by Miller, Deborah. Trade Paperback.