"I just wanted to ask you one question."

"Yes?"

"Why did you lie to us about that burglar?"

The Case of the Deadly Diamonds starts out as a small-scale caper for Ludovlc Travers, leading light of the Broad Street Detective Agency. The unspectacular sum of two hundred pounds had vanished mysteriously from a safe in the home of Paul Morren, an old-guard London jeweller.

But when Travers moves in to investigate for the Insurance company, the case erupts into a bona fide spectacular involving the theft of a fortune in diamonds, armed bank robbery, and a bloody climax of multiple murder and suicide.

The key to the Morren family's liaison with death and diamonds lies with heir-turned-criminal David Wayner. But he isn't talking.

And since the Morrens are such accomplished liars, Travers has to rely on what corpse number one and corpse number two can tell him about who corpse number three will be-before he can engineer a perilous confrontation with the desperate keeper of the diabolical gems.

The Case of the Deadly Diamonds was originally published in 1967. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.