Publisher's Synopsis
A FICTION HOUSE PRESS FACSIMILE REPRINT: Something ominous in Lincoln Forrestor's laughter brought a sudden chill to Clifford Parks. And well it might. For Cliff Parks, gun expert who came to Forrestor Farms to loaf, was to remain to solve the mystery of his host's murder. People were alien creatures to Forrestor. A successful dramatist, coldly analytical, he found both pleasure and profit in pitting human beings against one another, goading them, then using their reactions as the basis for a new play. This week-end the group assembled--the playwright's browbeaten wife, the man she loved and the woman he had married, an agent, a gardener, a lawyer and a feckless nephew with his sullen spouse--promised more than ordinarily good sport, until one puppet turned upon the puppeteer and struck to kill. Clifford Parks saw at a glance that the explosion in the gun shack had been no accident. This was murder--by someone who had at least some knowledge of the technicalities of firearms, as well as motive and opportunity. And all the suspects fulfilled, in some measure, all the requirements. A capital puzzle, logically and suspensefully handled by an author who is himself a gun authority and a long time member of the Philadelphia Police Force.
