El fiscal de distrito de Nueva York, R. Montgomery Tracy, no está pasando por su mejor momento. Acaba de sacar de la cárcel a su hermano Spike, encerrado por embriaguez y alteración del orden público, y además tiene entre manos un caso candente. Cecily Thane, esposa de un millonario traficante de joyas, ha sido asesinada a tiros en su casa. De su caja fuerte han desaparecido piezas de enorme valor, por lo que para la policía no hay duda posible: se trata de un robo que salió mal y el culpa...

"She was quite dead—had been dead for some hours. Now, Inspector, do you understand what I mean when I say I had an acute attack of déja vu?”Spike Tracy is bored. Fortunately, a chance visit to his friend Inspector Herschman turns up a fascinating case when the Inspector receives a mysterious summons from one Dr. Horatio Pennypacker, who tells them that they must hurry to the flat of Moira Ballinger - a thoroughly unpleasant shopwoman turned millionaire's widow. Pennypacker explain...

"Somewhere on their tight little island, lurking, slinking, creeping up from behind, striking death and terror—there was some one. And the very namelessness of the some one only made stronger the nervous, haunting dread that pressed down upon them."1921 - The millionaire Thaddeus Culver creates a sensation when he announces that he will marry his housekeeper...1935 - Culver's daughter Elise has become a succesful poet. Following a motor accident, she meets a handsome young m...

R. Montgomery Tracy, District Attorney of New York County is not having a good day. He has just had to bail out his brother Spike, who has been arrested for drunken disorder. Worse still Spike has decided to abandon an elk-shooting excursion in British Coulumbia in order to accompany his brother (strictly on sufferance) to the house of jewel merchant Elton Thane, whose wife Cecily has been found murdered in front of a rifled safe. Initially regretting his decision, Tracy soon discovers tha...

When a drunken challenge leads Spike Tracy to hijack the taxi of a young couple, not to mention spending the night on a sofa belonging to the couple's neighbour, he little imagines that the four of them will ever meet again - let alone as part of a murder investigation. But when Inspector Herschman calls on Spike for assistance in discovering the murder of Lina Lee, secretary at the Penton Press, that is exactly what happens. But which of the many tangled love affairs uncovered by Spike in...

When noted philatelist Prentice Crossley is murdered at his New York home, man of leisure and occasional amateur sleuth Spike Tracy finds a welcome opportunity to enliven a dull vacation. But as more murders are committed, a priceless stamp from the Crossley collection discovered near each body, the killer's motives are increasingly unclear. The police believe a homicidal maniac is at work. Spike, however, suspects that an altogether less sensational, but no less horrific human tragedy lie...

When Spike Tracy, man of leisure and occasional amateur sleuth, seeks roadside assistance from an attractive young woman named Jill, he readily accepts her invitation to stay to tea with her family while his car is being fixed. So it is that he finds himself in the house of Jill's guardian, Dr. Sigurd Sharon, which they share with Jill's twin sister Mary. Of particular interest to Spike is Jill's insistance that she is in immanent danger of being murdered. But when tragedy does strike, it ...

“On the whole I’d say that the whole thing is rather ideal—the proverbial house party, a murder, everyone under suspicion, a man of mystery, two lovers... misappropriated funds, threats of disinheritance, cut telephone wires, and strange doings in the dead of night...”Jennifer Vinton, an orphan about to come of age, returns to the country house of her grandfather and guardian Steven Kester. Jennifer is determined to marry a poor legal student - a match which her guardian bitterly o...