Summary
In an audacious synthesis of literary theory and forensic application, protagonist Ruth Winton—herself a scribe of the macabre—endeavors to validate her own creative postulates within the crucible of a real-world tragedy. When her paramour, Perry Standish, is ensnared in a judicial nightmare and sentenced to the gallows for the slaying of his employer, a diamond magnate with murky ties to the criminal subterranean, Winton refuses to succumb to despair. Instead, she orchestrates a daring psychological gambit, inhabiting the very domicile where the late Graves met his end. By reinstating the domestic staff and observing the predatory circling of the victim's partner, Mallison, she transforms the crime scene into a laboratory of human compulsion. The narrative hurtles toward a zenith of high-stakes revelation where the domestic shadows yield a dying confession, salvaging a life from the brink of state-sanctioned oblivion.
Synopsis
Ruth Winton, author of The Great Diamond Mystery, tests its hypothesis--that a murderer will return to the scene of the crime--when her sweetheart, Perry Standish, is sentenced to death for the murder of his employer, Graves, a diamond merchant with underworld connections. Ruth rents Graves's house; rehires Davis, the butler; and notices that Mallison, Graves's partner, snoops around the house for some missing diamonds. In the climax, the butler is shot and makes a dying confession to Graves's murder; Perry is pardoned at the last minute.
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