“No Clue!”

A hot summer night at Sloanehurst, the country home of the wealthy and eccentric Arthur Sloane, turns grim when two guests discover the body of a young woman, Mildred Brace, lying on the lawn. Sloane’s daughter Lucille calls in the detective Jefferson Hastings, who soon finds that nearly everyone he questions, including his host and even the victim’s own mother, would rather stay silent. Alibis that looked solid begin to crack, the list of suspects keeps widening, and Hastings is left to read faces and piece together scant evidence to reach the truth. This 1920 novel works squarely in the American whodunit tradition, and it rewards readers who like a fair-play puzzle where working out motive counts for as much as the mechanics of the crime.