This image is the cover for the book Headless Lady, The Great Merlini Mysteries

Headless Lady, The Great Merlini Mysteries

A circus owner’s murder produces a roster of bizarre suspects

Summer heat is choking New York, and the Great Merlini—conjurer, sleuth, and godson of P. T. Barnum—offers his friend Ross Harte a chance to get out of town. Before they can depart for the annual convention of the Society of American Magicians, a nervous woman enters Merlini’s shop, begging to purchase his most popular illusion: the headless lady. When the magician refuses to sell his last copy, she steals it. She is the daughter of Major Hannum, a recently deceased circus magnate whose death may not have been an accident. Somewhere among the carnies, barkers, and freaks lurks a killer, and only Merlini can save the carnival from further bloodshed. The killer’s plot is as sly as a funhouse mirror, but no detective is more at home in a world where nothing is what it seems.

Clayton Rawson

Clayton Rawson (1906–1971) was a novelist, editor, and magician. He is best known for creating the Great Merlini, an illusionist and amateur sleuth introduced in Death from a Top Hat (1938), a rollicking crime novel which has been called one of the best locked-room mysteries of all time. Rawson followed the character through three more adventures, concluding the series with No Coffin for the Corpse (1942). In 1941 and 1943 he published the short-story collections Death out of Thin Air and Death from Nowhere, starring Don Diavolo, an escape artist introduced in the Merlini series. In 1945 Rawson was among the founders of the Mystery Writers of America. He served as the first editor for the group’s newsletter, The Third Degree, and coined its famous slogan: “Crime Doesn’t Pay—Enough.” Rawson continued writing and editing for the rest of his life.

Open Road Integrated Media