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by Erle Stanley Gardner (Author)
A homeless man's corpse sends a California D.A. down a twisted path in this classic hard-boiled mystery from the author of the Perry Mason series.
"The bestselling author of the century . . . a master storyteller." --The New York Times
District Attorney Doug Selby's latest trouble begins when the battered corpse of a vagabond is found near the railroad in Madison County. The coroner suspects he was struck by a train. Searching the dead man's wallet, they discover he had a wealthy brother in Phoenix. But who was the dead man? And how did he make it to the train tracks. . . ?
Meanwhile, a neighboring city needs Doug's help. A bookkeeper named John Burke has vanished, potentially with funds stolen from his employer. Burke's neighbors report seeing a drifter in the alley near their house. And when Selby and Sheriff Rex Brandon speak to Burke's employer, they discover Burke wired him from Phoenix . . .
Selby thinks he has found two threads that will tie together neatly in a bow, but the more he investigates, the more he is left in knots.
Originally published in 1940.Author Biography
Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) was an author and lawyer who wrote nearly 150 detective and mystery novels that sold more than one million copies each, making him easily the best-selling American writer of his time. He ranks as one of the most prolific specialists of crime fiction due to his popular alter ego, lawyer-detective Perry Mason. A self-taught lawyer, Gardner was admitted to the California bar in 1911 and began defending poor Chinese and Mexicans as well as other clients. Eventually his writing career, which began with the pulps, pushed his law career aside. As proven in his Edgar Award-winning The Court of Last Resort, Gardner never gave up on the cases of wrongly accused individuals or unjustly convicted defendants.
