Obelists En Route
A classic Golden Age locked-room mystery in which the discovery of a body turns a cross-country train journey into a hunt for a killer.
The luxurious Transcontinental Express, a locomotive journeying coast-to-coast across the United States, is the height of 1930s technology and sophistication. Alongside carriages for dining, drinking and dancing, there’s even a swimming pool car – in which the corpse of a banker is found floating facedown just one day into the journey.
With nowhere to hide, any passenger could be next. It's up to the clever Dr Pons – with his sharp wit and knack for impossible puzzles – to get to the bottom of the case, before it is too late.
'A highly ingenious, entertaining and unusual tale.' Daily Herald
C. Daly King (Author)
C. Daly King (1895-1963) was an American psychologist and detective story writer. He was born in New York City and educated at Yale University. After fighting in World War I, he worked in textiles and in advertising before returning to school to study psychology, with a particular focus on sleep and consciousness. In the 1930s, King published nine books that quickly established him as a master of the Golden Age mystery, but ceased writing fiction with the advent of World War II.
Otto Penzler (Introducer)
Otto Penzler owns The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City and founded the Mysterious Press and Otto Penzler Books. He has written and edited several books, including the Edgar Award-winning Encyclopaedia of Mystery and Detection, and is the series editor of the annual Best American Mystery Stories of the Year.