The Case of the Dead Lord

A locked room becomes the scene of a seemingly impossible murder...

Gambling debts have brought Lord Redmire to the brink of bankruptcy. In an attempt to raise money to pay them off, he decides to stage a spectacular magic show and perform a difficult locked-room illusion, which will also be broadcast live on television. But not long after the cameras start rolling, the spectacular trick goes spectacularly wrong.
Inspector Jim Oldroyd, watching the performance from the front row, has never seen anything like it in his entire police career. Lord Redmire disappears right before his eyes, only to reappear moments later with a knife in his back. Oldroyd and his colleague, Sergeant Stephanie Johnson, soon discover that almost everyone in the audience at the time had a motive for the murder. But how did the killer manage to get into the locked room and out again without leaving a single trace?
After the only person who knew the secret behind the illusion is brutally silenced, the case begins to seem unsolvable. The question is not only who committed the murder, but also why and, above all, how.