Cirrus@Austlit

A disgraced politician plans a complex and bizarre method of taking his own life, hoping to leave wife facing a murder charge. Hodgkiss has to make use of all his powers of imagination to make sense of the few clues left behind and demonstrate how the man managed to kill himself then make the gun disappear.

'When two bodies are found shot dead lying side by side in a park Inspector Donald Burke decides it is very likely murder-suicide. But there are no fingerprints on the gun which is lying on the ground between them. When Hodgkiss begins to look into the family history a very different, dark picture emerges.

'Visiting a country town with his friend Pat Strong, Hodgkiss is soon investigating the death of an unpopular man whose body was found in a motel room with the door barricaded inside by a heavy chest of drawers. Everyone thinks it must have been suicide. But Hodgkiss knows that the locked room scenario can conceal murder ... and this is no exception.

'Hodgkiss, who haunts charity shops in his quest for wristwatches, is baffled when a particular knife he wants to buy disappears mysteriously from the shop's window when the shop is closed and returns just as mysteriously later . When such a knife is used in a murder Hodgkiss knows where to go looking for the killer.' (Publication summary)