THE SIAMESE TWIN MYSTERY is superlatively “different.” It accomplishes the difficult task of combining provocative clues, thought-compelling logic and an amazing and inexorable mathematical solution with sheer story — the story of a bewildered group of people isolated on a mountain-top by a forest fire below... menaced by a murderer within and a flaming death without — truly caught between two fires.

Mr. Queen handles his story elements — the growth of fear, the interplay of emotion, the delineation of common people helpless before an uncommon situation — equally as superbly as he docs his mystery and detective elements, in the concoction and treatment of which he is a past master.

JOHN MARCO, the dashing and handsome Spaniard, the great lover, despoiler and betrayer of women, sat quietly on the beach terrace of Spanish Cape that ghostly night, apparently musing on his many iniquities, on the hold he had over the frantic desperate women in the house above him. Hat on head, hand on stick, long black opera cloak draped about his virile figure... that is the way they found him the next morning — dead, strangled, murdered... and when they removed the opera cloak they found him without shoes or socks, without trousers or coat or shirt or necktie or underwear — completely nude!

Daring, clever, extraordinarily exciting, here is Ellery Queen at his best. And, as you might expect, again a stunning surprise at the end!