A Difficult Problem

When Lucy Holmes finds a newspaper death notice for her husband on her dressing table, she is stunned into doubt: James Holmes has already been reported dead in Philadelphia, yet a cheerful letter from him arrived only days earlier. Desperate for answers, the young widow turns to a private investigator, who quickly sees that the clipping is no ordinary newspaper item and that someone has deliberately used it to unsettle her. What begins as a seeming mystery of death notices and mistaken identity deepens into a case of hidden motive, old guilt, and murder. As the investigator probes Holmes's death, he finds a suspicious thumb puncture, a strange wire puzzle among the dead man's effects, and a trail leading back to Lucy's past. She confesses that she once abandoned her fiancé, John Graham, for wealth, and now fears that the shabby, bitter man she met on the street is the lover she betrayed. The investigator pursues Graham through the city, using steel coils to force out his terror and expose his conscience. At last, Graham breaks down and confesses: driven by revenge and resentment, he forged the obituary, poisoned Holmes, and has been living under the weight of his own ruined ambitions. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.