Red Aces by Edgar Wallace

Kenneth McKay is already uneasy about his beloved Margot Lynn, whose secrecy and unexplained wealth make him fear she is hiding something dangerous. When she abruptly ends their relationship by letter, his private doubts begin to echo a wider unease: money has gone missing from his bank, and the cool, observant detective J. G. Reeder has appeared on the scene. In this atmosphere of romantic suspicion and financial unease, a winter roadside tragedy suddenly widens the case into something far darker. A car is stopped on a frozen road, and the body of old Wentford is found in the snow. Solicitor Mr. Enward, his clerk Henry, and later Reeder confront a murder that leads to a secluded cottage, where footprints, blood smears, a lit window, and a room rigged with hidden compartments reveal a secretive life beneath an ordinary exterior. Reeder's inquiries draw him into a web of false identities, foreign links, strange visitors, a red-haired stranger, missing men, and the shadow of the Pizarro Syndicate. As clues from Paris, Budapest, Madrid, Berlin, and New York accumulate, Reeder begins to see that love, money, and murder are all entangled in a single, carefully concealed conspiracy. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.