These Names Make Clues

Chief Inspector Macdonald receives an invitation to a treasure hunt party hosted by Graham Coombe, a noted publisher known for his work on Murder by Mesmerism. As guests, disguised as fictional characters created by Coombe's thriller-writer friends, engage in the hunt, the festivities turn grim when a murder occurs in the telephone room. Amid the chaos of aliases and complicated alibis, Macdonald and his CID colleagues must navigate the mystery to untangle the truth in this clever metafictional narrative from the Golden Age of detective fiction.