Twelve mysteries, dozens of clues, and two detectives matching wits Detective Jack Barnes is good at his job―no nonsense and thorough, his dogged nature makes him the best at what he does. Mr. Robert Leroy Mitchel is entirely different: a gentleman and an amateur sleuth, Mitchel is confident in his ability to find answers where the professionals cannot. But by choice or circumstance the two are thrown together in pursuit of the truth. Sometimes partners, often competitors, these dueling detectives tackle a slew of unsolvable cases in Gilded Age New York: a body washed up in the river after its cremation, the disappearance of a priceless emerald that leaves a trail of death in its wake, and an IOU demanding a man's life, to name a few. A long-neglected master of detective stories, Rodrigues Ottolengui was a gifted dentist and lover of mysteries whose work established forensic dentistry as a science and emphasized the value of evidence. Through crisp prose, captivating plot twists, and charming characters, Ottolengui's collection of stories delves into the bizarre―sometimes dangerous, sometimes ridiculous―side of human nature. "The Library of Congress Crime Classics series rescues another gifted author from obscurity with this collection of 12 stories set in the 1890s...Mystery fans devoted to logical deduction will welcome this reissue." ― Publishers Weekly LESLIE S. KLINGER is the two-time Edgar® winning editor of New Annotated Sherlock Holmes and Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s. He has also edited two anthologies of classic mysteries and, with Laurie R. King, five anthologies of stories inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon. Klinger is the series editor of Library of Congress Crime Classics, a partnership of the Library of Congress and Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks. He is a former Chapter President of the SoCal Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America and lives in Malibu, California.