As far as New Yorker Carol Spencer is concerned, the war has spoiled everything. She and Don had been engaged for years and were on the verge of marriage when he was shot down in the South Pacific, leaving Carol on the verge of spinsterhood at twenty-four. Instead of allowing her to take a job in the war effort as Carol wishes, her invalid mother demands that Carol accompany her to the family's summer home in Maine. But when they arrive at the faded mansion, they find it completely locked up. The servants are gone, the lights are dark—and there is a body in the closet. There is a killer on the grounds of the abandoned Spencer estate, and the police believe it is Carol. As war rages across the seas, Carol Spencer fights a private battle of her own—to prove her own innocence and to save her mother's life. The suspense mounts as surprises continue in this first-rate mystery from the author known as "America's Agatha Christie." Meanwhile, Rinehart powerfully illustrates American life in wartime, with the rationing of food, gasoline, and other elements that in ordinary times were taken for granted. "An intricate web of mystery." ― New York Times Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958) was the most beloved and best-selling mystery writer in America in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Pittsburgh to the owner of a sewing machine factory, she wrote fiction in her spare time until a stock market crash sent her and her husband into debt, forcing her to lean on her writing to pay the bills. Her first two novels, The Circular Staircase (1908) and The Man in Lower Ten (1909), established her as a bright young talent, and it wasn’t long before she was a regular on bestseller lists. Among her dozens of novels were The Amazing Adventures of Letitia Carberry (1911) and The Bat (1932), which was among the inspirations for Bob Kane’s Batman. Today, Rinehart is often called an American Agatha Christie, even though she was much more popular than Christie during her heyday.