THE SLAYING OF JOSEPH BOWNE ELWELL

Hardback. The unlucky ace of spades was a card that Joseph Bowne Elwell, the 'Wizard of Whist' might well have been dealt just prior to the sweltering-hot day in June 1920 when somebody somehow managed to obtain access to his art-filled house in Manhattan, shot him through the head, and then disappeared, as if into thin air - thereby creating one of the most fascinating true-crime mysteries of the 20th century. Elwell was as mysterious as his murderer. As well as being the greatest of bridge-players, the leading tutor of the game and the author of best-selling bridge textbooks, he was an unofficial 'spy-catcher', a heavy gambler on the stock exchange, the owner of a large stable of race-horses, a developer of Floridian real estate, a dealer in bootleg liquor - and following separation from his wife, a most industrious philanderer. Chiefly because his murder was of the nature of a 'locked-room mystery', there seemed no doubt that he had been slain by an intimate acquaintance - but was the murderous 'joker in the pack' a jealous husband, a revengeful ex-lover, a gambler whom Elwell had cheated or who owed him money, a bootlegger, a rival race-horse owner, an undercover agent for a foreign power..or an acquaintance of some other category? This is a brilliant reconstruction and analysis of events leading up to the crime and of the investigation. Illus., Index. Map eps. 224pp. 8vo. h/back. F. in F. dw.