Books with title The Diamond Pin: A Fleming Stone Mystery

On the eve of her wedding, stunning heiress Madeleine Van Norman is found stabbed to death in the library of her palatial country mansion, killed by a single thrust from her Venetian letter opener. Suspicion falls by turns to the groom who loved another, the cousin who stands to inherit her fortune, the woman the groom loves, the murdered woman’s secretary, and the former lover of the murdered woman’s uncle who will inherit the mansion. A suicide note is found next to her body, but the evidence points to murder. The house had been securely locked with no sign of a break in.For the first half of the novel, we follow the actions of a pair of amateur sleuths, a young man and woman who were members of the wedding party. They find a clue -- a cachou, or lozenge, dropped on the floor -- but they aren't able to make anything of it. The local authorities are mystified. With pressure mounting, they call on the services of the famed detective Fleming Stone to resolve the case. In the end, his solution rests on a single tiny clue. A classic from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, The Clue falls squarely in the tradition of two favorite mystery sub-genres – the Big House Mystery and the Locked Room Mystery. Detective Fleming Stone is cool and methodical, not unlike his more famous fictional contemporaries, Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes. The twist is that he doesn’t appear until the second half of the story.

"The Diamond Pin" is a classic locked room mystery with few clues and no end of suspicion. Mrs. Pell is having a Sunday dinner with the local minister, the minister's wife and Iris, one of her two young relatives she intends leaving her wealth to, but who she treats quite viscously. During the dinner she pulls the trick on Iris who ends up with black ink all over her face and dress. After dinner, Mrs. Pell goes into her private room. Soon, a servant hears her scream. Carolyn Wells (1862-1942) was an American writer and poet. Among the most famous of her mystery novels were the Fleming Stone Detective Stories, and Pennington Wise series. She also wrote several Sherlock Holmes stories.

Sam Appleby, the former Governor of Massachusetts, pays a weekend visit to Sycamore Ridge, the Connecticut estate of his old political rival Dan Wheeler. Appleby wants Wheeler’s support for his son Appleby JR who is running for Governor, but Wheeler is a hard sell. As tension escalates between the two men, a small fire erupts, causing a commotion. During the melee a gunshot rings out. When everyone returns to the study, Appleby is discovered dead in his chair, with a bullet through his heart. Wheeler seems the obvious suspect, but as the police probe further it appears more than one member of the Sycamore Ridge household may have had a motive for murdering the ex-Governor. With not enough clues to proceed in their investigation, the local authorities call in master sleuth Fleming Stone and his sidekick Terence McGuire - or ‘Fibsy’ as he’s more commonly known - to solve … The Mystery of the Sycamore.

Wealthy New York widow Ursula Pell enjoys hosting parties and playing cruel jokes on her guests. If anyone complains about the humiliating mistreatment, she threatens to cut them out of her will. When Ursula’s dead body is discovered in a locked-room the morning after a dinner party, suspicion initially points to the murder victim’s niece Iris, the most recent recipient of one of Ursula’s humiliating pranks. But there are many others competing for Ursula Pell’s fortune in gems, which the eccentric widow hid somewhere and which includes a highly prized diamond pin. Who killed Ursula and how? And where is the stash of gemstones? When amateur sleuths fail to unearth any clues, they call in Detective Fleming Stone to fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle. Curl up with this classic locked-room whodunit from Carolyn Wells, author of The Clue.

On the eve of her wedding, stunning heiress Madeleine Van Norman is found stabbed to death in the library of her palatial country mansion, killed by a single thrust from her Venetian letter opener. Suspicion falls by turns to the groom who loved another, the cousin who stands to inherit her fortune, the woman the groom loves, the murdered woman’s secretary, and the former lover of the murdered woman’s uncle who will inherit the mansion. A suicide note is found next to her body, but the evidence points to murder. The house had been securely locked with no sign of a break in.For the first half of the novel, we follow the actions of a pair of amateur sleuths, a young man and woman who were members of the wedding party. They find a clue -- a cachou, or lozenge, dropped on the floor -- but they aren't able to make anything of it. The local authorities are mystified. With pressure mounting, they call on the services of the famed detective Fleming Stone to resolve the case. In the end, his solution rests on a single tiny clue.