Escapade — Walter Satterthwait

It's the summer of 1921. At a weekend party in an English country manor, the discovery of a dead body in a locked room pits the minds of a brilliant escape artist and a famous detective novelist against that of a fiendishly clever murderer. Will an American private eye beat two twentieth-century heroes to the punch and find the killer--before he finds them?

American Phil Beaumont, hired to guard Harry Houdini from a rival magician's persistent death threats, finds his hands full at a stately country home, where the eclectic guest list includes the leading light of detective fiction, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. When their host is found murdered in a locked room, Houdini and Conan Doyle--with some help from their American friend Beaumont--match wits with the diabolical "Chin Soo," a master of disguise--and murder.