The Glass Village — Ellery Queen

A lynch mob threatens to take over a small New England town after a shocking murder

Homicide has never had a place in Shinn Corners. This backwater New England hamlet has seen three unlawful deaths in its 250-year history: infanticide in 1739, a political killing in the 1860s, and a forgettable murder some 15 years ago. In his long tenure on the bench, Judge Lewis Shinn has hardly seen any violent crime at all. His nephew, Johnny, is happy to settle in such a quiet place. After fighting in the Korean and Second World Wars, he's seen enough bloodshed to last a lifetime. On returning to Shinn Corners, however, he learns that death has followed him home.
 
When the town's only celebrity, landscape painter Fanny Adams, is killed with a fireplace poker, suspicion falls on a foreign stranger who recently passed through. As mob rule threatens to corrupt the stranger's trial, Johnny will fight for justice -- and learn the chilling truth about his Yankee neighbors.