The Mad Hatter Mystery — John Dickson Carr

A CAB-HORSE IN A BARRISTER'S WIG AND A CORPSE IN A TOP HAT

The newspapers dubbed the thief the "Mad Hatter," and his outrageous pranks amused all London. But the laughter turned to horror when a corpse with a crossbow bolt through the heart was found at the Tower of London in a top hat.

As Dr. Gideon Fell was to discover, the whole case turned on the matter of hats -- in fact, threatened to become a nightmare of hats. For the victim was none other than Sir William Bitton's nephew, dressed in a golfing suit and wearing Sir William's stolen opera hat. And tying Sir William to his murdered nephew with a scarlet thread was the stolen manuscript of a completely unknown story said to be the handiwork of Edgar Allan Poe.

In a tale as freighted with menace as the Traitor's Gate, portly Dr. Fell unravels a crime unique by even his standards of the bizarre.