The Scarab Murder Case

Benjamin Kyle lies face down in a private Egyptian museum off Gramercy Park, arms flung out at the feet of a jackal-headed Anûbis, the black statue of Sakhmet still resting across his crushed skull. A foot away is a lapis-lazuli scarab in a modern scarf-pin, and it belongs to the Egyptologist asleep behind a padded door. Under the dead man's hand is a financial report from that same desk. Philo Vance calls the evidence too simple.

Everyone in the house wanted something from Kyle: a wife schooled in the language of the pharaohs, a nephew who stands to inherit, a retainer who insists the goddess passed judgment. Vance works it through Egyptology and through motive, a fair-play puzzle from the decade when he was America's most popular detective.