Edgar Wallace

A Greek millionaire with a taste for cruelty is found shot in a locked room; the man who threatened to kill him has an alibi, and the only oddity is a candle burnt strangely. Wallace was illegitimate, raised by a Billingsgate fish porter and out of school at twelve; at his height a quarter of all books borrowed in England were his, and this is one of the cleanest locked-room tricks he built.