He said he was deeply shocked to hear of Mr. Staffer’s murder.

I rather doubted it.

Ludovic Travers had never come across a more ingenious fraud-three of them, in fact. All were perpetrated in only twenty-four hours. One was in Liverpool, the second and third in Southampton and London. The same two people posing as an American married couple, had purchased a diamond ring at each of three jewellery stores, paying for all three with beautifully forged traveller’s cheques-to the tune of about two thousand pounds. The thieves had then done a highly successful vanishing act.

Shortly after Ludovic Travers is called in on the case, he is diverted from it by the search for a missing heir, one of the twin grandsons of an old friend. The twin on the scene-the Heavenly Twin, Travers calls him-is apparently doing very well. The other has definitely gone wrong, and has also disappeared.

On the missing twin’s trail, Travers encounters yet another diversion: a jewel robbery in a country house in Hampshire. And then two more forged cheques turn up. Are they red herrings-or pieces of the same puzzle?

The Case of the Heavenly Twin was originally published in 1963. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

Mr. Travers ought to be knighted for his easy devotion to the formal tale of detection, woven with humorous deliberation. His knitting needles keep on clicking sharply. New York Herald Tribune