Clare-her Clare-was gone.

Mystery in Paris! A disappearance as surprising and baffling as if it had been done by magic. A young girl, barely fifteen, beautiful yet shy and under constant protection, disappears in the one moment that is offered. Between the click of a garden gate and the opening of a door. Fifteen seconds! The quiet dispatch of the affair was its most appalling feature. No struggle, no outcry. She had vanished into the thin air with a finality that shocked and puzzled. As the story unfolds a note of sinister intrigue enters in and violence heightens the plot.

Charnwood, the Englishman who loves the girl’s mother, works in the dark, as do the Paris police. But the key to the solution lies close to all the characters in the story. This is a fascinating tale of disappearance, murder and adventure-a thriller even for calloused students of crime.

The Click of the Gate was originally published in 1932. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

She could not be unexciting if she tried Times Literary Supplement