"I will not take a case involving an insanity plea. As you very well know."
When old Uncle William Cassell returned home to England for the first time in nearly twenty years, he arrived just in time for afternoon tea, followed by his own late evening murder--in his own brother Ambrose's study, no less!
Police arrest William's great-nephew, Paul Herron, who was found outside the study's open French window with a dazed look on his face and a smoking gun in his hands. It is thought Paul mistook the dead man for his tyrannical grandfather Ambrose, whom he had reason to hate. In the face of the determination of most of his own family to have him declared insane and put away in an institution, Paul is defended by Antony Maitland and his celebrated Uncle Nick-though not without grumbling from the latter man about a case which is stuffed like a fatally fruity plum pudding with somnambulism, inherited insanity, two sets of twins and a trio of mysterious deaths in the past. Huffs Sir Nicholas Maitland: "In the best storybook tradition, I make no doubt!"
This gripping courtroom drama from 1962 features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.
"Clever plot; excellent study of needlenoses at work." - Nicholas Blake, London Sunday Telegraph