I think murder is practically a certainty.
William Weddall was eccentric even in Ludovic Traver's wide experience. There was about him an aura of secrecy and subterfuge at odds with the quiet atmosphere of his estate. Hinchbrook Hall, show-place for his antiques and paintings. He had sent Travers to Paris on the seemingly pointless errand of mailing a letter. And Travers later saw him deliberately miss a boat.
Then William Weddall plunged from a window to his death. A running man was seen leaving Hinchbrook Hall after the fatal accident, a man identifiable only by the scar on his chin. Weddall's American chauffeur, Sam, asked Travers to investigate. It was Sam's guess that Weddall was pushed. Suave and urbane, with a connoisseur's eye for antiques, Travers stepped in.
An unwholesome nephew, an ambitious housekeeper, faked-antique swindles in a Bohemian underworld-these are the elements that combine to give Christopher Bush's 52nd mystery an electric atmosphere of suspense.
The Case of the Running Man was originally published in 1958. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.
"Throws incidental information on art and antiques into an ingenious plot as Ludovic Travers pursues the murderer of a collector." Daily Telegraph
"As neatly fashioned a puzzle as Ludovic Travers has ever tackled." Guardian