In one of his earliest cases, Ellery Queen confronts a murder in blue blood.

America's master of deduction, Ellery Queen, has made his name by combining dazzling feats of pure reason with the old-fashioned legwork that comes with being the son of a New York cop. Before he became the nation's most famous sleuth, he was just an untested talent — a bookworm who thought he might put his genius to work solving crimes. Young Queen made his bones on the Khalkis case. The scion of a famous New York art-dealing family, Georg Khalkis has spent several years housebound with blindness — a misery he is relieved of when a heart attack knocks him dead on the library floor. After the funeral, his will vanishes, and an exhaustive search of home, churchyard, crypt, and mourners reveals nothing. Baffled, the police turn to a headstrong young genius named Ellery Queen. During this case, Queen develops his deductive method — and swings dramatically between failure and success.