Ten short stories. Miss Mott is a newspaper columnist, offering advice to readers on various personal matters. Is she now to become a consultant on crime? Of course, her uncle does work at Scotland Yard...In the ten cases, Lucie Mott solves only two-inding a missing woman locked in her own house and recognizing that an apparently philandering husband was actually out thieving--and in a third helps rescue her uncle. In five stories she is saved from her own folly by a supposed criminal known as Violet Joe with whom she immediately falls in love. Three strains of action are interwoven throughout the volume: the romance of Lucie and Violet Joe, the maniacal attraction of the criminal gang leader Meredith for Lucie, and Miss Mott's investigative career. All are neatly tied up in the final case.

A fine August morning in Fowey on the Cornish Riviera, a noble yacht appears round the western point of the estuary, and enters the broad river. The Rajah of Puht is arriving. In the early afternoon, as the palatial yacht lies at anchor, Lady Constance Bolliver and sundry other distinguished guests will arrive by train, to be rowed across to her. On board is half-a-million pounds in diamonds. This tranquil scene has been preceded by a cat-and-mouse pursuit by Detective Inspective Edward Strood - one of Scotland Yard's finest - of a master criminal, a person unknown, intent on grand larceny of the exquisite stones." -- Back cover.

The King's Cross restaurant is nearly empty when a timid London clerk overhears a few muttered words at a neighbouring table - a young woman is to be followed, and dealt with roughly if she proves troublesome. Before he can talk himself out of it, he is on a northbound express, pursuing the men and the girl they mean to harm. The journey ends on the windswept moors of Northumberland, where a tumbledown house sits alone against the sky. An out-of-work navvy has already taken shelter there, and soon a pair of young adventurers join the vigil. But the house is not as empty as it appears. Something beneath it gives a hollow boom, a professor works against his will, and a ruthless schemer will stop at nothing to protect what is buried below. First published in 1928, this thriller of treason, courage, and a secret that must never see daylight is vintage British mystery at its most atmospheric.