The Velvet Hand

A celebrated private investigator and her sharp-eyed secretary face four cases that carry them from New York to Paris, across the Atlantic, through England, and into a wealthy Connecticut household. Each mystery begins with a troubling question: a millionaire’s suspicious death, a pair of elegant confidence artists, a murder aboard a night train, and a fortune surrounded by dangerous hangers-on.

These stories mix classic detection with travel, social observation, and the polished atmosphere of the 1920s. The investigator relies on intuition, close study of human behavior, and carefully tested evidence rather than brute force. Her cases unfold among ocean liners, fashionable hotels, private homes, laboratories, and crowded railway carriages, with each setting becoming part of the puzzle. The collection also shows how deception can hide behind wealth, fashion, respectability, and ordinary domestic life. First published as separate magazine stories and collected in book form in 1928, The Velvet Hand brings together four substantial mysteries featuring one of the era’s distinctive women detectives.