Two Clues: 1. The Clue of the Runaway Blonde; 2. The Case of the Hungry Horse

A new Gardner character — Bill Eldon! These two CLUE stories — each with a crime so calculated, so cold-blooded, that it came near being perfect — will establish human, kindly Sheriff Eldon as a dangerous rival for Perry Mason and Doug Selby.

Rockville’s good-hearted, aging Sheriff was slowing up — or so some thought — and the crowd in the courthouse was out to get him. Rank inefficiency, they said, the way he boasts about studying people’s reactions more than material evidence. But Bill Eldon, patient under fire, proved the value of his method...

The first clue...

THE CLUE OF THE RUNAWAY BLONDE

Sam Beckett found her body, lying face down in a plowed field, not far from the mansion where Marvin Higbee had lived and died, leaving his cunningly gathered wealth to a pack of quarrelsome relatives. She was beautiful — and a stranger. And there were no tracks in the soft earth around her, neither her own nor her murderer’s... A crime to cudgel with, this. But Sheriff Bill Eldon, moving slowly, relentlessly, found the answer — an answer that had the town reeling. Serialized as “Clues Don’t Count” in 1945.

The second clue...

THE CLUE OF THE HUNGRY HORSE

When they found the body, the head caved in by the hoof of a restive mare, they identified it as Lorraine Calhoun. An accident, Calhoun said — and the district attorney agreed — a regrettable accident, nothing more. But Bill Eldon thought it was murder... And calmly untangling the skeins of human deception, he found a murderer masked by a sanctimonious face.

Here are two fast-moving mysteries in one package. Here are shrewdly contrived plots, suspense, and a vital new investigator. Truly, Gardner at his customary best.