Bob Rollins is a journalist working for Chicago's Leader newspaper. He's also engaged to Eleanor Stevens, whose father Alexander Stevens has discovered a pioneering method of color photographic reproduction which has the potential of making a fortune. The trouble is that Alexander Stevens just has been found dead in his laboratory an impenetrable room locked from the inside, and the only key to the room is Iying beside his body.

Inspector Devine considers it a straightforward case of suicide. Bob Rollins is not so sure, especially when the little clues he refers to as "damning trifles" begin accruing. Suspects abound, and Rollins and his assistant Bill Hackett must follow an intricate series of trails in their search for the killer.

This 1932 locked room mystery was mentioned in a recent Keeler News as possibly written by Harry Stephen Keeler, but none of the Keeler experts who have read the book agree. Still, with a "recommendation" like that . . .