When police pull over a drunken motorist, they make a gruesome discovery: a corpse concealed beneath a rug in the back of his car. The explanation appears obvious—the drunk struck the victim and, too intoxicated to remember, placed the dead man in his vehicle—but the suspect insists his only passenger was a stone bust. Now the bust has vanished, the dead body has taken its place, and an apparent case of drunken manslaughter begins to look far more sinister. Working alongside the official police, Dr. Priestley applies rigorous logic to an apparently impossible chain of events, gradually revealing how a straightforward accident was engineered to conceal an extraordinary crime. As the peculiar investigation leads from the dead man's secluded country house to a beached yacht, it places the detective in deadly danger.

Dr. Priestley Investigates by John Rhode is a classic Golden Age detective novel featuring Dr. Lancelot Priestley, a renowned mathematician whose calm analysis and scientific reasoning make him uniquely suited to untangle the most perplexing cases. Rhode’s precise plotting and subtle misdirection place Dr. Priestley Investigates among the great works written during the height of the Golden Age of detective fiction. Combining an ingenious fair-play mystery with elements of a police procedural and vintage crime thriller, this classic British mystery delivers meticulous clues, unexpected danger, and a solution built through logical deduction rather than guesswork. 

Perfect for fans of Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr, Anthony Berkeley, Freeman Wills Crofts, R. Austin Freeman, and J. J. Connington, as well as readers who enjoy elaborate puzzle mysteries, ingenious murder methods, gentleman detectives, armchair sleuths, and vintage crime fiction. Ideal for libraries, book clubs, and collectors alike.