One of the best-known Rhodes, with its serial killings in a working-class district of London in the vein of Mrs. Belloc Lowndes' (and Hitchcock's) The Lodger. There is far more activity and action here than there would be in later Rhodes, which is both the book's strength and its weakness. Dr. Priestley is personally involved to a degree he would be in very few cases (c.f. The Paddington Mystery, The Claverton Mystery), even going so far as to flee the country in a vain attempt to baffle the murderer, with whose original motive the reader feels some sympathy. Unfortunately, that murderer is remarkably obvious -- and yet Dr. Priestley completely fails to identify him, and is taken aback by the glaringly obvious. Obviously he suffered the same problem as so many action heroes: his brains stopped working, while his muscles did all the work.