A group of men discuss the reasons for murder and one announces that he would kill one particular man because he disliked him." Then when the man turns up dead, the others are horrified that he has said something that has put the noose around his own neck, particularly when he offers no alibi. As the police investigate they discover other possible reasons for the murder but in each and all, they find that the alibis hold.

Carolyn Wells wrote a total of more than 170 books. During the first ten years of her career, she concentrated on poetry, humor, and children's books. According to her autobiography, The Rest of My Life (1937), she heard That Affair Next Door (1897), one of Anna Katharine Green's mystery novels, being read aloud and was immediately captivated by the unraveling of the puzzle. From that point onward she devoted herself to the mystery genre. Among the most famous of her mystery novels were the Fleming Stone Detective Stories which.according to Allen J. Hubin's Crime Fiction IV: A Comprehensive Bibliography, 1749-2000 (2003).number 61 titles. Wells's The Clue (1909) is on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list of essential mysteries. She was also the first to conduct a (brief, in this case) annual series devoted to the best short crime fiction of the previous year in the U.s., beginning with The Best American Mystery Stories of the Year (1931) (though others had begun a similar British series in 1929).