[citation needed] In a poll of 17 detective story writers and reviewers, this novel was voted as the seventh best locked room mystery of all time.

They include a professional medium, an escape artist, a couple of magicians, a ventriloquist, and two people who claim to exhibit mental telepathy in their nightclub act.

After a number of breakneck chases from one scene to the next, Merlini and his assistant are a couple of steps ahead of the police and provide a far-fetched but logical solution to the impossible crimes.

The action also stops for a while when Merlini quotes a well-known passage from John Dickson Carr's The Three Coffins about the nature of locked-room mystery novels, and adds some flourishes of his own in relation to the problems at hand.

The penultimate scene in which the murderer is revealed is enlivened by one of the suspects attempting (on stage) to catch a bullet in his teeth, and all is explained in the final chapter when everyone gathers at Merlini's Magic Shop in the best whodunnit tradition.