The 1930s country house party packed with crooks, cops, and the usual suspects frame the perfect scene of the crime. This one assembles all the right ingredients--the theft of the fabled diamond necklace, the purloined antique pistols, the secret passage, the ravishing baroness with a past, the body in the lake.... What a pretty puzzle! "Don't expect me to solve anything," Inspector Wilkens announces. But of course, he does: theft, espionage, impersonations (triple, at the very least), blackmail, murder.
The suspects include a noble host and hostess, a jewel thief and foreign agents in disguise, bright young things, mysterious mature men, a Texas millionaire, and, of course, the butler.
Crime connoisseurs will recognize the ingredients for a zany pastiche, a delightful romp paying tribute to the past while titillating the present.
And what does the blood-stained egg cosy have to do with anything?