The French Powder Mystery, by Ellery Queen (Hardcover)

When a woman’s body is discovered in the display window of a prestigious Fifth Avenue department store, the elegant setting belies a brutal crime. The victim, arranged as if peacefully sleeping on a luxurious bed, holds no obvious clues—yet the powder on her face hints at a cunningly concealed truth. The police are baffled, but one man sees what others miss.

Ellery Queen, the sharp-witted amateur logician, steps into the labyrinth of suspects and secrets. With his father, Inspector Richard Queen, he navigates a world of merchants, artists, and hidden rivalries, where every gesture and whisper may be a fatal clue. As the investigation tightens, he realizes that the key lies not in what is seen, but in what is meticulously hidden behind a mask of normalcy.

In this classic puzzle mystery, nothing is as simple as it appears. With relentless logic and an eye for the overlooked, Queen must reconstruct the truth from a mosaic of deception before the killer can slip away into the shadows.