The Roman Hat Mystery has been chosen from more than 100 selected manuscripts to represent the Stokes contribution to the mysterio-detective literature of 1929. Because we believe it to be in a class by itself we are publishing no other detective novel this season. Following no hackneyed formula, conveying to the public an entirely new experience in this popular type of fiction, The Roman Hat Mystery offers a foolproof plot of fascinating complexity, a theatrically romantic setting and a most ingenious deductive pattern that is plausible, gripping throughout and wholly original in weave. The essential clue is a missing silk tophat. On the surface it appears to be of minor significance, yet about this elusive thread the entire amazing tale revolves. The reader is given every fact necessary to the solution; and yet we challenge your most ardent amateur criminologists to deduce the startling dénouement. Not only in plot but in protagonist does this novel offer something “different.” You will like the old snuff-taking Inspector, Richard Queen, a shrewd and human manhunter; you will more than like his son Ellery, whose keen intellect dominates every situation. A brilliant analyst, a convincing maker of miracles, Ellery Queen bids fair to join that immortal group to which Sherlock Holmes, Lupin and few others belong