“Ode to a chocolate,” murmured Bobby.

Olive, Inspector Bobby Owen’s wife, is on a mission to obtain the recipe for some uncommonly good chocolates. But the most innocent beginning means trouble for Bobby Owen: take one wood-dwelling hermit, a girl who talks to animals, an evil stepfather and two exceedingly valuable works of art, and you have the recipe, not for chocolate, but for one of Punshon’s most satisfying and devilish mysteries.

This beguiling story of labyrinths and seemingly impossible murder is a challenge and a treat for armchair sleuths everywhere. Diabolic Candelabra was originally published in 1942. It is the seventeenth of the Bobby Owen mysteries, a series including thirty-five novels. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

“What is distinction? … in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time.” Dorothy L. Sayers