One morning, Tom Barnabas of the publishers Barnabas & Company left his house as usual, then simply vanished. Twenty years later, his cousin Paul, now head of the company, meets an untimely death. To solve Paul's murder, Campion has to go back two decades and sort through a legacy of treachery to solve a case sure to be one of his most difficult.
The Barnabas publishing dynasty is no stranger to mystery; after all, the founder?s nephew is legendary for having disappeared in broad daylight. Yet the discovery of one of the Barnabas cousins, dead for some days inside a locked basement, throws the entire clan in disarray. As police suspicions settle on a member of the family, the Barnabas cousins have no choice but to ask Albert Campion to step in and salvage their reputation. But everywhere he turns, Campion finds more questions than answers. Just what was the deceased Barnabas doing in that basement in his evening clothes and bowler hat? And the original disappearing nephew?where, exactly, did he disappear to?
