Quintet: The Cases of Chase and Delacroix

The Era of Wonderful Nonsense was over, replaced by the grimmer, grittier world of the Great Depression. But millionaire autodidact polymath Akhenaton Beelzebub Chase and his brilliant, lissome associate Claire Delacroix, live on comfortably in their neo-Tudor mansion. They practice duets on priceless classical instruments, dine on haute cuisine and sip choice vintage wines.

It is a milieu reminiscent of the surroundings of Philo Vance, young Ellery Queen, and other amateur sleuths of that bygone era. Chase and Delacroix's luxuriant lives are interrupted when Captain Cleland Baxter, head of the San Francisco Police Department's detective bureau, calls on them to solve baffling cases.

They must unravel the mysteries of a famous Hungarian actor found dead in his dressing room, two tiny puncture wounds in his neck . . . a deep-water explorer who disappears from his diving suit forty feet beneath the surface of Monterey Bay . . . a test pilot who flies an experimental fighter plane into a cloud with a passenger on board and emerges seconds later, alone.