'Anything doing?'

'Maybe,' he said guardedly, and then as a kind of afterthought: 'Just slipping along to Hampstead. Charles Manfrey's dead.'

Ludovic Travers is on army leave in London when actor and theatrical impresario Charles Manfrey is murdered, so it is not surprising that Superintendent Wharton – 'the General' to the initiated – pulls him in to help investigate the crime. All the suspects are examined – the rival actor, the housekeeper, the beautiful and calculating secretary – all seem to have a watertight alibi, yet there is a clue which Travers and Wharton have overlooked.

It is only months later, while investigating a case of blackmail, that something very unexpected happens – and gives Travers a second chance of finding the killer of Charles Manfrey.

The Case of the Second Chance was originally published in 1946. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

"Bush gets better and better . . . And Ludovic Travers is becoming one of our favourite sleuths" San Francisco Chronicle