When Dick Staines graduated the University of Cambridge without family connections or inherited wealth, he decides to put his honours science degree in the service of Scotland Yard, where he is marked for rapid promotion. Ten years later, and Detective Inspector Richard Staines is confronted by a murder from his past, involving a doppelgänger and a mysterious thumbprint. From the golden age of detective fiction, Edgar Wallace was a prolific author with over 170 novels to his credit, including King Kong. More than 160 films have been made of his works, and a publisher once claimed that a quarter of all books read in England were written by him. - Summary by ASharma