In many ways, The Emperor's Snuff-Box is the perfect novel to gauge how interested you are in the works of John Dickson Carr: it's readily available (which a majority of the 76 books published in his lifetime are not), very swift, and contains a great puzzle which highlights just how damn good Carr was at this kind of thing. The plot is simplicity itself: a woman is witness to the closing stages of a murder across the street from her in her fiancé’s house, and finds herself under suspicion for the crime. We know from the very outset that she is not guilty, but the events we witness lead to a situation where her actions - and one frankly inexplicable piece of physical evidence - make her appear guilty. So, well, what's going on? It sounds rather like so many cookie-cutter Heroine Suspense novels of the late-2000s, but that's Carr's genius: he takes something that makes it look simple and spins out of it something you would never suspect... Well, something you might not suspect, anyway, as anyone who is wise to Carr's trick will probably start to twig to what's going on here, which is part of why reading it early is recommended - he wrote easily another 20 or so books superior to this, so getting it out of the way early is simply going to hook you in rather than clean out the only decent book in his oeuvre. It's also a great introduction to how good his characters are, too, since people will have you believe that Carr couldnt write women (clearly not the case) or that so much Golden Age detective fiction is purely about the puzzle and not the people involved. If you adhere to either of those beliefs after reading this...well, I'm afraid I have no idea what you're thinking. Carr really was the finest proponent of classic detective puzzle plotting going - more so than Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh combined - and while his unavailability is baffling you can be grateful that this one at least is available to you for your enjoyment. Prepare for a new addiction in your reading life...