This is the novel which introduced Colonel Gethryn as a debonair, world-weary Holmes. Horseman, furious driver, ex-secret service agent, Gethryn represents a friend's newspaper as special investigator of the murder of John Hoode, Minister of Imperial Finance. Hoode has been the victim of a peculiarly clever murder - an insanely clever murder, the work of a monomaniac. Despite the brutality of the crime and the evidences of a struggle, no one in the house heard a sound; and everybody has an alibi. How Gethryn, with his clever blend of intuition and logic, breaks these alibis, rescues an innocent man from overwhelming circumstantial evidence, and puts the finger on the last character one would suspect, makes The Rasp a fascinating problem in detection - a tense, swift-paced, yet humorous novel.