Midnight - A Classic David Carroll Murder Mystery - Paperback

A veiled woman enters a taxicab on a freezing December night-but when the cab reaches its destination, she has vanished and a murdered man lies in her place.

Young taxi driver Spike Walters picks up an elegant, heavily veiled passenger outside Union Station during a bitter sleet storm. She directs him to an isolated address on the outskirts of the city, but when Spike arrives and looks into the back seat, the woman is gone. Her suitcase remains, along with the body of a man Spike has never seen. With no footprints, no visible escape route, and no explanation for how the corpse entered the cab, the crime appears impossible.

Private detective David Carroll is called upon to untangle the mystery. As he follows a trail of concealed relationships, conflicting testimony, suspicious behavior, and carefully constructed deception, Carroll must determine who the dead man was, why he was killed, and how the murderer transformed an ordinary taxi ride into a seemingly supernatural disappearance. The investigation demands patience, psychological insight, and close attention to details others dismiss.

Published in 1922, Midnight was the fourth and final novel featuring David Carroll, Cohen's energetic and unconventional private detective. The novel combines an ingenious opening puzzle with brisk dialogue, humor, romantic complications, and the atmosphere of an early twentieth-century urban mystery. Contemporary mystery historian Jon L. Breen has described it as a cleverly constructed and highly readable example of detective fiction from its period.