Cry for the Baron

John Mannering, the suave antiques dealer and reformed jewel thief known in the underworld as the Baron, is drawn into a deadly affair surrounding a cursed gem called the Diamond of Tears. Every previous owner of the stone has been tortured and met a violent end, and when Jacob Bernstein, the fifth in that grim line, is murdered, Mannering takes up the investigation. As he probes the secret of why the jewel attracts death, he finds himself caught in a web of greed and danger, and soon the Baron himself becomes a target. An entry in John Creasey's long-running Baron series, written under the pen name Anthony Morton, the novel blends classic mystery with the charm and daring of a gentleman-rogue hero who moves easily between the respectable world of fine antiques and the shadowy circles of thieves and killers. Brisk and plotted in the tradition of mid-century British crime fiction, it follows Mannering as he races to unravel the jewel's lethal history before he joins its long roll of victims.