Murder gone mad

Holmdale, a suburb, is under attack by a killer who uses a long knife and has no motive anyone can name. Innocent people die in public view, close to the police who cannot stop it. After each death, a businesslike letter arrives announcing that another removal has been carried out.

Inspector Pyke of Scotland Yard leads the hunt. He has very little to work with: the bodies themselves and the killer's own boasting. The murders come so fast that clear thinking is hard, and the police progress slowly and painfully.

This is a crime thriller first published in 1931, and it is presented as the first Golden Age detective novel built around a serial killer driven only by blood lust. It draws on the real 1929 case of the Düsseldorf Monster.

Philip MacDonald also wrote The Noose and The Rasp. Here he leaves out his series detective Anthony Gethryn, so no familiar investigator steadies the story. The question the book turns on is how police can catch a maniac whose crimes follow no rational motive.