Martin Starberth stands to inherit his family's estate provided he can fulfill a certain condition. Part of the estate is an old prison where the Starbeths had been wardens for generations. From a balcony off the Governor's Room, Starberth wardens watched countless men be hanged from the Hag's Nook gallows, their lifeless bodies dropping to a deep well below. A cholera epidemic wiped out the prison population decades earlier but a curse seems to have settled upon the Starberth family with several heirs meeting their death via a broken neck. To inherit the estate, each prospective heir must spend the night of his 25th birthday locked in that warden's room, hopefully escaping the curse. But when Martin's body is found battered, his neck broken, beneath the balcony, it seems that the curse has once again claimed a victim. Dr. Gideon Fell, a splendid figure in his slouch cap and cape, supported by two canes, suspects murder instead, even though he and several others had the room under observation at the time of the death. First published in 1933, this is the first of 23 novels that would feature Dr. Fell, perhaps the most accomplished solver of locked room and impossible crime mysteries in the history of the genre.

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