The man in the yellow robe had put a curse on Wolfe Harrigan—the ancient curse called the Nine Times Nine. And when Matt Duncan looked up from the croquet lawn that afternoon, he saw the man in the yellow robe in Wolfe Harrigan’s study.

When Matt got there, all the doors were locked and all the windows too; all locked from the inside. Harrigan’s sister sat outside the room. She had seen no one come out. But when the door was broken down, there was no man in a yellow robe in the room, and the body of Wolfe Harrigan lay murdered on the floor.

Later the police discovered that at the time of the murder the man in the yellow robe was lecturing to a group of his followers miles away!

A man who could be in two places at once? An astral body? A miracle, perhaps?

Then who better to explain miracles than Sister Ursula, a nun, whose childhood ambition was to become a policewoman.

Legendary science fiction author Fowler Faulkes may be dead, but his creation, the iconic Dr. Derringer, lives on in popular culture. Or, at least, the character would live on if not for Faulkes's predatory and greedy heir Hilary, who, during his time as the inflexible guardian of the estate, has created countless enemies in the relatively small community of writers of the genre. So when he is stabbed nearly to death in a room with only one door, which nobody was seen entering or exiting, Foulkes suspects a writer. Fearing that the assailant will return, he asks for police protection, and when more potentially-fatal encounters follow, it becomes clear to Detective Terry Marshall and his assistant, the inquisitive nun, Sister Ursula, that death awaits Mr. Foulkes around every corner. Now, they'll have to work overtime to thwart the would-be murderer--a task that requires a deep dive into the strange, idiosyncratic world of science fiction in its early days.

With characters based heavily on Anthony Boucher's friends at the Manana Literary Society, including Robert Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and Jack Parsons, Rocket to the Morgue is both a classic locked room mystery and an enduring portrait of a real-life writing community. Reprinted for the first time in over thirty years, the book is a must-read for fans of mysteries and science fiction alike.