Dead Ringer

Summary

It begins with a phone plugged into a faulty socket and an electric malfunction, it ends with seven dead and one missing... Detective Maxwell is called to investigate what seems to be, by all accounts, an impossible murder. In all of his years, he has never seen a crime this gruesome perpetrated in such a puzzling way. All he has are the testimonies of three known survivors — socialite and lobbyist Meredith Eloise, her stoic butler Richard Torres, and the one surviving guest, Alexander Florence. There's also the matter of the missing person, Felix McCain, Meredith's good-for-nothing and embittered employee... He must solve the case under a deadline; if he cannot catch the culprit by dawn, the place will be swarming with reporters, ruining his client's dear reputation. And Meredith values her good name more than her own life. What's already an impossible crime gets dialed up when Maxwell finds an unexplainable oddity: a telephone that did not belong to any of the people at the party. Perhaps it was waiting for its next owner...