'In a prologue set in 1901 London, a woman is apparently killed outside her home after her gold watch falls out of her pocket. Flash forward to 1991... playwright André Lévêque seeks help identifying a film he saw at a friend’s house when he was 10, whose story seems to match the circumstances of the 1901 crime. And in the winter of 1911, Victoria Sanders... has invited guests to her English country house. Burns investigates after someone takes a fatal fall on the house’s snowy grounds. Since the only footprints in the snow near the body are the victim’s, it appears the death—from impact with a rock—was accidental. That the deceased was reading Robert Chambers’s macabre classic, The King in Yellow, could be a clue to foul play. Halter links everything logically, further burnishing his reputation as a modern master of the impossible crime mystery.' Publishers Weekly.And, in a further impossibility, a woman is apparently pushed from a cliff quarry with nobody closer than thirty feet away.Locked Room International translates and publishes the works of international impossible crime authors past and present. For information about signed and lettered editions of all living authors please contact pugmire1@yahoo.com or go to www.mylri.com.

當代法國偵探小說作傢，碩果僅存的堅持本格偵探小說創作的歐美作傢，被譽為“黃金時代偵探小說最後的捍衛者”。

霍爾特一九五六年齣生於法國東北部亞爾薩斯省的阿格諾。一九八七年以《第四扇門》一書獲得乾邑偵探小說奬而正式齣道。之後陸續創作以“阿蘭•圖威斯特博士”為主人公的係列作品及其他係列作品，代錶作有《第七重解答》、《達特穆爾的惡魔》、《惡狼之夜》等。霍爾特的絕大多數作品都是描寫不可能犯罪的正統解謎之作，以密室、不在場證明、足跡消失等核心詭計為賣點，憑藉異想天開的構思、縝密的邏輯推導以及意料之外、情理之中的解答徵服瞭廣大讀者，成為當代歐美偵探小說作傢中最為“古典”、“另類”的一位，是當之無愧的當代本格偵探小說的領軍人物。