People vs. Withers and Malone

Written with Craig Rice, introduction by Ellery Queen

First Encounters
These are some of the great meetings of the past: Stanley and Livingstone, Romeo and Juliet, Holmes and Watson, Ahab and the whale, Scarlett and Rhett, Elvis and the Colonel. However, gentle and learned reader, we submit that none of these, not a one, was more dramatic or significant than the chance encounter on a train between schoolteacher-sleuth Miss Hildegarde Withers and the hard-drinking little lawyer John J. Malone. We won’t keep you in suspense. We won’t even make you turn to page 23. Here then is a précis of that happening: Withers and Malone, together for the very first time!