The Headless Lady is a whodunnit mystery

Mystery fiction

Mystery fiction is a loosely-defined term.1.It is often used as a synonym for detective fiction or crime fiction— in other words a novel or short story in which a detective investigates and solves a crime mystery. Sometimes mystery books are nonfiction...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 written by Clayton Rawson

Clayton Rawson

Clayton Rawson was an American mystery writer, editor, and amateur magician. His four novels frequently invoke his great knowledge of stage magic and feature as their fictional detective The Great Merlini, a professional magician who runs a shop selling magic supplies...

. A character in the novel, a detective story writer named Stuart Towne, has the same name as a pen name

Pen name

A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...

 of Rawson. This is the third of four mysteries featuring The Great Merlini

The Great Merlini

The Great Merlini is a fictional detective created by Clayton Rawson. He is a professional magician who appears in four locked room or impossible crime novels written in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as well as in a few short stories....

, a stage magician

Magic (illusion)

Magic is a performing art that entertains audiences by staging tricks or creating illusions of seemingly impossible or supernatural feats using natural means...

 and Rawson's favorite protagonist.

Plot summary

Beautiful young Pauline Hannum, daughter of the late Major Hannum and a performer with his circus

Circus

A circus is commonly a travelling company of performers that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, unicyclists and other stunt-oriented artists...

, enters The Magic Shop run by The Great Merlini and is suspiciously willing to pay much more than the going price for immediate delivery of a "Headless Lady" illusion. Merlini and his writer friend Ross Harte decide to investigate, drawn by Merlini's love of circuses. They soon learn that Major Hannum's death was probably a murder, and that the killer seems to have unfinished, and deadly, business that involves a real headless lady whose head has disappeared. Merlini, Harte and a new associate, detective writer Stuart Towne, soon learn a number of interesting background facts about goings-on at the circus -- including why it's bad luck for the circus orchestra to play Suppé's

Franz von Suppé

Franz von Suppé or Francesco Suppé Demelli was an Austrian composer of light operas who was born in what is now Croatia during the time his father was working in this outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire...

 Light Cavalry March, what the mummified body of John Wilkes Booth

John Wilkes Booth

John Wilkes Booth was an American stage actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. Booth was a member of the prominent 19th century Booth theatrical family from Maryland and, by the 1860s, was a well-known actor...

 is composed of, and how to create fingerprints

Fingerprint

A fingerprint in its narrow sense is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. In a wider use of the term, fingerprints are the traces of an impression from the friction ridges of any part of a human hand. A print from the foot can also leave an impression of friction ridges...

that have no loops or whorls. Merlini must use his magic skills to escape from an "escape-proof" jail, assemble the suspects, and identify the murderer in a surprising final scene.