Empty Pockets

by Rupert Hughes, James Montgomery Flagg (Illustrator)

Married playboy "Merry Perry" Merithew lies dead on the roof of a squalid tenement on Manhattan's Lower East Side. His money, watch, and jeweled tie-pin are missing and the body's right hand is closed tightly around a sheared-off clump of long copper-colored hair. But Merithew's life was one long string of cast-off redheads. Is his killer millionaire's daughter and would-be social reformer Muriel Schuyler? His ex-mistress, sweatshop seamstress-turned-model Maryla Sokalski? The eyelash-fluttering vamp Aphra Shaler? Bowery pockpocket and gang hanger-on "Red Ida" Ganley? Society blackmailer "Pet" Bettany? The answer may lie in an amethyst-headed hatpin found at the crime scene...or in the guilty conscience of the killer herself.

616 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1915

About the author

Hughes was an American novelist, film director, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, military officer, and music composer.