Author Mary Roberts Rinehart

"The Spiral Staircase" is one of Mary Reinhard's best and perhaps most violent novels. Summer vacation in the village breaks the chain of mysterious murders. One man's madness and the mystery of a locked room.

Mary Roberts Rinehart wrote more than 50 books: 8 plays (three of them were on Broadway), hundreds of short stories, poems, but the most famous became her detective works. She was one of the first authors to bring humor to the genre. At one time she was an even more popular author than Agatha Christie. "The Wall" is one of the late works of the writer.