This is the 5th in the series of murder mysteries by Peter J. Heck featuring Mark Twain and his long suffering secretary, Wentworth Cabot.

On the upside you get a pretty good rendition of Twain and his sensibilities and a fair amount of local color and history. On the downside the wit between the two protagonists never approach the level of Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe, one of the templates for this series.

Minor quip for Twain geeks like me; while the title is a nice enough pun on Twain's last published full length novel - it more or less stops there. Nothing about printers or printer's devils or Satan or angels or the other things Twain's MYSTERIOUS STRANGER concerns itself with. There are some missed opportunities to establish stronger links with Twain's work in this series. But a pleasant enough diversion, nevertheless. ( )