The Riddle of the Traveling Skull
Although he enjoyed moderate commercial success early in his career–one of his books was the basis for a Bela Lugosi film, The Mysterious Mr. Wong–Keeler was long out of print when he died in 1967. But after his death, a small cult began scouring used-book stores for titles like The Skull of the Waltzing Clown and The Mystery of the Fiddling Cracksman. Articles celebrating his demented aesthetic began to appear in publications ranging from the Journal of Popular Culture to the New Republic, and his fame started to grow. This winter McSweeney’s Books formally launches a Keeler revival with its reprint of The Riddle of the Traveling Skull, originally published in 1934. It’s the first Keeler to see print in America in more than 50 years.
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He quickly deduces that he must have switched bags with a clergyman on a Broadway streetcar. However, this is no ordinary trepanned skull–and in short order Clay is mugged and relieved of the object by a mysterious Chinese man, inexplicably jilted by his fiancee, and inadvertently involved in blackmail directed against his employer and potential father-in-law, Roger Pelton.
