Contains the short stories:
The Case of the White Footprints
The Blue Scarab
The New Jersey Sphinx
The Touchstone
A Fisher of Men
The Stolen Ingots
The Funeral Pyre

One aspect of this collection of short stories that I particularly liked was that several of the cases were investigations into crimes other than murder. ( )

More conventional short mysteries than The Singing Bone --that is, we see the crimes only from the detective's viewpoint, not both the criminal's and the detective's. Personally, I prefer it this way. The first story (white Footprints) starts promisingly with what I can a "Miss Phipps" (from "Miss Phipps Improvises" which demonstrated the technique) --a mystery in which there are two equally plausible potential villains. .In this one (as in the original Miss Phipps) a third [party turns out to be guilty, and in this one, I disliked the ending --partly because it seemed racist, but also because the solution depends on knowledge a (genuine) real disease which is not mentioned until Thorndyke reveals it at the end. The second story -- "The Blue Scarab" --I liked much better. The general outline reminded me of Sayers' "The Dragon's Head" -- there is a lost treasure hidden by a piratical ancestor, a message from him which depends on antiquarian knowledge to solve (in this case Egyptian hieroglyphics) , a nice modern claimant and a not-so-nice modern claimant who steals the message but is ultimately thwarted. The next one --The New Jersey Sphinx - to some extent offsets the racism of the first, as the victim and his brother the client are vey nice Indian gentlemen. However, the villain (the Sphinx of the title) is less interesting, and his nickname is not explained. ( )