Only Seven Were Hanged

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. On a snowbound Christmas Eve, the exclusive Clue Club gathers to discuss murder, justice, and the dark puzzles of crime. Its members—lawyers, doctors, actors, politicians, novelists, and a clergyman—debate notorious cases under the stern eye of a Criminal Court judge, while the club's regular waiter, an ex-prisoner, silently reminds them of the world they dissect so glibly. But the evening turns sinister when his replacement steps forward: calm, observant, and far more formidable than he seems. As the room, lined with relics of executions, revolutions, and prisons, grows uneasy, he exposes the club's vote for capital punishment as moral evasion and state-sanctioned vengeance. After drugging the members, he leaves the judge alone for a private reckoning, forcing a terrifying duel of law, conscience, and survival. The judge fights back with the case of Nathaniel Gore, a vain master thief who plots to steal a priceless diamond from a ship bound from South Africa to England. Gore recruits Chicago Anne and the crook Archer, infiltrates the crew, and waits aboard a storm-tossed floating fortress where the gem's fame makes the whole voyage feel charged with danger. Through Gore's story, the debate over punishment becomes a deeper question of character, pride, and whether the law can ever truly answer crime.