I Love a Mystery

Opening with a car crash and a decapitation, the story is told in flashback as Jack and Doc become involved with a man who tells them that he will die in just such a manner in three days' time. Of course there is a large amount of money involved, and also an Oriental cult, mysterious women, a peg-legged man, and many deaths.

Story takes place over a span of years and a lot happens before Jack Packard and 'Doc" Long show up, or is explained after they make their entrance: A girl marries against the wishes of her parents, the parents argue about it, the father is killed, the girl loses her mind, and the mother goes away and pretends to be dead. Years later, the daughter of the insane woman (she had gotten married, and pregnant)returns to the old family homestead, and is not welcomed with open arms, as this family has several closets containing skeletons...from around the world.

Based on the "I Love a Mystery" radio program (where most of the stories were told in serial fashion over several episodes): Searching through the wreckage of a crashed airline, the police find five shrunken human heads, and one of them is a white man with red hair. The head belonged to an explorer, deemed lost on an expedition to South America, and is tagged as a victim of jungle savagery. His daughter thinks otherwise, and suspects foul-play outside the jungle. She hires a team of private detectives to investigate, and points them in the direction of her stepmother and a colleague of her father, who appears to be more than a colleague of the stepmother. The detective, however, also looks in another direction and vocation for the killer.