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Imagine receiving a small wooden doll in the mail, carved to look exactly like you.

That’d be some weird shit, right?

Now imagine discovering that the last person who received one was murdered shortly afterward.

The story takes place at an isolated English mansion belonging to Professor Cornelius Rochester, an eccentric scholar with an interest in the occult. Six miniature figures were originally carved to resemble members of his household, but the dolls disappeared. Now they’re turning up again, one by one, and the inhabitants are understandably getting nervous.

Amateur detective Jeffery Blackburn and Scotland Yard’s Chief Inspector William Read are called in to sort things out. What follows is a series of bizarre murders, suspicious characters, and impossible crimes.

Death’s Mannikins, also published under the way cooler title of Dolls of Death, appeared in 1937 and was written by Australian novelist and radio dramatist Max Afford.

He’s not particularly well remembered today, which is a shame. This story that wonderfully morbid quality found in some of the stranger detective fiction of the 1930s.