In principle, the core concept of Murder by the Clock (1929), the debut novel for both author Rufus King and character Lieutenant Valcour, is a good one: the youthful Mrs. Endicott calls the police because she fears her husband has gone out that evening to pay off a blackmailer, only for Valcour, the policeman who responds to the call, to find Mr. Endiciott dead in his closet at the close of the first chapter. Thus, the focus of the mystery becomes the Endicott ménage itself, as the questions of who would have killed the master of the house, and why, take understandable prominence. And some fun ideas remain, but the book containing them doesn’t quite compel as it might.