On a stormy evening on an island off the coast of Connecticut, Marian Coolbrith anxiously awaits for the return of her gardener and her dog, who have been missing all day. As a bolt of lightning brightens the sky, she sees a face pressed against the window, and soon she disappears as well....

So begins the opening pages of "Out There in the Dark," a gloomy atmospheric novelette in The New Adventures of Jimmie Lavender, in which the intrepid gentleman detective Jimmie Lavender and his assistant Charles Gilruth, solve one of their most baffling cases.

Vincent Starrett's last collection of Jimmie Lavender detective stories appeared in 1944 under the title of The Case Book of Jimmie Lavender. He was a life long connoisseur of detective fiction, and a noted anthologist. He also wrote 6 detective novels and as many as 500 short stories for the "pulp" magazines beginning as early as 1916. The editor has been collecting the Jimmie Lavender stories for thirty-five years and has tracked down 50. Vincent Starrett was named the first Grand Master of Mystery in 1957 by the Mystery Writers of America.