Douglas Selby, the ambitious young District Attorney of the territory around Madison City, had up before him a young man guilty of embezzling a comparatively small sum of money which he had spent gambling. Selby could have locked him up – and perhaps ruined his life. But he wanted to find the how and the why of this otherwise law-abiding young man’s gambling.

Selby’s investigations led him to a hit-and-run motorcycle accident, to blackmail, and to the doorstep of DeWitt Stapleton, the local big-wig, who ran things in that part of the country by and for himself.

That doesn’t bode well, does it? In case you didn’t realise, that’s the blurb from The Murder Room edition of this book – I kind of couldn’t be bothered to write my own like I usually do…

OK, a bit of background. This is the second of nine books featuring D.A. Doug Selby. After really enjoying The Case Of The Foot-loose Doll, a Perry Mason title, I decided I should branch out into his other main series. So I decided to read the first D.A. title and promptly picked the wrong book – the first one is The D.A. Calls It Murder. And hopefully it’s a bit better than this one.

This one is… well, it’s a book, certainly. Characters appear, a murder plot takes place and Doug Selby sorts it all out. The problem is, it’s a story basically about doggedly putting a case together to prosecute someone for the crime. It isn’t a traditional mystery, at least not one with a particularly innovative solution.

I did like the relationship between Selby and Sylvia Martin, a journalist, but I think I need some reassurances that this is a low point for the series before returning to it. Anyone want to try and talk me into it?