It was bad enough that someone chopped up the chairs in the hospital’s contagion ward, but when an ax-wielder started in on the patients, Nurse Norma Gale figured she’d better turn detective before she ended up as choice chopped round herself. Before she can nab the killer, Norma first has to figure out the significance of an artificial black thumb as well as why pools of water keep appearing outside of one patient’s door. Then there’s nonmusical Aunt Aggie, who insists on singing “John Brown’s Body” at odd times in the night. And what does Uncle William want with Aggie’s carpetbag anyway? Does any of this have anything to do with the still in Aggie’s basement? Aiding and abetting Norma is Dr. James Lawrence, whose intentions seem anything but honorable, considering that the newspapers report he’s engaged to one Louise Fish. Or maybe it’s just as well that the young doctor is seemingly out of the running as a potential beau. After all, any budding romance between Norma and James would just interfere with the pair’s bickering. On the dust jacket to this 1942 charmer, the original publisher described The Black Thumb in this way: “There is all the humor and gaiety and the amusing romance-in-reverse that one expects from the Littles, with a fair amount of gore, mutilation, creaking doors, and shadowy figures that are demanded in a detective story.”

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