Three Women in Black by Helen Reilly

Naomi Shane was impatiently waiting for her divorce from her cruel husband Doctor Gilbert Shane. She had spent part of this time with Pamela Crewe who was the fiance of Michael Bonnard,  the son of well to do socialite Irene Bonnard. During that time, Naomi fell in love with Michael. She told no one including Michael because she did not want to upset her friend Pamela. Then Naomi found out that she was expected to attend a fund raising event hosted by Irene, and her husband, Gilbert would be there and would be performing magic tricks to help raise money. When Naomi encountered Gilbert, he told her that he was no longer willing to give her a divorce, and that he intended to send her to a sanitorium until she came to her senses. Gilbert also had photographs of Naomi and Michael together. Naomi was panicked, and afraid of Gilbert, and she could see no reason at all why Gilbert had changed his mind about the divorce.

Then the fund raising performance began, and Gilbert was on the stage alone doing his tricks when he was stabbed in the back and died. The stage lighting for the tricks was set in such a way that anyone wearing black could not be seem. Gilbert had been wearing a white suit, but his assistant was dressed in black. Anyone wearing the assistant's costume could have killed him. Naomi knew that Gilbert had put the envelopes with the photographs into the pocket of his suit jacket. When she got a moment alone with his body, she removed the envelope from his pocket, and found it to be empty.

Inspector McKee was given the case, and he set about interviewing the people present during the magic show. One he could not interview was Gerard Ferris, Naomi's lawyer, who seemed to have completely disappeared. Naomi had been staying with the Bonnards, but she felt that she should return to the apartment she and Gilbert had been living in. Possible here, she could find the photographs. Instead she found another dead body. Inspector McKee would succeed in finding the murderer in this rather tangled plot.

The book was published in 1941 by Helen Reilly.  She was a prolific writer who emphasized police procedure in her books, and was an early writer to do so. Her characters are well off financially and she does mention how all of the women dress. Although this book has a young woman in distress as a main character, the book is not really a had-I-but-know novel. There is some romance but it is not overwhelming. I found the book to be interesting, and I really liked the rather surrealistic cover of this Dell Mapback.