The alumni reports of many colleges include a section listing Lost Men - class members who can no longer be reached, who have disappeared without leaving a forwarding address and have been impossible to track down.
There are stories in this new Ellery Queen collection about just such men, men who lose touch with their past, with their family and friends, either intentionally or for reasons beyond their control. In either case and in every case - the circumstances are intriguing, whether the setting is the New York subway, the London Underground, a baseball stadium, a chemistry lab, a street in Reno, a hotel in Switzerland, or a South American military academy.
Or, yes, the sewers of post-World War II Vienna - for a collection of stories about lost men would not be complete without Graham Greene's Harry Lime.
Many of the stories in this anthology are sparked and informed by the imagination and wit of such top Golden Age detective-story writers as Ellery Queen, John Dickson Carr, Clayton Rawson, and Jacques Futrelle. The collection itself is dedicated to Mr. Futrelle, who himself was lost at sea aboard The Titanic.