Stop Press: The Spider Strikes (4) (Inspector Appleby)

Famous writer Richard Eliot has written numerous detective novels, featuring The Spider, a daring, clever criminal in earlier books, and an equally canny private investigator in later ones. But when he comes to life—first to burgle an odd neighbor, then to harass the Eliot family, and finally to attend his own "birthday party"—Inspector John Appleby is sent to investigate.