Campbell's love letter to cinema and detective fiction. It's a bit like a giallo, with a young woman improbably embroiling herself in a deadly mystery. Campbell is always the master of the thing barely glimpsed, making the thinnest slivers of shadow and reflection bloom in the imagination into horrors. The scarecrow-dog-plant-things in this book will haunt me forever.
For me, though, this is still lesser Campbell. All of the sleuthing gets a bit repetitive and the overall light, fun feel of the novel sometimes made me wish I was reading The Face that Must Die again instead. If you don't come to this book wanting pitiless bleakness and ugliness, though, you might have a great time with it. I usually turn to Campbell when I want a really, really bad time.