Original mysteryNo. 1731 hr 17 minVeronica Lakewood
In a white house in Palermo behind iron gates and jacaranda trees, two thieves posing as a married French couple accept a dinner invitation from a wealthy Argentine widow who wears at her throat a necklace of diamonds and sapphires said to have belonged to a Russian grand duchess — they have come to steal it, but before the fish course is cleared the necklace vanishes from the hostess's throat without a hand being raised and a note appears on a silver tray, turning the evening from a planned robbery into a locked-room puzzle involving a bitter ex-lover from one thief's past, a lovesick colonel manipulated by charm, a desperate daughter already stealing from her own mother, and a midnight trail through the backstreets of Buenos Aires to a shuttered restaurant above a gaming house; The Alvarado Necklace is an original Golden Age–style mystery about thieves forced to become detectives by another thief's bad manners — and the unsettling discovery that solving a crime can be as dangerous a habit as committing one.
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