Death from a Top HatClayton Rawson (19061971) was a novelist, editor, and magician. He is best known for creating the Great Merlini, an illusionist and amateur sleuth introduced in Death from a Top Hat (1938). Rawson followed the character through three more novels, concluding the series with No Coffin for the Corpse (1942). In 1941 and 1943 he published the short story collections Death out of Thin Air and Death from Nowhere, starring Don Diavolo, an escape artist