Description
Like The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Hugh Greene’s new collection is limited to detective stories between the first appearance of Sherlock Holms in the Strand Magazine in 1891 and the outbreak of war in 1914. This is a self-contained period with its own character. With the invention of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle changed the character of the short detective story; the First World War changed the character of the world in which the stores were set.
The connecting link in this new volume is that all the stories are, in some sense, foreign affairs. In one adventure a French detective is at work in London. In the others, detectives, agents and rogues are pursuing their business in France. Switzerland, South Africa, Belgium, the United States, Denmark, Austria and Canada.
Some of the authors are famous, like Maurice Leblanc, E. Phillips Oppenheim and Arnold Bennett (not usually thought of as a writer of detective stories). Others have been more or less forgotten, like Robert Barr, whose story in this collection is surely one of the most ‘ ingenious ever written, and Baron Palle Rosenkrantz a descendant of the namesake who, as Sir Hugh points out in a scholarly aside in his introduction, must have been in Shakespeare’s mind when he wrote Hamlet. All are worthy representative, of this great period of the detective story.
Contents:
The Episode of the Mexican Seer, Grant Allen
The Episode of the Diamond Links, Grant Allen
Five Hundred Carats, George Griffith
A Bracelet at Bruges, Arnold Bennett
The Absent-Minded Coterie, Robert Barr
The Problem of Cell 13, Jacques Futrelle
Arsene Lupin in Prison, Maurice Lelanc
The Superfluous Finger, Jacques Futrelle
A Sensible Course of Action, Baron Palle Rosendkrantz, new translated from the Danish by Michael Meyer
Anonymous Letters, Baldwin Groller, newly translated from the German by Christopher Dilke
The Red Silk Scarf, Maurice Leblanc
The Secret of the ‘Magngique’. E Phillips Oppenheim
Murder at the Duck Club, H Hesketh Prichard
Hardcover. 347 pages. In good condition with the exception of being ex-library.