„The Talleyrand Maxim" belongs to the pen of an outstanding British journalist and writer Joseph Smith Fletcher. Linford Pratt is a suave and clever law clerk looking for a chance to better himself. Opportunity knocks when he gets possession of a rich man’s will that would mean the ruin of the present heirs. His thoughts turn to blackmail, since he assumes the wrongful heirs would pay a high price to hang onto their wealth. Pratt’s personal hero is the subtle, wily diplomat...
This novel, first published in 1922, is a good example of J. S. Fletcher’s complex plots. The story starts with a famous actor gone missing in suspicious circumstances in northern England. But other dark deeds soon take our attention. Copplestone, the young dramatist, helping to solve the mystery, found himself suddenly in love; and the solution and his happiness were discovered together. In the search for Oliver, we find ourselves on a wild and lonely coast off the North S...
This is a story of graft and corruption set in one of Fletchers favoured Northern towns. The mayor who is on a clean-up campaign is found dead in his parlour and our hero, his younger cousin, is determined to find out who killed him. Was he eliminated for this reason? There are entanglements involving city officials and his proposed reforms plus jealousy related to relationships. Lots of twists with a surprise murderer. The plot is cleverly centered around the inquest, whic...
Another fast-paced murder mystery by J.S. Fletcher told in the first person. He wrote about 200 books on a wide variety of subjects, both fiction and non-fiction. He was one of the leading writers of detective fiction in the „Golden Age”. It was first published in 1920, and has just the right stock of truly good characters, balanced by a couple of nasties. A young apprentice solicitor in a rural English town bordering Scotland, is riding his bike through lonely stretches of...
Pat is a beautiful young woman with many admirers. Nick is a young man with a secret. When his dark side interferes with their burgeoning love, things turn grim, and psychologist Carl Horker has to intervene. The plot wraps up in a way that the coming Hollywood would approve of, and with a deus ex machina that a theater would envy. Stanley Grauman Weinbaum (April 4, 1902 – December 14, 1935) was an American science fiction writer. His career in science fiction was short but...
Charlie Chan, the first Chinese detective in literature, is modeled after Chang Apana, a real-life police detective in Honolulu. A family originally from Boston, the Winterslips, has some members living in Hawaii. You can almost feel the gentle trade winds of Hawaii during the 1920s in this classic novel by Earl Derr Biggers. One of the wealthy Winterslips living in Hawaii is murdered. A younger member of the family, John Quincy Winterslip, has been sent to Boston to check ...
A quaint and idyllic English community is rocked to its very core when a dead body of a man is found and foul play is suspected. Did he fall or was he pushed? The inquest records a verdict of death by misadventure but more than one person is dubious about the death. But with few clues to go on and no likely suspects, it appears that the brutal crime may remain unsolved. There’s another murder, lots of behind the scenes investigation into burial and marriage records, questio...
Fans of golden-era mysteries will relish the twists and turns of J. S. Fletcher’s „The Chestermarke Instinct”. This cleverly crafted mystery begins with what seems like a common enough occurrence: a bank manager is late for work one morning. But what first appears to be simply a matter of a missed train soon is revealed to be a much more vexing problem. Has the manager, formerly a pillar of honesty, absconded with the missing bank’s items, or has something more sinister occ...
„The Borough Treasurer” (1921) by J.S. Fletcher is a tale of blackmail, murder and a secret quarry. He has quite a large cast of interesting characters in this one, and manages to bring them all to life with great detail. This novel tales place in an obscure small town by the Yorkshire moors – an ideal spot for two ex-cons to start life over. Messrs. Mallalieu and Cotherstone were outsiders who had built a prosperous business in Highmarket and even been elected as Mayor and...
In this tightly plotted novel, we follow the bizarre career of a man who loathes criminals. After Humphrey Challoner finds his wife killed by the bullet of a robber in his home, he vows to catch the man. Mr. Challoner is a wealthy savant, and he saved the fingerprints of the robber as well as some of the robber’s strange hair which Challoner’s wife had in her hand. For twenty years Humphrey hunts for the killer, in the process revenging himself on London’s criminals class i...
The pioneering creator of the inverted detective story, R. Austin Freeman was a popular Edwardian author of novels and short stories featuring Dr. Thorndyke, a pathologist-detective. Freeman’s detective and mystery tales offered an innovative approach to the genre, selling thousands of copies on both sides of the Atlantic. Robert Hawke is a man on the run. After returning from business in London, he finds that a sworn enemy, Will Colville, has been shot dead and the murder ...
Marshall Allerdyke is driving through the night from London to Hull in response to an urgent telegram from his cousin. As he nears Hull, a beautiful woman stops his car to ask for directions to Scotland. Odd time to be traveling so far and in such a hurry, but Allerdyke’s mind is elsewhere. When he finally arrives in Hull, he finds his cousin dead in his hotel room and a valuable consignment of jewels missing. Allerdyke’s only clue rests with that woman hurrying off to Scot...
When an elderly man’s body is found on the steps of chambers in the Midde Temple, one of the Inns of Court, it falls to newspaperman Frank Spargo and Detective-Sergeant Rathbury to solve the crime. There is no indication as to the idetity of the corpse, whose pockets are completely empty apart from a scrap of paper bearing the names and chambers address of an aspiring young barrister. Who is the victim? Why was he killed? Who is the murderer? These are the questions that Sp...
No sooner had Bob from the Silver Star ranch reached Italy than a telegram arrived asking for $1,000. A pretty woman was behind it, but that wasn’t all. This early work by Earl Derr Biggers was originally published in 1916. „The Ebony Stick” is one of Biggers shorter stories, published after his death. The son of Robert J. and Emma E. (Derr) Biggers, Earl Derr Biggers was born in Warren, Ohio, and graduated from Harvard University in 1907. While on holiday in Hawaii, Bigger...
Geoffrey West falls in love at first sight with a girl in a hotel breakfasting with her father. They’re all Americans, but the scene is London on the eve of the Great War. Both Geoffrey and his ladylove Marian are reading the personals (The Agony Column) of the Daily Mail. Later that day he has an idea to place an ad to catch her attention, and vows to send her a letter each day for a week to win her heart. Each letter becomes more interesting than the previous because West...
The basic plot of this book is built around the reputation the Lloyds of London insurance firm had for ensuring all manner of unlikely propositions. Lord Harrowby is advised to marry a wealthy heiress. Luckily he meets Cynthia. She is rich, beautiful and willing to marry him. But, since he comes from a family of gamblers, he goes to Lloyds of London and takes an insurance policy to ensure his bride makes to the alter. Lloyds sends a handsome young man to make sure nothing s...
Earl Derr Biggers’ second Charlie Chan novel took the detective to the California desert where he uncovers the reason for the mysterious disappearance of a millionaire. Biggers was always a great romance writer who simply incorporated mystery into his books to propel the story forward. The story concerns a valuable string of pearls which is purchased by a wealthy and eccentric financier. Charlie Chan embarks on an incognito journey across the desert to find the answer to a ...
The death of Hollywood actress Shelah Fane in her Waikiki beach house brings Charlie Chan of the Honolulu police to seek the identity of the killer. The story behind her murder is linked with the three-year-old murder of another Hollywood actor and also connected with an enigmatic psychic named Tarneverro. Through the confusion of alibis, false clues, and bizarre characters, Chan moves with the utmost calm – until the classic „gathering of suspects” climax, when his form of...
One of the most thrilling novel ever, this is a medley of mystery, farce and intrigue an especially fine example of the American mystery play and one of the outstanding dramatic successes of modern times. A hotel closed for the winter, a snowy night, our hero and a key begin this delightful mystery. As we soon learn, our hero looking only for solitude, isn’t the only one with a key. Other colorful characters arrive one by one... men and women with stories of love, loss, and...
Just as in Biggers’ first Charlie Chan mystery, „The House Without a Key,” that romantic link between the Hawaii of a different era and the city of San Francisco is explored and holds the key to the mystery. Henry Drew has cheated young Winthrop out of a partnership in a Hunan mine. Other shady deeds abound in the past of this rich and outwardly respectable old man. Despite his antagonism to Drew, Winthrop accepts the old man’s invitation to a birthday dinner, mainly to be ...
The fifth of the Earl Derr Biggers Charlie Chan books books involves the Honolulu detective in a case of murder that stretches around the world, as members of a tour group are dying, one by one. Charlie’s old friend Chief Inspector Duff from Scotland Yard comes to his rescue in this book. Duff is investigating the murder of Hugh Morris Drake, a sweet old man strangled in London’s famous and exclusive hotel, Broome’s. Drake is with a tour group encircling the globe. While Du...
In this last written adventure, the plot unfolds with an intriguing scenario. Wealthy and hospitible Dudley Ward gathers together Charlie Chan along with Ellen’s three later husbands to his large house on Lake Tahoe. After hearing his former wife, Ellen Landini, may have been pregnant when she left him, Dudley Ward is determined to find his son. There are four ex-husbands, including Ward, all of them angry with Landini, who is about to marry a fifth husband, also present, w...
Biggers’ third book in the Charlie Chan series involves the detective in a case that spans decades and continents, culminating in the city of San Francisco. This time Charlie pulls aside the curtain that conceals a mystery far in the past. The plot links a present day murder with another murder some year previously, combined with a series of disappearances of young women. Charlie Chan is still trying to leave San Francisco after a vacation that turned into a job of detectio...
Eine Geschichte im Stil der Zeit des ausgehenden 19. Jahrhunderts von der ersten Bestseller-Autorin der Welt – Eugenie Marlitt. Balduin Lamprecht, attraktiver und stolzer Chef der Firma Lamprecht und Sohn, hat früh seine Frau verloren. Er lebt mit seinen zwei Kindern und den konservativen Schwiegereltern zusammen in der imposanten Fabrikantenvilla. Die Dienerschaft des Hauses tuschelt schon länger über Geisterscheinungen, erst recht seitdem diese verwunschene junge Frau von...
