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William Le Queux
No second glance was needed to realise the pitiful truth. The man seated there in his fine library, with the summer sunset slanting across the red carpet from the open French windows, was blind. Since his daughter Gabrielle had been a pretty, prattling child of nine, nursing her dolly, he had never looked upon her fair face. But he was ever as devoted to her as she to him.
Fred M. White
Barnes Place the house, fascinated everyone who saw it. However, his host, Ralph Enderby, didnt care much about him and saw the house as a week-end office where he entertained his friends and weaved those business schemes which had made his name a byword amongst the City men who knew. One evening Enderby, as always was not at home. This took advantage of an attacker who tried to steal something from the safe. It turned out that it was a girl who was unhappy with the frauds of Ralph Enderby and in the safe was evidence that he wanted to ruin the life of a young woman.
Earl Derr Biggers
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 up on his Aunt Minerva and persuade her to return to Boston. He arrives in Honolulu and gets involved in the investigation and is determined to see it through to the end, before he returns to the mainland. Romantic and full of atmosphere, this is a most enjoyable read that was our first introduction to Charlie Chan.
E. Phillips Oppenheim
The six stories in Part I of this book trace the early career of Peter Benskin. He is a public school graduate with a small private income who joins the police force in London. After an early success he transfers to Scotland Yard where he becomes a detective. He is successful in solving several difficult cases but is hampered at times by his ethical feelings towards criminals who have been coerced or forced to commit crimes. He allows the innocent to escape, while he pursues the truly guilty. Part II of the book, which also consists of six stories, chronicles Benskins pursuit of and ultimate victory over a self-conceited master-criminal known only by the sobriquet Matthew.
H.C. McNeile
Shorty Bill the sniper is a fun type, but with a cool head. He cuts a new tag on his rifle with each new kill. Herman Cyril McNeile despised the Germans. He was a soldier, a member of the Royal Engineers. This story is about simple guys who became real soldiers in the war.
William Le Queux
Up to that time, I remember, my big brass plate, with the legend Mr Hugh Glynn, Secret Investigator, had only succeeded in drawing a very average and ordinary amount of business. True, I had had several profitable cases in which wives wanted to know what happened to their husbands when they didnt come home at the usual hours, and employers were anxious to discover certain leakages through which had disappeared a percentage of their cash; but for the most part my work had been shockingly humdrum, and already I had begun to regret the whim that had prompted me, after reading certain latter-day romances, to throw up my career as a barrister in Grays Inn to emulate the romancers heroes in real life.
Hulbert Footner
The Huntress written by Hulbert Footner who was a Canadian writer of non-fiction and detective fiction. His first published works were travelogues of canoe trips on the Hudson River and in the Northwest Territory along the Peace River, Hay River and Fraser River. He also wrote a series of northwest adventures during the period 1911 through 1920. Published in 1922, here a frontier love story with a tough, but intriguing heroine and a reluctant, at first weak, but eventually worthy lover.
E. Phillips Oppenheim
Written in 1910, The Illustrious Prince is set in England some time after the Russian-Japanese War which ended in victory for the Japanese in 1905. The Emperor of Japan, suspecting an ulterior motive in the world cruise of the American battleship fleet, dispatches his cousin, Prince Maiyo, on a mission to learn the secret if one existed. Two American spies are murdered, an intrepid detective from Scotland Yard is hard on the trail of clues that will lead him to the killer. As Scotland Yard races to solve the mystery of the murders, several highborn ladies (one of them is Penelope Morse who becomes both wary and fascinated by him) and gentlemen from the British aristocracy befriend the charming Prince and get caught up in the intrigue.
The Incredulity of Father Brown
G.K. Chesterton
The Incredulity of Father Brown is the third collection of short mysteries by G.K. Chesterton about that character. In The Incredulity of Father Brown, all the stories involve murders and conflicts between Catholicism and atheism and spiritualism. We find the usual Chesterton moral landscape -- in which the author paints a picture of nature somehow mirroring the fact that something is very wrong. In The Incredulity of Father Brown, G.K. Chesterton treats us to another set of bizarre crimes that only his stumpy Roman Catholic prelate has the wisdom and mindset to solve. As usual, Chesterton loves playing with early twentieth-century class distinctions, common-sense assumptions, and the often anti-Catholic biases of his characters.
Edgar Wallace
The India-Rubber Men is a gripping thriller of Londons River Police, whose swift launches patrol the Thames and guard the ships that lie in port. Inspector John Wade is given the toughest job of his life when he is assigned the task of running to earth a gang of gunmen in rubber gas-masks, rubber gloves and crepe rubber shoes, who rob banks and jewelers, and even commit murder under the very eyes of the police, and get away with it. Through it all runs the Thames, and there is even time for a little excursion out of London to its upper reaches in Oxfordshire. A classic Wallace, stitching together his favorite themes with enough humor and vigor to keep the reader intrigued till the very end.
E. Phillips Oppenheim
In this funny satire, Oppenheim offers us an argument that has been used in several movies: Two brothers come into a large inheritance with a pre-condition that they need to spend a big amount of money within a month. In the letter from their deceased father, they are enjoined to learn how to spend as well as that have learned how to save. The story deals with their noble efforts to spend their money without waste or ostentation. They back a musical comedy, finance a gold club, back an inventor who wants to extract rubber from sea weed will they be able to get rid of their fortune? Join the likeable Mr. Steven and Mr. George Henry Underwood in this goodhearted comedy of The Inevitable Millionaires.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Antonia Thornton is raised to be a religious skeptic by her father, but has doubts after meeting with Oxford Methodists, such as Stobard. Lord Killrush is impressed by her beauty and intelligence and suggests making her his mistress. Dying from consumption, as people did in the old days, Killrush agrees to marry her. Provided that she marries no one.
G.K. Chesterton
Father Brown is one of the Hounds greatest crime fighters and his creator, Chesterton, one of the masters of the short crime story. Father Brown is the second among the Great literary detectives, right after Sherlock Holmes. In some ways, Father Brown was a continuation of what Chesterton wrote in his classic Orthodoxy.The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) is the first of five collections of mystery stories by G. K. Chesterton starring an unimposing but surprisingly capable Roman Catholic priest. Father Browns ability to uncover the truth behind the mystery continually surpasses that of the experts around him, who are fooled into underestimation by the priests unimpressive outward appearance and, often, by their own prejudices about Christianity.
E. Phillips Oppenheim
Oppenheim was famous for his hundreds of spy and espionage novels. This is not one of them. Its billed as a novel of social intrigue and as a story of revenge without violence and moves quickly. Duke Henry Chatfield with his family, and family lawyer Sir Stephen are riding through central Italy when the car breaks down in Pellini, where, 20 years earlier, the Dukes brother had a mistress and illegitimate child. Dukes daughter Monica is intrigued by a young Englishman named Francis taking his vows before disappearing into a monastery. She tries to convince him not to shut himself away but fails. Three years later, the family lawyer discovers that Francis is in fact the legitimate Duke, and encourages him to return to England. How Francis treats his relations, and his new found wealth and position form the plot of this 1927 novel.
William Le Queux, H.W. Wilson
The Invasion of 1910 is a novel written mainly by William Le Queux (along with H. W. Wilson providing the naval chapters). It is centered on an invasion by the Germans, who have managed to land a sizable invasion force on the East Coast of England. They reach London and occupy half the city. A junior Member of Parliament organizes a resistance movement, the League of Defenders and the Germans seem unable to combat this and tighten their control of London, and suddenly find themselves faced with a popular uprising. Finally a newly-formed British Army marches to liberate London. First published in 1906 this is one of the best-known examples of invasion literature, viewed by some as an example of pre-World War I Germanophobia but considered by others as prescient as it warned of the need to prepare for war with Germany.
Edgar Wallace
1929 short story collection by Edgar Wallace revolving around the demobbed soldier (WWI) Jack Wireless Bryce and his engagement by the law firm Hemmer & Hemmer. Operating on the fringes of lawlessness, Bryce uses his brains and brawn to protect a range of the firms more vulnerable and downright gullible clients. His new career as a detective creates a compelling tale of adventure. Most of his adventures involve rescuing various damsels in distress from the clutches of men who are far from gentle. The tales are told with real zip, with a dash of grit and humor. Eventually, however, he is overpowered caught in the tender grip of love from which he has no desire to escape.
Fred M. White
Tom Armstrong, commonly known by the common name of Captain Armstrong, could boast the amount of knowledge that he had or the discoveries he made. However, he is already 5 years retired. Armstrongs companion, named Harold Coventry, was a young man of about six-and-twenty years. Like his companion, the sea was his passion, and although he was not a very wealthy man, he managed to explore every sea. Old friends decided to get together again and go on adventures, but this time they are waiting for a very mysterious island.
H.C. McNeile
The protagonist, the real adventurer Jim Maitland returns to England. There he meets a charming girl, Judy Draycott, who needs his help. She tells the story of her brother Arthur, who knew where the treasures were hidden, but he was killed. Judy decides to first get to the treasure and asks Jim to help her.
Edgar Wallace
Mr. Stratford Harlow, the colossus of British Finance, was a gentleman with no particular call to hurry. By every standard he was a member of the leisured classes, and to his opportunities for lingering, he added the desire of one who was pertinently curious. The most commonplace phenomena interested Mr. Harlow. He had all the requisite qualities of an observer; his enjoyment was without the handicap of sentimentality, a weakness which is fatal to accurate judgement. Between Stratford Harlow and James Carlton, whom Harlow described as Scotland Yards most unscrupulous man, there was never open warfare until the murder of Mrs. Gibbons...
Edgar Wallace
There are crimes for which no punishment is adequate, offences that the written law cannot redress. The three friends, Pioccart, Manfred and Gonsalez, may be enjoying the exotic, Spanish city of Cordova with its heat and Moorish influences, but they are still committed to employing their intellect and cunning to dispense justice. In The Just Men of Cordova, written in 1917, the just men move into the treacherous, aristocratic world of gambling, horse-racing and high finance. It seems that police services, even governments, have no power to control this world, where blackmail, poison and murder are commonplace. The just men, working outside the law, take it upon themselves to clean things up in their own way.
Aidan de Brune
The Kahm Syndicate is another breathtaking novel by the master of mystery Aidan de Brune, a colorful and prolific Australian writer whose opus is well worth saving from oblivion. Who will control the mean streets of Darlinghurst? This and another answers you can find here. The story is fast-paced with some surprising twists, well written and great to read. This genuine mystery story takes the reader from one exciting episode to another with all the adroitness and ingenuity of de Brunes previous successful books. An entertaining tale of mystery and intrigue, this book constitutes a must-read for lovers of crime mystery.
J.S. Fletcher
The main character is Ben, a trainee lawyer who survived a difficult childhood and was cured of his illness. However, from childhood into his life, a malevolent uncle climbs. He asks the main character to plant him. At night, they hear a scream, on arrival they see a dead stranger. Can uncle be guilty of this?
The Keepers of the Kings Peace
Edgar Wallace
The Keepers of the Kings Peace is another entry in Edgar Wallaces eminently popular Sanders of the River series based on British attempts to bring their administration to darkest Africa. An elite crew of officers is charged with getting to the bottom of a female shamans seemingly miraculous powers, but bumbling new addition Bones keeps getting in the way. Will they be able to stave off a mass rebellion before its too late? Always with tongue in cheek, Edgar Wallace nevertheless provides insights into the period of history at the same time. Wonderful characters, enthralling stories, never a dull moment. These stories are as good as any of the Sanders of the River stories.
S.S. Van Dine
Vance, an independently wealthy college educator, amateur detective, uses his deductive skills and psychological knowledge to help his friend New York County Attorney solve the murder of Archer Coe. At first he thought of suicide when Coes body was found in a room locked from the inside with all the windows closed. As usual, the action takes place in New York. Vances methods are unconventional and run counter to the more stringent police investigation methods and legal requirements of a lawyer.