The Complete Dr. Thorndyke - Volume 2 by R Austin Freeman

The Complete Dr. Thorndyke - Volume 2 by R Austin Freeman

Volume I contains roughly the first half of the Thorndyke Short Stories. In all, there are over forty Thorndyke short stories, spread over six books. This volume contains the fifteen short stories from the first three, John Thorndyke's Cases, The Singing Bone, and The Great Portrait Mystery.

Some of the stories in this book are especially famous, as they were the first use of the inverted mystery, in which the criminal (and how he did it) are identified from the first, and the second half of the narrative shows how Thorndyke solves it, in spite of the criminal's every effort. (The inverted crime story was later used to great success by Columbo, as well as other detectives.)

In addition to these fifteen stories, this book also contains a couple of Apocrypal Thorndyke tales:

• The original novella of 31, New Inn from 1905, which became The Mystery of 31 New Inn, the third Thorndyke novel from 1912. This is the doctor's true first appearance - written and published several years before the appearance of The Red Thumb Mark (1907), which is commonly believed to be Thorndyke's first published adventure; and
• The Dead Hand (1912), which later became the revised and expanded Thorndyke novel The Shadow of the Wolf (1925).

Join us as these handsome new editions bring back one of the truly great detectives who has been neglected for far too long.

Freeman was eminently successful in creating, in Thorndyke, a noble, highly convincing and thoroughly consistent character who was precisely fitted to his role.

- Norman Donaldson, Thorndyke Scholar In Search of Dr. Thorndyke (1971)

Richard Austin Freeman was born in London in 1862 and died in 1943. He went to Middlesex Hospital to study medicine before joining the Colonial Service. He was sent to a position in Accra, Ghana, on Africa's Gold Coast. He suffered blackwater sickness while in Africa, forcing him to return to Britain. He decided to try his hand at writing fiction after failing to find a permanent medical employment.

Using the pen name Clifford Ashdown, he wrote his first works in partnership with Dr. John James Pitcairn, the medical officer of Holloway Prison. The Red Thumb Mark, the first Doctor Thorndyke novel, was released in 1907. During World War I, he was a Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He continued to write until his death in 1939, when he was 77 years old and wrote parts of Polton Explains in a bomb shelter.