Classic Detective

Sir Henry Marquis, the Sleuth of St. James’ Square, shines in these 16 unique mystery and crime stories from Melville Davisson Post.

"The Moonstone" by Wilkie Collins is one of the forefathers of detective fiction, cementing the foundations of the genre. At the centre of it lays the theft of a diamond, dating in origin from a religious Indian shrine, which prompts detective Sergeant Cuff to take up the case. It is an absolute page-turner of a story and goes through the accounts of the different characters, winding and meandering from fact to fiction and vice versa.

Pip is a poor orphaned boy who lives together with his sister and her husband. Pip is not educated but has great dreams of the future. He is determined to get out of the low class and seek progress in the higher class. One day a lawyer appears. Pip has suddenly received a large fortune from a secret benefactor and he has to get to London to start his education. Pip’s life changes in a second. But he is ready to embark on his next journey.

Hungary during the Ottoman wars: Turks attack Buda and set up a siege of Eger. Gergely Bornemissza is a poor half-orphan who is about to become a national hero. "Eclipse of the Crescent Moon" follows Gergelys life from the age of eight until his early thirties. His life is a vivid combination of poverty, love, battles and dangers. He is on the front line when the Turks capture Buda and later when they approach Eger. His country is in danger and so is his family. The battle is one of life or death.

When Mordaunt Reeves and a group of friends playing a round discover the battered body of a man, clearly fallen from the viaduct, Reeves—a man a little too fond of reminding everyone that he was in Military Intelligence during the war—suspects that the police are not taking the death seriously, and persuades his friends to help him to investigate. Soon, theories of the crime begin to emerge.

France and Great Britain are waging a fierce war for the control of the North American colonies. Cora and Alice Munro are two sisters who travel through the forest to visit their father - Colonel Munro. Major Duncan Heyward and an Indian named Magua escort the two girls. However, unbeknownst to them, many dangers are lurking in the forest and stand reading to strike unsuspecting travellers.

David Copperfield was a little boy who grew up in an unfortunate family. His father died six months before David’s birth. Later his mother remarried to a cruel man who beat him up. David however fought back and bit him. This resulted in David getting sent to a boarding school which he did not finish because of his mother’s death. All in all, David’s life has been a string of misfortunes. His development from infancy to maturity happened unnecessarily fast.

Tom and Huckleberry Finn get rescued from spring fever when they take a serendipitous trip to visit Tom's Uncle Silas. But little did the family know Tom would be the one to rescue Uncle Silas - and much more.

Arthur Morrison has brought to life detective Martin Hewitt in a glimpse into the day-to-day life of civil servants and different moral codes that were being questioned pre WWI.

From the alkali plains of Utah to the battlefields of colonial India and then back to the confines of 221B Baker Street in London, the stories in this collection are among the favorites of Sherlockians the world over. In this volume, we are introduced to the world's greatest unofficial consulting detective—Sherlock Holmes—and his trusty companion and chronicler Doctor Watson, who set off on various adventures; from the moment of their first meeting in A Study in Scarlet to the mystery of the Great Agra Treasure in The Sign of the Four.

Jazz Ramsey is just getting used to the idea that her on-again-off-again beau, Nick, might actually be a permanent fixture, when she gets an alarming call in the middle of the night from his mother, Kim: There's a dead man in her backyard. Kim has a long history of drinking and a vivid imagination, so when Jazz's human remains detection dog, Wally, finds no evidence of a body, Jazz thinks she can breathe easy. But when the body of a middle-aged man is discovered in a nearby park, and a photo of Nick and his mom is found in his pocket, Jazz has to admit that something isn't adding up.

After losing her copywriting job, young Gwynne Dacres seeks a place to live when she stumbles upon Mrs. Garr's old boarding house. Despite the gruff landlady and an assortment of shifty tenants, Gwynne rents a room for herself. She spends her first few nights at 593 Trent Street tensely awake, the house creaking and groaning as if listening to everything that happens behind its closed doors. A chain of chilling events leads to the gruesome discovery of a mutilated body in the basement kitchen, dead of unknown circumstances. Was it an accident or murder?

Anthropology Professor Gideon Oliver would prefer to keep his mind on his beautiful new bride, Julie, during their English honeymoon, but one intrusive question will not stop nagging at him: Who would want to steal a 30,000-year-old parieto-occipital calvarial fragment? Yet someone has lifted this chunk of prehistoric human skull from a musty museum in Dorchester. Then, 30 miles away, an archaeology student is murdered, increasing tension and suspicion at a dig that had already seethed with suspicion, rivalry, and mistrust.

Por un instante, los dos trenes circularon paralelos. En ese preciso momento, Elspeth McGillicuddy presenció un asesinato. Desde su vagón vio con impotencia como en el otro tren un hombre agarraba sin piedad el cuello de una mujer hasta estrangularla. Después el tren se alejó. No había sospechosos ni testimonios. Tampoco había cadáver. ¿Quién, salvo Jane Marple, se tomaría en serio esta historia?

Crescent Place was once a peaceful country green surrounded by five tasteful suburban houses and populated by polite, responsible citizens. But as the city enveloped it, the residents built a gate to keep the world out. With each passing year, the subdivision grew stranger and stranger - until it began to look like a time capsule of the 1890s.

In an elaborate house known as the Cloisters, Maud Wainwright rules supreme. The queen of society in the small town of Beverly, she has a table long enough to seat 100, and she keeps an iron grip on the guest list. Her right-hand woman is Pat Abbott, a local girl who is beautiful, innocent, and kind. Pat has no idea how cutthroat high society can be, but she's about to get a deadly first lesson.

Elizabeth Bell runs a quiet household, with no family and no more than the usual number of servants. She passes her time thinking about crime and working on her biography of a relative. When a young cousin comes to stay, life in the house becomes uncharacteristically lively. First, cousin Judy burns a hole in Miss Bell's desk. Next, they spy a burglar on the staircase - a shadowy figure who vanishes without a trace. And finally, Sarah, the nurse, takes the dogs for a walk and never returns.

The house called Sunset has been Marcia's summer home for her entire life. Both of her parents died there, and she and her brother spent their youth exploring its rambling hallways and seaside grounds. They love the old house, but Marcia's sister-in-law has never taken to it. Juliette loathes the sea, and soon comes to loathe her husband as well. After they divorce, Juliette pays a final visit to Sunset, demanding alimony. She is there for a few tense days before she disappears. It takes them a week to find her body.

Ernest Bramah (1868-1942) was an English author of 21 novels and numerous short stories and features. His humorous works have been ranked with Jerome K. Jerome and W. W. Jacobs, his detective stories with Conan Doyle, his politico-science fiction with H. G. Wells, and his supernatural stories with Algernon Blackwood. In his stories of detection, Bramah hit on the idea of a blind detective, Max Carrados, whose triumphs are all the more amazing because of his disability.

In Agatha Christie’s short story “The Case of the Missing Will,” Poirot must help clever student Violet Marsh meet the terms of an unusual will by her Uncle Andrew. She must live in his house for a month and “prove her wits” if she is ever to receive his fortune. But is there another will?