Historical Traditional Detectives

As the early years of detective fiction gave way to two separate golden ages - of hard-boiled tales in America and intricately-plotted, so-called “cozy” murders in Britain - the legacy of Sherlock Holmes, with his fierce devotion to science and logic, gave way to street smarts on the one hand and social insight on the other, but even though these new sub-genres went their own ways, their detectives still required intelligence and clear-sightedness as characterized the earliest works of detective fiction: the trademarks of Sherlock Holmes, and of all the detectives featured here.

This is the second novella detailing the continuing adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the world's first consulting detective, and his friend and colleague, Dr. John Watson. In The Sign of Four, Holmes and Watson are hired by Mary Morstan to investigate the mysterious circumstances of her father's death, which will set them on the trail of a lost Indian treasure and in pursuit of two of the strangest criminals in the Holmes canon.

Brighton, 1882: Albert Moscrop spends his holiday peering at beachgoers through a telescope, piecing together disarmingly trivial observations into a compelling drama for his own amusement. A keen student of human nature, Moscrop concentrates his interest on one particular family - the Protheros, especially the beautiful Zena Prothero, whose husband appears to take her for granted. Moscrop gradually moves into the circle of the Prothero family, only to become involved in a sensational murder.

Thomas Howard of Missouri came out of nowhere, one foggy night, to rescue Countess Elaina Montague from rape and robbery. He was in England, he said, to find his brother, who had disappeared. To repay him, the beautiful countess offered to enlist her friend, Sherlock Holmes, to help in the search. Despite investigating a rash of audacious jewel thefts, and already spending altogether too much time at the music hall, the great detective felt there was more to the mysterious Mr. Howard, and accepted the case.

After her bruising encounter with the law, Angela Marchmont has vowed to give up detecting and is doing her best to forget the events of last winter and the terrible lie she told to save herself. So, when a letter arrives from beyond the grave requesting her help and reminding her of the past, she is anything but pleased. Drawn reluctantly into one final case and spurred on by her guilty conscience, Angela soon discovers a viper's nest of family betrayals and hidden enmities that have lain undisturbed for years and that may have led to the deaths of more than one person.

When an unwelcome figure from her past turns up unexpectedly, Angela Marchmont has no idea that she is about to become the most notorious woman in Britain. Forced to reveal secrets she has kept to herself for many years - and which she had thought were safely buried - Angela faces a fight for her very life that she looks almost certain to lose without the help of the man she loves.

Resourceful Bingo Riggs and his partner, Handsome Kusak, are in the sucker-bait business, snapping candid pics of tourists off Central Park. Their fly-by-night enterprise can be irresistible to souvenir lovers, but with one camera in a pawnshop and their developing room in the bathtub of a two-room dump near Hell’s Kitchen, their venture is wretchedly underexposed - until they stumble upon an insurance fraud scheme between the allegedly dead eccentric Mr. S. S. Pigeon and his business partner and beneficiary.

On a reluctant visit to her painfully respectable brother and his wife, Angela Marchmont finds herself once again caught up in murder when a local farmer is shot dead, apparently at the hands of his sworn enemy. But the case is not as simple as it seems, for other motives and suspects soon come to light. With reporters hot on the scent and her friend, Inspector Jameson, battling a conflict of interest, Angela must use all her ingenuity to unravel the case and bring the murderer to justice - or more than one person will suffer the consequences.

Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services is a fixture in San Francisco at the dawn of a new century. While the future is unclear, Sabina and John know one thing for certain: they will protect their clients from flimflammers, thieves, and murderers, and do whatever it takes to run these dregs of society into the arms of the law. Sometimes, that requires a subtle touch. Professor A. Vargas, self-styled medium extraordinaire, and his partner Annabelle, use guile and trickery to swindle bereaved men and women eager to contact the spirits of deceased loved ones.

Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson are summoned to Theobald Grange, the Warwickshire home of Lady Heminworth. Being of a nervous and superstitious disposition, her Ladyship lives in fear. Her husband and elder son were recently murdered, apparently by the ghost of a court jester who was executed on the site centuries before. The apparition has warned that she, too, is to die. Holmes rejects a supernatural explanation, although his adversary seems unaffected by gunfire and is able to take flight and disappear.

After their eventful outing at Foxfire Manor, Jem Bishop and his brother, Hal, have returned to London in hopes of making progress on their on their own mystery: their father's death. But they are getting nowhere, until a letter arrives from Andrew Marsh, the son of the industrialist who manufactures the aether-engines their father became famous for. The letter describes a terrible curse - and soon, Jem and Hal are on their way to Birmingham on the trail of another case.

A con man always has a bag of tricks, ready to fool the unsuspecting, and almost everyone is unsuspecting until they get taken. When that happens, they turn to Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, to recover their money and what’s left of their dignity, and perhaps even to save their lives.

Thus begins Mycroft Holmes’s valiant, if irregular, attempt to chronicle his doings. Rediscovered in 1976 and now fully translated from an obscure code, Mycroft’s diaries reveal that a brother’s lot is not always a happy one, especially when that brother happens to be London’s only consulting detective. In this humorous look at the world of Sherlock Holmes through Mycroft’s eyes, one question always remains: will Sherlock ever get a proper job?

Thanks to Royal Jelly, Holmes is a fit 74-year-old, who has lost his interest in bees and returned to detecting, joining forces again with his colleague and friend, Dr. John Hamish Watson, a 75-year-old unfit twice-widower, who hankers after the good old days of derring-do. Together they explore the case of the Kew Gardens Gnomes and their fiery vengeance; the Portobello Pornographer and the reappearance of an old enemy; the Camden Counterfeiter and the theft of Doctor Watson's identity; the Kensington Kidnapper and the hefty price on Mrs Hudson's head; and the Undiscovered Country, in which a successful writer is haunted by his most famous character.

When Fredericka Wing arrives in South Sutton, Massachusetts, a tiny New England town, it seems an ideal place for a working summer vacation. She plans on managing Miss Hartwell's bookstore while working on her own writing. She never dreamed she would find a body in a hammock in her own backyard. Someone brutally murdered Catherine Clay, an heir to the Sutton fortune. And more violence follows. Together with Peter Mohun, a professor at a local college, Fredericka sets out to discover the murderer's identity.

Inspector Gregson approaches Holmes to help him with a murder that has taken place at night at Number 3, Lauriston Gardens, near Brixton Road, London. The murder is weird, because nothing has been stolen from the dead man. And there are no marks to indicate a fight. To top all of this, the man lies murdered in a house that has been vacant for a long time. And yes..."RACHE" is written with blood on the wall near the man. Now, obviously there are many questions....

Sherlock Holmes has left the Baker Street days of crime and detection behind to retire to a small Sussex cottage overlooking the sea where he can focus on his new hobbies: beekeeping and photography. But when a shadowy figure is seen walking below the cliffs one night, Holmes cannot resist the temptation of solving one more mystery. He summons his old flatmate and confidant, Dr Watson, to help.

Who wanted him? What for? Why was Roger Farrar (if that was his name) on the run in Dublin? Was he a traitor and deserted? The innocent target of a kidnap plot? Or a lonely persecuted paranoiac? One thing is certain: he is likely to suffer a fate worse than death if he is caught by the gross villain who specialises in brain-washing.

In response to a string of gold thefts in a Mother Lode mine, Quincannon goes undercover as a newly hired miner to identify and capture the men responsible. Meanwhile, Sabina finds herself not only making plans for her and Quincannon’s wedding, but also investigating both an audacious real estate scam and an abusive young man’s villainous secret.

Quincannon’s pursuit of two con men who have absconded to Hawaii with a considerable sum of his employer’s assets dovetails nicely with Sabina’s vision of a second honeymoon. But neither is wont to stay out of trouble, and Sabina inadvertently becomes involved in a locked room/dying message murder in Honolulu.