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Before Sherlock Holmes there was Dick Donovan The first internationally-popular Victorian police detective, Dick Donovan was Glasgow's own protector of the peace. "Dick Donovan" was the pen-name for a hugely successful series of over 200 stories and books written by James Emmerson Preston Muddock. These tales predated in popularity Conan Doyle's early Sherlock Holmes outings, and some were first were published in The Strand Magazine at the same time as the Holmes stories. Dick Donovan achieved an international reputation as the master sleuth, and is reputedly responsible for American detectives being known popularly as "Dicks". The foremost, the original, the genuine, the one, the only Man-Hunter in his earliest cases - now available again, with introductory and biographical material by Dr. Bruce Durie. Warning! Do not allow your children, servants, or elderly relatives of a nervous disposition to read these stirring tales of wrong-doers brought to book! www.brucedurie.co.uk/books
Twenty-one rare, seldom-anthologized stories include "A Bottomless Grave" by Ambrose Bierce, "The Ship that Saw a Ghost" by Frank Norris, Guy de Maupassant's "The Tomb," other gems of the genre.
This volume contains four hard to find and rarely-collected stories by 'Dick Donovan' (JEP Muddock), originally printed in Strand in July, August, September and November 1892, between the 1st and 2nd series of Conan Doyle's adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Also reproduced here is Grant Allen's October 1892 tale, 'The Great Ruby Robbery'. An appreciation of that worthy man, Muddock, for whom the bald term "writer" is wholly inadequate, is included. There are brief sketches of the artists Paul Hardy, who illustrated the Strand Donovan stories, and Sidney Paget, who drew for Grant Allen's yarn, but better known as the accidental illustrator of the Holmes stories (Strand really wanted his brother Walter for that task - see p. 143). The layout of this book differs from that of the original Strand publications, but the typographical conventions of the day have been largely adhered to, even if they look antiquated or simply wrong by today's rules. A few errors have been corrected. Edited by Bruce Durie
Tracked to Doom: The Story of a Mystery and its Unraveling Midnight in London. In one of the streets off the Strand a man was pacing near the stage-door of a popular venue. Inside was the star, her stage-name was Vesta Florence and she was blonde, remarkably pretty and with a faultless figure. Now and again the man glanced nervously at the stage-door, looked at his watch, then resumed walking, never going many yards away from the door. Hours later, Vesta Florence would be quite dead. The case would remain unresolved for years until a second murder. Could the two be connected?