The first book featuring Ben, the lovable, humorous ex-sailor and
down-at-heels rascal who can't help running into trouble.
Ben is back home from the Merchant Navy, penniless as usual and looking
for digs in fog-bound London. Taking shelter in an abandoned old house,
he stumbles across a dead body - and scarpers. Running into a detective,
Gilbert Fordyce, the reluctant Ben is persuaded to return to the house
and investigate the mystery of the corpse - which promptly disappears!
The vacant No.17 is the rendezvous for a gang of villains, and the
cowardly Ben finds himself in the thick of thieves with no way of
escape.
Ben's first adventure, No.17, began life in the 1920s as an
internationally successful stage play and was immortalised on film by
the legendary Alfred Hitchcock. Its author, J. Jefferson Farjeon, wrote
more than 60 crime thrillers, eight featuring Ben the tramp, his most
popular character.