Volume II 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)
