The Specimen Case

Twenty-one stories, written across thirty years and gathered by an author who preferred to remain a rumour. A market trader in old China talks his way out of a death sentence. A blind investigator hunts a traitor through wartime London on the evidence of a scent and a sound. In Paris, in the autumn of 1793, two men meet in a rain-swept street and discover which of them holds the other’s life.

Elsewhere a ruined musician is interrupted at the worst possible moment, a shrewd antiquarian is offered the find of his career, a country inn keeps a secret that outlasts its keepers, and a retired sea captain wakes convinced of something no one else will believe.

Ghost story and swindle, satire and espionage, quiet comedy and quieter dread — a deliberate sampler from one of the most elusive craftsmen of the golden age of the English magazine story.