Complete Detective Dr. John Thorndyke of R. Austin Freeman

British writer of detective stories, mostly featuring the medico-legal forensic investigator Dr. Thorndyke.


His first stories were written in collaboration with Dr. John James Pitcairn [1860–1936], medical officer at Holloway Prison and published under the nom de plume "Clifford Ashdown". His first Thorndyke story, The Red Thumb Mark, was published in 1907 and shortly afterwards he pioneered the inverted detective story, in which the identity of the criminal is shown from the beginning: some short stories with this feature were collected in The Singing Bone in 1912.

Contents

The Red Thumb Mark (1911)

The Mystery of 31 New Inn (1912)

John Thorndyke's Cases (1909)

The Eye of Osiris or The Vanishing Man (1911)

The Uttermost Farthing (1914)

The Adventures of Dr. Thorndyke

Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman (1856)


The Eye of Osiris-

An Egyptian mystery thriller, also published under the title The Vanishing Man.


The Red Thumb Mark-

Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone prize winner for 1907.


The Mystery of 31 New Inn-

The fact that Jeffrey Blackmore made two wills, seemingly alike yet cunningly different, caused John Thorndyke, master mind, to suspect a tragedy. With the logic and cool analysis of a lawyer and scientist he works out and proves his theory in the most startling manner, bringing the work to an amazing but thoroughly logical conclusion.


John Thorndyke's Cases-

The primary function of all fiction is to furnish entertainment to the reader, and this fact has not been lost sight of. But the interest of so-called "detective" fiction is, I believe, greatly enhanced by a careful adherence to the probable, and a strict avoidance of physical impossibilities; and, in accordance with this belief, I have been scrupulous in confining myself to authentic facts and practicable methods. The stories have, for the most part, a medico-legal motive, and the methods of solution described in them are similar to those employed in actual practice by medical jurists.


The Uttermost Farthing-

It is not without some misgivings that I at length make public the strange history communicated to me by my lamented friend Humphrey Challoner. The outlook of the narrator is so evidently abnormal, his ethical standards are so remote from those ordinarily current, that the chronicle of his life and actions may not only fail to secure the sympathy of the reader but may even excite a certain amount of moral repulsion. But by those who knew him, his generosity to the poor, and especially to those who struggled against undeserved misfortune, will be an ample set-off to his severity and even ferocity towards the enemies of society.