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A Certain Dr Thorndyke (Dr. Thorndyke Mysteries)
A winding adventure that begins in an exotic, teasing location. Richard Austin Freeman introduces the reader to the delights of an extraordinary jewel heist. Hollis is a retired soap manufacturer, richer than Croesus and some say mad. Obsessed with amassing precious stones and bullion, Hollis chooses a strong room to deposit his dazzling hoard. But when he discovers that h...more
Paperback, 284 pages
Published
January 1st 2011
by House of Stratus
(first published 1927)
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An unusually styled detective story.
***SPOILER***
We begin on the West Coast of Africa, following John Walker, aka John Osmond, on the run from Scotland Yard for a jewel robbery. Then he -- takes over a British colonial general store, buries its manager (who's died from black water fever), eludes the colonial police, overcomes a ship-board mutiny, falls in love with the female passenger, refuses mega-payment from the captain for 'only doing his job', refuses (for honorable reasons) to marry his l...more
***SPOILER***
We begin on the West Coast of Africa, following John Walker, aka John Osmond, on the run from Scotland Yard for a jewel robbery. Then he -- takes over a British colonial general store, buries its manager (who's died from black water fever), eludes the colonial police, overcomes a ship-board mutiny, falls in love with the female passenger, refuses mega-payment from the captain for 'only doing his job', refuses (for honorable reasons) to marry his l...more
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This is really two stories. The first half of the book is a romance cum adventure set in West Africa and no doubt drawing on Freeman's experience there in the British colonial administration in the 1880s. The hero has fled England having been accused of a crime and adopted a false identity. The second half explains how he is cleared of the crime by Thorndyke. An epilogue explains why the hero, knowing he was innocent, chose to flee rather than stay and clear his name.
Thorndyke aficionados (like...more
Thorndyke aficionados (like...more
I do enjoy Thorndyke mysteries, but this is an odd one. The first half of the book is taken up with the entertaining (but largely irrelevant and most implausible) exploits of Osmond in Africa. Only in the later chapters does Thorndyke actually appear - at which point he naturally proceeds to clear everything up with characteristic thoroughness.
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Richard Freeman was born in Soho, London on 11 April 1862 and was the son of Ann Maria (nee Dunn) and Richard Freeman, a tailor. He was originally named Richard and later added the Austin to his name.
He became a medical trainee at Middlesex Hospital Medical College and was accepted as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons.
He married Annie Elizabeth Edwards in 1887 and they had two sons and aft...more
More about R. Austin Freeman...
He became a medical trainee at Middlesex Hospital Medical College and was accepted as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons.
He married Annie Elizabeth Edwards in 1887 and they had two sons and aft...more
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