Humor Thomson, Basil: Mr Pepper, Investigator (1925); v1; 11 July 2022

[Pulpmeister]

Sir Basil Thomson. former chief of CID at Scotland Yard, took to writing crime fiction on his retirement. He wrote mostly novels, including the series of adventures of Richardson of the Yard.

This book is wry look at the "Great Detective" genre, and is hard to find today. At a time when the pages of fiction teemed with amateur Great Detectives from Holmes to Poirot, Thomson gently debunked the theme.

There are 15 cases bumbled through by Mr. Pepper, a red-headed American Great Detective living in London, assisted by the narrator Meddlestone-Jones.

The book is quite rare, although two of the stories, "The Hanover Court Murder", and "The Vanishing of Mrs Fraser" were chosen by Dorothy L Sayers in two of her compendious and considered anthologies of short crime fiction in the 1930s.

1: I Meet Mr. Pepper
2: The Burglary in Middlesex Street
3: The Hanover Court Murder
4: The Disappearance of Accepted Frewen
5: The House in which Everybody Died
6: Blackmailers
7: Manning's Funeral
8: Mrs. Stoot and her Ear-rings
9: Dust
10: The Wedding Present
11: The Vanishing of Mrs. Fraser
12: How I Stole a Child
13: The Scent of Flowers
14: My Chief is Threatened
15: How England lost Mr. Pepper

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