The Bones of the Case (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

By R. Austin Freeman

R. Austin Freeman was a popular mystery author of the early 20th century. Some credit him with having invented the 'inverted detective story' - a plot structure in which the commission of the crime is described at the beginning, and the story details the detective's attempt to solve the mystery. Many of the hardboiled and pulp detective stories, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Dec 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781447499909

R. Austin Freeman

R. Austin Freeman (1862–1943) was a British author of detective stories. A pioneer of the inverted detective story, in which the reader knows from the start who committed the crime, Freeman is best known as the creator of the “medical jurispractitioner” Dr. John Thorndyke. First introduced in The Red Thumb Mark (1907), the brilliant forensic investigator went on to star in dozens of novels and short stories over the next decades. 

Book preview

Case

R. AUSTIN FREEMAN

Richard Austin Freeman was born in London in 1862. He first trained as an apothecary and then studied medicine at Middlesex Hospital, qualifying in 1887. He entered the Colonial Service and was sent to Accra (present-day Ghana) on the Gold Coast, but returned in 1891, aged 29, suffering from blackwater fever.

Finding himself unable to secure a permanent medical position, Freeman turned to writing fiction. The first story featuring his well-known protagonist Dr. Thorndyke – a medico-legal forensic investigator – was published in 1907, and although Freeman’s early works were seen as simple homages to his contemporary, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he quickly developed his own style: The ‘inverted detective story’, in which the identity of the criminal is shown from the beginning, and the story then describes the detective’s attempt to solve the mystery. Freeman’s writing was interrupted by the First World War, during which he served as a Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps, but after the armistice he produced a Thorndyke novel almost every year until his death in 1943.

Amongst Freeman’s best-known works are the short stories ‘The Red Thumb Mark’ (1907), ‘The Case of Oscar Brodski’ (1912), and the novels The Mystery of Angelina Frood (1924), As a Thief in the Night (1928), The Penrose Mystery (1936), The Stoneware Monkey (1938) and Mr. Polton Explains (1940). Although overshadowed by other writers of his era, Freeman has undergone something of a critical revival in recent years: Raymond Chandler called him a wonderful performer with no equal in his genre, and in 2008 The Independent included him in their ‘Forgotten Authors’ series, stating that his 30-odd books are certainly worth rediscovery.

PART I

MR PERCIVAL BLAND was a somewhat uncommon type of criminal. In the first place he really had an appreciable amount of common-sense. If he had only had a little more, he would not have been a criminal at all. As it was, he had just sufficient judgment to perceive that the consequences of unlawful acts accumulate as the acts are repeated; to realize that the criminal’s position must, at length, become untenable; and to take what he considered fair precautions against the inevitable catastrophe.

But in spite of these estimable traits of character and the precautions aforesaid, Mr Bland found himself in rather a tight place and with a prospect of increasing tightness. The causes of this uncomfortable tension do not concern us, and may be dismissed with the remark, that, if one perseveringly distributes flash Bank of England notes among the money-changers of the Continent, there will come a