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The Detections of Dr. Sam Johnson
The Detections of Dr. Sam Johnson
The Detections of Dr. Sam Johnson
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The Detections of Dr. Sam Johnson

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Eight exquisite mystery stories set in London, starring Dr. Samuel Johnson, one of the greatest minds of the eighteenth century.

In 1775, as the British Empire is about to be cracked by the earthquake of the American Revolution, twenty English families join in the ghoulish bargain known as a tontine. Each puts £5,000 into a common fund to be held in trust for their children with the terrible stipulation that the money will go to the last child left alive. Such a bargain should take seventy or eighty years to come to fruition, but there is a curse upon this tontine. Sixteen of the twenty children are dead within four years—and the survivors have no one to turn to but the great Dr. Sam Johnson.
 
The seventy-year-old scholar has seen his share of trickery, corruption, and murder, but he’s never encountered anything quite as chilling as “The Tontine Curse.” In this story, and the seven others included in this volume, Dr. Johnson and his assistant, biographer James Boswell, pit their wits against the darkest mysteries of the Enlightenment.
 
In this charming, brilliant series, author Lillian de la Torre features Johnson and Boswell, real-life forerunners of Holmes and Watson, in an assortment of “excellent detective puzzles” (The New York Times).
 
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJun 6, 2017
ISBN9781504044547
The Detections of Dr. Sam Johnson
Author

Lillian de la Torre

Lillian de la Torre (1902–1993) was born in New York City. She received a bachelor's degree from the College of New Rochelle and master's degrees from Columbia University and Radcliffe College, and she taught in the English department at Colorado College for twenty-seven years. De la Torre wrote numerous books; short stories for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine; reviews for the New York Times Book Review; poetry; and plays, including one produced for Alfred Hitchcock's television series. In her first book, Elizabeth Is Missing (1945), she refuted twelve theories on the disappearance of a maidservant near the Tower of London in 1753, and then offered her own answer. Her series of historical detective stories about Dr. Samuel Johnson and James Boswell comprise her most popular fiction. De la Torre served as the 1979 president of the Mystery Writers of America.  

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This reads like Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, with the more ornate language and manners of an earlier time added on top of them. If you are a fan of Samuel Johnson and his time period, this book of short stories is sure to amuse. If you are not used to the vocabulary and mannerism of Johnson's time, the book may be a bit of a slog, but I found it charming in its attempts to be accurate to its source material.I will be seeking out the other Samuel Johnson detective fiction by this author as I found these enjoyable.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The cleverness of the concept --one of the first significant series of historical mysteries, with Sam Johnson as the detective and Boswell, of course, as his Watson (a parallel already suggested by Sherlock Holmes "I am lost without my Boswell.") -- does not always match the quality of the mysteries themselves. However, the author has a good feeling for 18th century style, unlike many modern "historical" mystery writers..

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The Detections of Dr. Sam Johnson - Lillian de la Torre

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