Three "Queen's Quorum" Keystone Mystery Classics! If you love gaslight mysteries and chases in hansom cabs or horseless carriages, and fin-de-siecle detectives, you will love this remarkable reading value. Here in one mammoth omnibus are three writers whose work was selected by the legendary mystery novelist and critic Ellery Queen as among the 100 best detective classics of all time, with two Queen's Quorum picks (Average Jones and Prince Zaleski), plus one of the rarest of mystery characters (Marquis of the C.I.D., the Sleuth of St. James Square). On the case from 1911 is the detective the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection called mystery master Samuel Hopkins Adams' "most famous creation," the man whose moniker totally belies his real character, that ratiocinating genius and member of the Cosmic Club, Adrian Van Reypen Egerton, or "Average" Jones as his friends shorten it. Here how the Enyclopedia describes his adventures, "This handsome young advertising genius maintains a remarkable sense of humor throughout a series of unusual cases which often have a medical background." Match wits with Jones as the takes on the cases of The Red Spot, the Mercy-Sign, the Blue Fires, the Million Dollar Dog, and others. Next, the game's afoot in the 1920s exploits of Sir Henry Marquis, Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard (C.I.D.), known as the Sleuth of St. James Square. "A middle-aged Englishman with short cropped grey hair, Marquis seems more like a typical outdoorsman than a policeman," the Encyclopedia says. "Although a Londoner, he directs secret service operations in Asia, and many of his cases take place in distant countries, including the U.S. These stories carefully combine ratiocination with dramatic flare." Then meet the justly praised M. P. Shiel's 1895 Prince Zaleski, whom the Fantastic Victoriana website hails as "one of the most memorable of the Victorian detectives, on a level with Sherlock Holmes himself. Zaleski is Russian royalty, a voluntary expatriate who never leaves his crumbling mansion home" and solves his cases, a al Nero Wolfe and C. Auguste Daupin, purely through brainwork without ever visiting the scene of a crime. If classic mystery tales that challenge you to match wits with a brilliant detective are your dish, then you will find this one volume omnibus of these three books, complete and unabridged, a three-course treat fit for a gourmet.
