SCATTERGOOD BAINES, DETECTIVE [The Scattergood Baines Mysteries] by Clarence Budington Kelland

Mystery fans will fall in love with Scattergood Baines!

Critics Rave about the Scattergood Baines Mystery Stories:

“Baines is an American institution … the most humorous and fascinating of rustic wits. A man who—in his life and daily acts—personified the shrewd downeasterner, guardian and solver of his neighbors’ problems. And when Baines turns detective, our delight knows no bounds.” —Leslie Charteris in The Saint Mystery Magazine

“That typically American character, that magazine and movie favorite—Scattergood Baines—had his own manhunting method. ‘I dunno’s I hold much with clues, not the kind ye kin see with your eyes and tetch with your fingers.’ He could ‘git the true inwardness’ of an assault-and-robbery—and that’s true detecting. Scattergood Baines acts the part of an authentic detective, in the purest American style.” —Ellery Queen in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

“The set-up: Deeds of justice tempered by mercy. Scattergood runs the town from his hardware store. He rises early, eats a ‘light breakfast of flannel cakes, baked beans, salt pork and two kinds of pie—not to mention porridge and hot biscuits and coffee.’ When one of his farmer neighbors is robbed, he figures out who did it by thinking over the characters in the county with dispositions suited to the manner of the crime.” —New York Times

The Scattergood Baines Method:
“He leaned back on the specially reinforced chair on the piazza of his hardware store, removed his shoes and socks and began to twiddle his toes—much to the chagrin of his wife Mandy. His mind worked more freely when his toes were unconfined, so that he might wriggle them as he reasoned.”

Here are 12 classic mysteries featuring the three-hundred-pound Sage of Coldriver. Match wits with Scattergood as he unravels bank robbery, fraud, impersonation, forgery, smuggling, and many other criminal activities, including murder. Written during the Golden Age of the Detective Story, and printed in the same magazines as Rex Stout, Agatha Christie and Erle Stanley Gardner, most of the Scattergood Baines tales have never been reprinted before. For readers of Wolfe, Marple, and Father Brown, this one-of-a-kind collection, selected from the pages of The Saturday Evening Post and The American Magazine, is an incomparable treat.

Follow this most famous detective as he wiggles his toes through such puzzlers as:

The Missing Organ Fund
Scattergood Becomes a Private Detective
Scattergood Sums up the Evidence
Scattergood Causes a Snake to Bite
Scattergood Takes to His Bed
The Touchstone
A Piece of String
Scattergood Discovers Society
Dancing Daughter
Angel in the Woods
Leopards Don’t Change Spots
Scattergood Pulls the Strings
Scattergood and the Bearded Brothers

Leslie Charteris hailed Clarence Budington Kelland as “one of the Old Masters.” Few other authors could fit romance, mystery and detection into 5000 words with such adroit effortlessness.