Mr Fortune's Trials

Meet Mr Reggie Fortune, a doctor by profession, a detective by accident. Mr Fortune is not an ordinary gum-shoe sleuth, yet he has long since established himself as one of the brightest stars in the galaxy of crime detectives. Attached in a loose way to the Home Office and Scotland Yard, he is utterly fearless, and with a cold astuteness belied by his cherubic appearance. His speciality is medicine, although he does not practice. But for his expert opinion on such matters as recently deceased bodies, the more difficult poisons and the like, the Yard would be hard pressed to investigate without him. Mr Fortune’s Trials is the third of his casebooks and includes six curious, gruesome and ingenious crimes which Reggie investigates through minute, scientific detection.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Henry Christopher Bailey was an English crime novelist and one of the Big Five writers of detective fictions in the ‘Golden Age’ which also included Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, R. Austin Freeman and Freeman Wills Crofts. Hugely popular at the time and adored by critics he is today unjustly rather forgotten. This was at least partly due to tortuous issues regarding his literary estate. His best-known creation was the plump and drawling Reginald Fortune. The medically trained ‘Mr Fortune’ was a scientific adviser to Scotland Yard’s Criminal Investigation Department and starred in twenty-two novels and short story collections. Much praised for his puzzles and characterisation, the Mr Fortune stories have echoes of Lord Peter Wimsey but are much darker, tackling subjects not touched upon by other major writers, including police corruption and murderous obsession. Bailey’s other series character was Joshua Clunk, a sanctimonious lawyer who exposes corruption and blackmail but also manages to profit from the crimes he investigates. H.C. Bailey died in 1961.

PRAISE FOR H.C. BAILEY’S ‘MR FORTUNE’

‘Clever and entertaining’ BOSTON TRANSCRIPT

‘The most engaging detective of fiction’ THE OBSERVER

‘Brilliant… his plots have an immense and admirable ingenuity’ TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

‘Fortune is a super sleuth who solves problems that are too much for Scotland Yard’ NEW YORK TIMES

‘It is difficult to find in modern detection, puzzles more elaborately conceived and mystifying’ HOWARD HAYCROFT

‘Mr Bailey is always readable’ NEW STATESMAN