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Audiobook edition · 9 h 3 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the answer sits in plain view, hidden only by what everyone expects to see?
In The Sleuth of St. James's Square, Melville Davisson Post presents sixteen short detective puzzles built on cunning, deception, and careful reasoning. Each tale sets a problem and follows a detective at work. The crucial detail is often there for anyone to notice, but seeing it clearly makes all the difference.
The wrongdoers plan, conceal their purpose, and rely on others accepting a convenient story. Against them stands the art of looking again. These self-contained cases bring together clever reasoning and the workings of the law, with manners, settings, and a pace that belong to an earlier age. Every new puzzle asks you to weigh what matters.
What you’ll discover
- The overlooked detail Watch a small fact become the key to a problem others cannot solve.
- Deception with a purpose Meet wrongdoers who hide their intentions behind stories they expect others to believe.
- Reasoning at work Follow a detective's attention toward the point that changes the meaning of a scene.
- A case at a time Enjoy each complete puzzle without needing to carry clues from one tale into another.
- An earlier detective world Settle into older manners and measured pacing, where careful observation holds the pleasure.
Who will love it
You will love these tales if you enjoy clue-based puzzles, clever reversals, old London clubs and country houses, and detectives who win with careful looking and sudden insight.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A bare footprint appears on a marble hearth
- A tramp teaches the Secret Service to look
- Tracks and fingerprints tell the true story
- Justice looks different in every country
- An old Virginia justice reads small signs
- Women see what the men miss
- War and empire bring darker surprises
- Why the stories follow one pattern
Who’s who
- Sir Henry MarquisThe unhurried chief of Scotland Yard's Criminal Investigation Department, who solves cases by reading tracks, marks and small oddities.
- Justice PendletonA stern Virginia justice of the peace who serves the state without pay and believes every sign carries weight.
- Captain WalkerHead of the United States Secret Service, who hunts stolen bond plates with a tramp's help.
- Marion WarfieldA young scholar who revises her grandfather's book on evidence and reads a railroad wreck for human design.
- Lady MurielA society spy in need of money, who risks everything for a treasure map she does not understand.
- BarclayA pockmarked gambler who wants one honest explorer, Charlie Tavor, to get his dream before he dies.
- Douglas HargraveA young American jewel buyer in London who finds himself holding a sack of coins and a puzzle.
Formats and delivery
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 9 h 3 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 6 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear Le détective de la place Saint-James in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Le détective de la place Saint-James
by Melville Davisson Post · 1920
A bare footprint on a marble hearth gives Sir Henry Marquis a mystery that seems to defy reason.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
A bare footprint appears on a marble hearth inside a locked room. Who left it, and what does it mean?
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A bare footprint appears on a marble hearth
The book opens with The Thing on the Hearth. A huge Oriental servant tells a visitor how his master, the American chemist Rodman, died in a locked drawing room in the Berkshires. Rodman had published a pamphlet on making jewels in a laboratory, and his formulas threatened to wipe out the wealth of Asia.
The servant says a monastery sent him to guard Rodman from every danger but one. He describes a small bronze figure on the hearth that swells to giant size, and a woman who steps down from it with bare feet and white skin. The court heard this account and sent the man to an asylum as a lunatic.
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What is The Sleuth of St. James's Square about?
These sixteen mysteries often feature Sir Henry Marquis, who leads criminal investigations for Scotland Yard.
Who is Sir Henry Marquis?
He is the recurring detective.
Who is Justice Pendleton in the book?
Pendleton is a Virginia justice of the peace in the days before the Civil War. Sir Henry reads aloud from a diary about him, and in three tales he solves cases by noticing signs and trusting the weight of small things.
The author
Melville Davisson Post
1869–1930 · American mystery writer
Melville Davisson Post (1869–1930) was an American writer born in Harrison County, West Virginia. He worked as a lawyer and wrote detective fiction. His books included Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries, published in 1918, and The Sleuth of St. James’s Square, published in 1920. He died in West Virginia.
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