Catherine Louisa Pirkis

When Loveday Brooke falls from her place in London high society, losing her financial security, she has no choice but to become a working woman. Set in the Victorian era, it is considered unusual and even shameful for a woman to participate in the workforce, but when Brooke proves her ability, no man can deny or ignore her talent. Beginning a career as a detective, Brooke becomes the go-to police consultant for any case that seems unsolvable. The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective is a collection of seven short stories, each portraying an individual mystery, varying crimes and intrigue. The Black Bag on the Doorstep is the first title in the collection, and follows a Christmas Eve robbery. Featuring a more heinous crime, The Murder at Troyte’s Hill depicts a murder mystery after a local lodge-keeper is found dead in a ransacked room. Challenged with one of her most puzzling mysteries, Brooke attempts to find a young girl who vanished without a trace in the fan-favorite story, Missing. Unable to find a lead even after ten days of searching, the police are ready to give up, but Loveday Brooke is determined to reunite the girl with her family. With an original approach to the mystery genre, The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective was among Catherine Louisa Pirkis’ most popular work. Often compared to Sherlock Holmes, Loveday Brooke remains to be a beloved and memorable character from the detective fiction genre, and is one of the earliest depictions of a woman working in the detective field in literature. With mysteries ranging from crimes of theft, murder, kidnap, and conspiracy, The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective provides a fun and fresh reading experience, as it has remained to be progressive and intriguing nearly one-hundred and thirty years after its original publication. This edition of The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective by Catherine Louisa Pirkis is now available in an easy-to-read font, and features a new, eye-catching cover design. With these accommodations, The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective is restored to modern standards while the original mastery of Catherine Louisa Pirkis’ work is preserved.

Meet the indomitable lady detective Loveday Brooke: able to assume a multitude of disguises and possessed of analytical powers rivaling those of the great Sherlock Holmes, she masters every baffling situation and solves each perplexing crime in these seven atmospheric and entertaining Victorian mysteries. While Holmes dominated the pages of The Strand, Loveday entertained readers of The Ludgate Monthly, employing her intuitive powers to unravel the connection between a jewel theft and a suicide note, to detect the reasons for the furtive behavior among members of a religious sisterhood, and to reveal the hidden truth in other intriguing cases. This edition of these hard-to-find tales from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction features an Introduction by a noted authority on fictional female detectives. Michele Slung discusses the importance of these stories in the context of Victorian life and literature and offers a bibliographical profile of author Catherine Louisa Pirkis. Catherine Louisa Pirkis (1839-1910) was a British mystery writer whose Loveday Brooke series was notable for being the first detective stories that featured a heroine created by a woman author. Dubbed "the female Sherlock Holmes," Loveday starred in adventures that were among the bestselling successors to those of the Baker Street sleuth.

Judith Wynne - A Novel. Vol. 3 is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1884. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.

Judith Wynne - A Novel. Vol. 1 is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1884. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.

"IT'S a big thing," said Loveday Brooke, addressing Ebenezer Dyer, chief of the well-known detective agency in Lynch Court, Fleet Street; "Lady Cathrow has lost 30,000 worth of jewellery, if the newspaper accounts are to be trusted." "They are fairly accurate this time. The robbery differs in few respects from the usual run of country-house robberies. The time chosen, of course, was the dinner-hour, when the family and guests were at table and the servants not on duty were amusing themselves in their own quarters. The fact of its being Christmas Eve would also of necessity add to the business and consequent distraction of the household. The entry to the house, however, in this case was not effected in the usual manner by a ladder to the dressing-room window, but through the window of a room on the ground floor-a small room with one window and two doors, one of which opens into the hall, and the other into a passage that leads by the back stairs to the bedroom floor. It is used, I believe, as a sort of hat and coat room by the gentlemen of the house." "It was, I suppose, the weak point of the house?"

What is a young lady like Loveday Brooke doing in a private detective agency? She's working there, as a clever sleuth, a female Sherlock Holmes of sorts. Excerpts: "Loveday Brooke, at this period of her career, was a little over thirty years of age, and could be best described in a series of negations." She was not tall, she was not short; she was not dark, she was not fair; she was neither handsome nor ugly. Her features were altogether nondescript; her one noticeable trait was a habit she had, when absorbed in thought, of dropping her eyelids over her eyes till only a line of eyeball showed, and she appeared to be looking out at the world through a slit, instead of through a window. Her dress was invariably black, and was almost Quaker-like in its neat primness."