Max Pemberton wrote more than sixty books in his eighty-seven years, enjoying wide popularity. Today his work is almost completely forgotten, and his mystery novels have been no more timeless. What interest they have comes from his accurate depiction of the new products of the modern age: automobiles, airplanes, and ships. Such elements, however, seem distinctly out of place with both the Victorian sentiment and style of Pemberton's work. His failure to reconcile his nineteenth-century values with the world he saw changing has contributed to his current obscurity.

Born in Birmingham, Warwickshire, on 19 June 1863, the son of a prosperous merchant in the Rice Market, Pemberton was early drawn to the idea of a writing career. He recalls in Lord Northcliffe (1922), his memoir of Alfred Harmsworth, how he and his friend planned to write a mystery novel to be called "The Black Hand." The book was inspired by Harmsworth's...