Ronald Arbuthnott Knox occupies a significant position in the history of British mystery writing. He was the first writer to subject Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories to careful--albeit playful--scrutiny; he was one of the first to attempt to codify--somewhat playfully--the principal attributes of quality detective fiction. The enormously prolific Knox also wrote several of his own detective novels. Although they are not particularly distinguished in the areas of characterization and plot, all are gracefully written and intelligently conceived.

Knox was born into a family of clerics on 17 February 1888. His mother's father, the scholarly and multilingual Reverend Thomas French, had served for many years as an Anglican missionary in India, and eventually assumed the bishopric of a vast diocese that included Karachi, Delhi, and Lehore. The Reverend George Knox--Knox's paternal grandfather--was a more theologically and socially conservative man whose rather mediocre ministerial career ended in Rutland, England...