#5: "The Blue Sequin" by R. Austin Freeman

Today's story, "The Blue Sequin", comes to you thanks to Flos Carmeli's E-Text Announcements.

I have always been very curious to read R. Austin Freeman and meet Dr. Thorndyke. Their names come up again and again among the pioneers of the genre, and Freeman was spoken of favorably by Dorothy L. Sayers. (If pressed, I would probably admit to being influenced by Sayers just a titch more than Lewis or Tolkien.) So I was very pleased to learn that Gutenberg had copies of his work.

I haven't yet tackled the novels for which Freeman is known (most notably, The Red Thumb-Mark), but I've really enjoyed the stories in John Thorndyke's Cases. Some of them have that definite air of a Holmes pastiche (particularly the beginnings of "The Man with the Nailed Shoes", "The Stranger's Latchkey", and "The Anthropologist at Large"). But Thorndyke clearly isn't Holmes. He strikes me as much more professorial than Holmes could ever be (except in disguise), and much more in love with technicalities and precision. But you could picture them being friendly colleagues.

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38 minutes.