The Riddle of the Purple Emperor: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Riddle of the Purple Emperor, credited to Mary E. Hanshew and Thomas W. Hanshew, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Riddle of the Purple Emperor, by Mary E. Hanshew and Thomas W. Hanshew. Read by Ruth Golding. Orphan Lady Margaret Cheyne returns home on her eighteenth birthday to live with her embittered maiden aunt and to take up her inheritance of the family jewels. The Cheyne jewels include a pendant featuring the Purple Emperor, a priceless jewel looted from a temple during the Indian Mutiny. During her time at school in Paris, Lady Margaret has met and fallen in love with Sir Edgar Brenton, the son of an old flame of her aunt and a neighbour in the village of Hampton, where Cleek's adored Ailsa Lorne has also taken up residence. Lady Margaret's return leads to a mysterious and sinister chain of events, which Cleek and Superintendent Maverick Narkom of Scotland Yard attempt to unravel, with, of course, the help of the irrepressible and ever-hungry Dollops, Cleek's cockney sidekick. This full-length mystery is a welcome return for Hamilton Cleek, whom we first met in Cleek: The Man of the Forty Faces. (Summary by Ruth Golding)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Riddle of the Purple Emperor
• Author credits: Mary E. Hanshew and Thomas W. Hanshew
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 25
• Listed recording duration: 8:18:58

Catalogue topics

• mystery
• detective story
• crime
• jewel thief
• Scotland Yard
• Narkom
• Cleek
• vanishing cracksman

Opening tracks: first 24 of 25

1. 01 - Which Introduces a New Friend — 22:58
2. 02 - The Home-coming — 18:15
3. 03 - In the Dark — 16:09
4. 04 - The House of Shadows — 20:27
5. 05 - The Threads of Chance — 18:03
6. 06 - The Cry in the Night — 24:39
7. 07 - In the Tiger's Clutches — 19:12
8. 08 - Complications and Complexities — 16:53
9. 09 - The House with the Shuttered Windows — 17:11
10. 10 - A Shot in the Dark — 14:18
11. 11 - A Terrible Discovery — 16:25
12. 12 - The Woman in the Case — 18:37
13. 13 - Tightening the Strands — 26:38
14. 14 - The Plot Thickens — 25:34
15. 15 - Tangled Threads — 16:05
16. 16 - In the Doctor's Surgery — 16:25
17. 17 - Miss Cheyne Again — 12:37
18. 18 - Dollops Takes a Hand — 23:50
19. 19 - The Twin Scarves — 20:23
20. 20 - A Twisted Clue — 17:28
21. 21 - 'Tis a Mad World, My Masters — 24:54
22. 22 - The Trap — 19:24
23. 23 - Untwisting the Threads — 25:24
24. 24 - An Unexpected Contretemps — 20:12

Listen to this recording

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.