Thornley Colton: Blind detective: Classic Book Guide and Free Edition
Thornley Colton: Blind detective: author and translator credits, catalogue synopsis, subjects and links to the Gutenberg reading formats.
Thornley Colton: Blind detective is catalogued by Project Gutenberg with author credits for Stagg, Clinton H. (Clinton Holland) (1888–1916).
Catalogue synopsis
Project Gutenberg supplies this automated synopsis of the opening text:
"Thornley Colton" by Clinton H. Stagg is a collection of detective stories written in the early 20th century. It centers on a brilliant blind problem-solver, Thornley Colton, whose acute senses and cool logic unravel intricate crimes with the help of his loyal secretary, Sydney Thames. The cases blend high society settings with clever criminal schemes, emphasizing psychological insight, misdirection, and tightly worked details. The opening of the book introduces Colton in a fashionable restaurant, where his poise and uncanny awareness foreshadow a coming crime involving a banker, Norris, the opera singer Rhoda Richmond, and a vice-president, Simpson, newly wed to a supposed deaf-mute. When half a million in negotiable bonds vanish from the Berkley Trust, police fix on Norris and Rhoda, even catching her at a South American liner after a mysterious phone summons. Colton methodically widens the lens: he calls in the alarm-company men, questions two elderly watchmen, notes a telltale dusting of sulfur by the safe, and traces a timid “scrubwoman” to a tenement—uncovering quills used for cocaine snuffing. In a staged confrontation, his boy assistant Shrimp delivers a collapsing vaudeville female impersonator—Simpson’s “wife”—and Colton produces the bonds, waterproofed in an ice bag and hidden in a pail of dirty mop water; Simpson is exposed as the calculating thief. The second story begins with a glittering society reception abruptly halted when Dorothy Raelton is found unconscious beside an opium set; press frenzy follows, and Dorothy, despairing, confesses to paying blackmail with her replaced diamond necklace. Colton, rethinking the scene, realizes she isn’t an opium smoker—she doesn’t even know how to “cook” the pill and the bedroom door was locked from the outside—pointing to a deliberate framing and a more sinister blackmail plot that he resolves to pursue.
Book and edition facts
- Title: Thornley Colton: Blind detective
- Author credits: Stagg, Clinton H. (Clinton Holland) (1888–1916)
- Catalogue language: English
Catalogue subjects
- Blind -- Fiction
- Detective and mystery stories, American
- New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
- Private investigators -- Fiction
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View the complete Gutenberg catalogue record. Project Gutenberg identifies this edition as public domain in the United States; that designation does not establish its copyright status in every country.
Source notes
Catalogue metadata is public domain and is supplied through Gutendex, which imports Gutenberg's machine-readable catalogue. The automated synopsis is source-supplied, not an independently verified review. Author dates above describe the credited people; no ebook release date is presented as the book's original publication date.
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