Ray Moore: Mysteries from the Golden Age of Detection

Ray Moore, a native of Nottingham, England, is now a resident of Florida. His first book was a critical introduction to The Stranger by Albert Camus, as well as a book that initiates the reader with the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales.

In "Investigations of The Reverend Lyle Thorne: Mysteries from the Golden Age of Detection," Moore introduces us to Detective Sergeant Lyle Thorne, who in March 1889 abruptly resigned from the Metropolitan Police and began training to become an ordained minister in the Church of England.

Thorne served as vicar of the South Coast resort of Sanditon from 1906 until his retirement in 1927. However, if Thorne had anticipated a quiet, uneventful life at Sanditon vicarage, he was to be disappointed, for his reputation as an investigator attracted a succession of 'clients' each with a remarkable tale. And these tales are investigated in both this volume and its sequel.

Five cases investigated by The Rev. Lyle Thorne during the years 1910 to 1912 include: The wedding of an American heiress and divorcée is cancelled by the inexplicable; An Oxford Antiquarian is found lying dead on a horde of medieval coins; The young bride-to-be of a rich widower receives frightening threats; A Sussex landowner walks calmly into the courtyard of his house and vanishes; Thorne must find a husband who has taken great care not to be found.