Son of novelist Benjamin Farjeon, and brother to children’s author Eleanor, playwright Herbert and composer Harry, Joseph Jefferson Farjeon (1883–1955) began work as an actor and freelance journalist before inevitably turning his own hand to writing fiction. Described by the Sunday Times as ‘a master of the art of blending horrors with humour’, Farjeon was a prolific author of mystery novels, with more than 60 books published between 1924 and 1955. His first play, No. 17, was produced at the New Theatre in 1925, when the actor Leon M. Lion ‘made all London laugh’ as Ben the tramp, an unorthodox amateur detective who became the most enduring of all Farjeon’s creations. Rewritten as a novel in 1926 and filmed by Alfred Hitchcock six years later, with Mr Lion reprising his role, No.17’s success led to seven further books featuring the warm-hearted but danger-prone Ben: ‘Ben is not merely a character but a parable—a mixture of Trimalchio and the Old Kent Road, a notable coward, a notable hero, above all a supreme humourist’ (Seton Dearden, Time and Tide). Although he had become largely forgotten over the 60 years since his death, J. Jefferson Farjeon’s reputation made an impressive resurgence in 2014 when his 1937 Crime Club book Mystery in White was reprinted by the British Library, returning him to the bestseller lists and resulting in readers wanting to know more about this enigmatic author from the Golden Age of detective fiction.