About the Author

 

Richard Austin Freeman, the doyen of the scientific division of detective writing is best known for his character Dr John Thorndyke. A close and careful investigator and the outstanding medical authority in the field of detective fiction, R. Austin Freeman not only tested the wits of the reader, but also inspired many modern detective forensic methods. The most famous of the Edwardian detective writers, he rescued the detective story from “thrillerdom” and made it acceptable to a more discerning class of reader.

Freeman initially trained as an apothecary and then studied medicine, before joining the Colonial Service on the Gold Coast in Africa. Suffering from blackwater fever, he returned to London, but when unable to find a permanent medical position turned to writing. His first books were co-written and published under the name of ‘Clifford Ashdown’, but by the turn of the twentieth century he settled upon his own character ‘Dr. Thorndyke’ and published his first solo effort, ‘The Red Thumb Mark’, in 1907.

During the First World War he served as a Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps and after demob continued with his writing. Amongst this is to be found the inverted detective story, which he invented. Here, the identity of the miscreant was known to the reader from the start. It was first successfully tried in a series of short stories contained in ‘The Singing Bone’. Freeman claimed that despite the reader being in possession of all the facts concerning the crime, he or she would be ‘so occupied with the crime that he would overlook the evidence’. The second part of each of these stories details the investigation of the crime.

 

Raymond Chandler once wrote:

'This man Austin Freeman is a wonderful performer. He has no equal in his genre, and he is also a much better writer than you might think, if you were superficially inclined, because in spite of the immense leisure of his writing, he accomplishes an even suspense which is quite unexpected.’

 

Amongs the many other tributes, The Times referred to the Dr. Thorndyke Series as 'The Ace of Detectives'.

 

The authors of today’s popular forensic detective TV series and books are in reality continuing in the ‘Freeman’ vein.