The Mystery of the Skeleton Key (Detective Club Crime Classics). This item is unavailable.The Mystery of the Skeleton Key (Detective Club Crime Classics)

The Skeleton Key (1919) was the first detective novel published by Collins, ushering in the Golden Age, the Crime Club, and 100 years of remarkable crime fiction that would follow.

A body is discovered after a shooting party in the grounds of a country house in Hampshire. The police are called in, and a clever young detective, Sergeant Ridgway, begins to unravel a much more complicated and brutal case of murder than was first suspected. But has he met his match with Le Sage, a chess-playing Baron, who is convinced that the answers lie not in Hampshire but in Paris?

After 20 years of writing in various genres, The Skeleton Key was Bernard Capes’ crowning achievement, as he died shortly after completing the book. Introduced by Hugh Lamb, whose anthology The Black Reaper resurrected Capes’ reputation as one of the best horror writers of his generation, the book also includes its original tribute to Capes by G. K. Chesterton, author of the Father Brown mysteries.

Bernard Edward Joseph Capes (1854-1918) was a prolific Victorian author who published more than 40 books, best remembered for his accomplished ghost stories. The Skeleton Key was the first detective novel commissioned and published by Collins (1919); its success (8 editions in 10 years) paved the way for a century of crime publishing. Sadly Capes died on 2 November 1918 in the influenza epidemic before his book was published. A plaque commemorating his life is in Winchester Cathedral.

Hugh Lamb has spent over forty years delving into weird fiction. His main area of research is Victorian ghost stories and he has published five anthologies of these. A freelance journalist by profession, Hugh Lamb lives in Sutton, Surrey.