After reading Thomas Hanshew’s Cleek: The Man of the Forty Faces on Project Gutenberg (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, click that first link to read an essay from this past June) I knew I had to have a hard copy. So I headed over to AbeBooks and dropped twenty bucks on Cleek of Scotland Yard, an omnibus edition containing Cleek, a few of the short stories Hanshew pasted together to make Cleek, and an eponymous sequel: Cleek of Scotland Yard.

I think there’s a book missing in between. I’m pretty sure it’s one I’ve seen listed as Cleek’s Government Cases. I’m going to have to get hold of that one, too, because Cleek of Scotland Yard—which we’ll call CoSY, to save typing—is almost as good as the first. Continue reading Cleek of Scotland Yard →

“‘Cleek!’ he said, in a voice that shook with nervous catches and the emotion of a soul deeply stirred, ‘Cleek to take the case? The great, the amazing, the undeceivable Cleek!’”
—T. W. Hanshew, Cleek: The Man of the Forty Faces

For old-school detective fans, times must come when Lord Peter Wimsey irritates; when Hercule Poirot comes off as an anal retentive with a weird moustache; when they even wish Sherlock Holmes would stop self-medicating his manic depression and get professional help. At moments like this I turn to Cleek. Hamilton Cleek. The Man of the Forty Faces.

Continue reading The Man Who Calls Himself Hamilton Cleek →