The chronicles Of Michael Danevitch Of the Russian secret service. by DONOVAN (Dick [i.e., J.E. Preston Muddock].) - 1897

By Dick Donovan Author of ‘The Man-hunter,’ ‘Tracked and Taken,’ ‘Caught at Last,’ ‘A Detective’s Triumphs,’ ‘Vidocq,’ etc[.] London, Chatto & Windus, 1897. Advertisement leaf precedes half-title; 8pp. text-paper advertisements, probably printed conjugate with prelims., followed by publisher’s inserted catalogue, 32pp., at ens, dated Feb. 1897 and advertising this volume as ‘shortly’; pp.[viii]+304+8; vertically fine-ribbed navy blue cloth ruled and elaborately blocked silver on front cover and spine; end-papers printed with leaf-and-frond pattern in olive green; top- and fore- edges uncut, lower-edges rough-trimmed. Very slight rubbing to cloth at extreme head of spine (affecting the top 2mm); two leaves of catalogue opened a little roughly, and catalogue lightly enbrowned; nonetheless a virtually fine copy with none of the usual oxydation of the silver blocked on the spine. Copies are also known in which the back cover is blocked with the publisher’s monogram device in blind. They have the same catalogue, and were presumably of simultaneous issue. Most of the stories are cases of the celebrated Russian detective as related to fellow detective Dick Donovan. The last story, “The Clue of the Dead Hand,” features detective Peter Brodie and has a Scottish setting. It tells of a murder and a simultaneous mysterious disappearance at Corbie Hall, “a strange, weird sort of place...” that has “an eeriness about it...calculated to make one shudder.” As much a rationalized ghost story as a detective story, it also involves male impersonation. Glover and Greene, Victorian Detective Fiction, 111; Queen, The Detective Short Story, p.34; Hubin, p.124; Wolff 4957, mis-reporting the text-paper advertisements at the end as a ‘publisher’s catalogue’. All books listed by Robert Temple are first editions unless otherwise stated.