Hachette India

The Memoirs of Constantine Dix

Barry Pain

A priest who's also a master criminal

Constantine Dix is a model English clergyman. Fine, upstanding, of moderate habits and fully committed to helping society's least fortunate as someone of his calling should be. But there's one major difference between Dix and other clergymen he is also one of the most talented thieves in all of England.

These twelve stories are a key addition to twentieth century detective and crime fiction.

Barry Pain

Barry Pain (1864 1928) was born in Cambridge, and educated at Sedbergh School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He became a prominent contributor to The Granta. He was known as a writer of parody and lightly humorous stories.

In 1889, Cornhill Magazine's editor, James Payn, published his story 'The Hundred Gates', and shortly afterwards Pain became a contributor to Punch and The Speaker, and joined the staffs of the Daily Chronicle and Black and White. Pain supposedly "owes his discovery to Robert Louis Stevenson, who compares him to De Maupassant". From 1896 to 1928, he was a regular contributor to The Windsor Magazine. He died in Bushey, in Hertfordshire on 5 May 1928.