Hachette India

The Complete Curious Mr Tarrant

C. Daly King

"Curiouser and curiouser"!

Twelve stories that deal with impossible and fantastical crimes ranging from haunted boats, headless corpses, vanishing harps, ancient objects with weird curses to locked room mysteries are what primarily interest amateur sleuth Trevis Tarrant, ably assisted by his manservant, Katoh, who is actually a Japanese spy. Tarrant's Watsonian narrator is Jerry Phelan, a young man about town in love with Valerie, who along with Jerry's smarter sister, Mary give the book a lighter almost Wodehousian touch.

"The most imaginative detective stories of our times" Ellery Queen

C. Daly King

Charles Daly King was an American psychologist. He was educated at Newark Academy, Yale and Columbia University. After Army service in WW1 he trained in psychology and wrote several textbooks. In the 1930s, he wrote seven detective novels while working in psychology. His detective, Michael Lord, is attached to the New York police department. Lord's cases are recounted by a Watson figure, Dr L. Rees Pons. King coined the word 'Obelists' to describe suspects and used it in three of his titles. Another series character, Trevis Tarrant, appears in a book of short stories. After Bermuda Burial (1940) King wrote no further fiction.