R. Austin Freeman - Bibliography - Thorndyke Novels and Story Collections

Thorndyke Novels and Story Collections

• The Red Thumb Mark (1907)
• John Thorndyke's Cases (1909), published in the USA as Dr. Thorndyke's Cases
• The Eye of Osiris (1911), published in the USA as The Vanishing Man
• The Mystery of 31 New Inn (1912)
• The Singing Bone (1912), published in the USA as The Adventures of Dr. Thorndyke
• A Silent Witness (1914)
• Helen Vardon's Confession (1922)
• The Cat's Eye (1923)
• Dr. Thorndyke's Casebook (1923), published in the USA as The Blue Scarab
• The Mystery of Angelina Frood (1924)
• The Shadow of the Wolf (1925)
• The Puzzle Lock (1925)
• The D'Arblay Mystery (1926)
• A Certain Dr. Thorndyke (1927)
• The Magic Casket (1927)
• As A Thief in the Night (1928)
• The Famous Cases of Dr. Thorndyke (1928), published in the USA as The Dr. Thorndyke Omnibus .
• Mr. Pottermack's Oversight (1930)
• Pontifex, Son and Thorndyke (1931)
• When Rogues Fall Out (1932), published in the USA as Dr. Thorndyke's Discovery
• Dr. Thorndyke Intervenes (1933)
• For the Defence: Dr. Thorndyke (1934)
• The Penrose Mystery (1936)
• Felo de Se (1937), published in the USA as Death At The Inn
• The Stoneware Monkey (1938)
• Mr. Polton Explains (1940)
• Dr. Thorndyke's Crime File (1941) -- omnibus including "Meet Dr. Thorndyke" (essay), The Eye of Osiris (novel), "The Art of the Detective Story" (essay), The Mystery of Angelina Frood (novel), "5A King's Bench Walk" (essay), and Mr. Pottermack's Oversight (novel).
• The Jacob Street Mystery (1942), published in the USA as The Unconscious Witness

The short-story collections are:

• John Thorndyke's Cases (1909) (published in the United States as Dr. Thorndyke's Cases).
• The Singing Bone (1912) (published in the United States as The Adventures of Dr. Thorndyke).
• Dr. Thorndyke's Casebook (1923) (published in the United States as The Blue Scarab)
• The Puzzle Lock (1925)
• The Magic Casket (1927)

These five collections contain together 38 from the below mentioned 40 stories. The two other Thorndyke stories were published in The Great Portrait Mystery and other stories (1918). This book contains 7 stories, but only two about Thorndyke. The titles of the 2 Thorndyke stories are The missing mortgagee and Percival Bland's proxy.

Two different omnibus editions of the collected Dr. Thorndyke short stories exist. The British edition is R. Austin Freeman, The Famous Cases of Dr. Thorndyke: Thirty-seven of His Criminal Investigations as set down by R. Austin Freeman (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1929 and later reprintings). The American edition is R. Austin Freeman, The Dr. Thorndyke Omnibus: 38 of His Criminal Investigations as set down by R. Austin Freeman (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1932 and later reprintings). The American edition includes one story, "The Mandarin's Pearl," printed in the first Thorndyke short-story collection, John Thorndyke's Cases, but omitted from the British omnibus. Two other stories, though also appearing in the first Dr. Thorndyke short-story collection, John Thorndyke's Cases, were omitted from the British and American editions of the omnibus collection: "The Man with the Nailed Shoes" and "A Message from the Deep Sea."

The order in the list appearing below is that of the American edition, which reprinted the five collections of stories in the following order (with two omissions noted below): The Singing Bone, The Great Portrait Mystery and other stories, The Singing Bone, Dr. Thorndyke's Cases, The Magic Casket, The Puzzle Lock, and The Blue Scarab. The British edition gives the stories in a different order from that of the American edition, indicated below by a bracketed note appearing after each story title giving its place in the British edition, denoted by the abbreviation UK and a two-digit number.

The first six stories of the list are "inverted" detective stories, divided into two parts; in the first part of each story, Freeman presented an account of the commission of crime, and then, in the second part, he presented an account, as told by Thorndyke's colleague Dr. Christopher Jervis, of Dr. Thorndyke's solution of the crime. These inverted stories are generally deemed by critics and scholars of the field to be his most creative contributions to the writing of detective stories, but the remaining stories, called "direct" stories, are also well-wrought and entertaining.

A modern publisher, Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, has issued a 10-volume edition of the complete works of R. Austin Freeman, including all the Thorndyke novels and short stories. It is available upon order. Amazon offers two volumes of electronic versions of "Dr. Thorndyke Mysteries Collection" each containing four of the original books.

• The Case of Oscar Brodski
• A Case of Premeditation
• The Echo of a Mutiny
• A Wastrel's Romance
• The Missing Mortgagee
• Percival Bland's Proxy
• The Old Lag
• The Stranger's Latchkey
• The Anthropologist at Large
• The Blue Sequin
• The Moabite Cipher
• The Mandarin's Pearl
• The Aluminium Dagger
• The Magic Casket
• The Case of the White Footprints
• The Blue Scarab
• The New Jersey Sphinx
• The Touchstone
• A Fisher of Men
• The Stolen Ingots
• The Funeral Pyre
• The Puzzle Lock
• The Green Check Jacket
• The Seal of Nebuchadnezzar
• Phyllis Annesley's Peril
• A Sower of Pestilence
• Rex v. Burnaby
• A Mystery of the Sand-hills
• The Apparition of Burling Court
• The Mysterious Visitor
• The Contents of a Mare's Nest
• The Stalking Horse
• The Naturalist at Law
• Mr. Ponting's Alibi
• Pandora's Box
• The Trail of Behemoth
• The Pathologist to the Rescue
• Gleanings from the Wreckage
• The Man with the Nailed Shoes
• A Message from the Deep Sea

There also exist two other Thorndyke stories, which were uncollected during his lifetime. 31, New Inn (circa 1905) is a short story, later completely rewritten as a full-length novel, The Mystery of 31 New Inn. Other people suggest 1911 as year of publication. The other short story is The Dead Hand (1912) that was later developed into the novel The Shadow of the Wolf.
31, New Inn was published in The Best Dr. Thorndyke Detective Stories (1973), edited by E.F. Bleiler, and in volume I of the Freeman omnibus, published by Battered Silicon Dispatch Box. The Dead Hand was published in The Dead Hand and Other Uncollected Stories, edited by Douglas G. Greene and Tony Medawar (Shelburne, Ontario: The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 1999). The Dead Hand is also published in Detection by Gaslight, 14 Victorian detective stories, an anthology by Douglas Greene (Dover. 1997).