The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley

About This Book

First published in 1919, The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley is a detective novel by the British journalist and fiction writer Louis Tracy (1863–1928). The story opens when Mortimer Fenley, a wealthy and prominent London banker, is shot dead on the doorstep of his Elizabethan country estate near Roxton. A young landscape painter, John Trenholme, who has been commissioned to sketch the grounds, hears the rifle shot but does not realize he has just become a key witness to murder. The weapon cannot be found and the killer seems to have vanished from the nearby woods.

The investigation falls to two Scotland Yard detectives — the steady, methodical Winter and his mercurial, sharp-tongued partner Furneaux — whose contrasting styles and witty interplay give the novel much of its energy. Unlike many mysteries of the era, Tracy places the work squarely in the hands of professional police rather than gifted amateurs. A romantic subplot involving Trenholme and a member of the Fenley household was typical of Edwardian detective fiction.

Tracy, born Patrick Joseph Treacy in Liverpool, was a prolific author of mystery, adventure, and romance novels. He also wrote under the shared pseudonym Gordon Holmes with M. P. Shiel. The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley is now in the public domain and freely available through Project Gutenberg.

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