The creator of academic sleuth Dr Priestley also invented Eric the Skull
Cecil Street, whose pen names included John Rhode |
Street also wrote 61 Desmond Merrion crime novels under the pseudonym Miles Burton and several detective stories under the pen name Cecil Waye.
He served as an artillery officer in the British Army and during World War I became a propagandist for MI7, rising to the rank of Major.
After the war, Street worked in both London and Dublin as an Information Officer during the Irish War of Independence.
Street produced his first detective novel, The Paddington Mystery, featuring Dr Priestley, under the pseudonym John Rhode in 1925. He then wrote at least one Dr Priestley novel a year, sometimes more.
Writing as Miles Burton, his Desmond Merrion novels began in 1930 and went on until 1960. He also wrote other non-series novels, short stories, radio plays, stage plays and non-fiction.
The Dr Priestley books are classics of scientific detection, with the elderly academic demonstrating how apparently impossible crimes have been carried out.
In The
Paddington Mystery, a young man, Harold Merefield, returns to his lodgings in
the early hours after visiting a night club to find the dead body of a man
lying on his bed. Although an inquest gives a verdict of death by natural
causes, Harold finds his reputation is tarnished as a result of all the
publicity and he is determined to solve the mystery to prove the death had
nothing to do with him.
He turns to
an old friend of his father’s, Professor Lancelot Priestley, a mathematician, for
help. Dr Priestley is an armchair detective, who sometimes helps the police. He
solves mysteries through logical reasoning, guided by facts and facts alone,
not by flashes of intuition or guesswork. Some of the scenes, where Dr
Priestley, does most of the talking because he hates to be interrupted, seem long
and unexciting, but as he considers each fact on its merits and chooses to accept
it, or discard it, he takes the characters and the readers nearer and nearer to
the truth.The great Dorothy L Sayers,
pictured with Eric the Skull
Dr Priestley
was an immediate success with the public and Street, as John Rhode, quickly produced
another six novels about his cases.
By 1930,
Street was no longer just a distinguished, retired army Major, he had written
25 books under various pseudonyms and he was still only 45 years old.
Perhaps Street’s most important contribution to the club was Eric the Skull, which he wired up with lights so that the eye sockets glowed red during the initiation ceremony for new members. Eric is said to participate in the initiation rituals for new members to this day.
Cecil Street died at the age of 80 in 1964 in Eastbourne.
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