Publisher's Synopsis
Joseph Smith Fletcher was born in 1863. He was the son of a clergyman. His father died when he was only eight months old and he was brought up by his grandmother in Yorkshire. When he was eighteen, Fletcher moved to London to study Law and this knowledge of crime was of great use to him in his career as a writer of mystery and adventure. Fletcher abandoned his plans to become a barrister in favour of the more immediate excitement of journalism and worked for a time on the newspaper The Yorkshire Post. From 1890-1900 he worked as a freelance newspaper writer for the Leeds Mercury and the London Star, writing sketches of rural life under the pseudonym 'Son of the Soil.' In 1894 these pieces were published as a collection under the title, The Wonderful Wapentake.
