Publisher's Synopsis
Barr (1849-1912) was a Scottish-Canadian short story writer and novelist, born in Barony, Lanark who then emigrated with his parents to Upper Canada at the age of four. In 1873 he trained as a teacher at Toronto Normal School and after graduating took a teaching post at the Central School of Windsor, Ontario, soon becoming headmaster. In 1876 he left teaching to join the Detroit Free Press where he became News Editor and wrote under the pseudonym Luke Sharp. In 1881 he left Canada to settle in London, England, where he started a new weekly version of the Detroit Free Press Magazine. During the 1890s he began writing novels in the popular crime genre, and in 1892 founded The Idler magazine in collaboration with Jerome K Jerome, retiring from its co-editorship in 1895. By this time he was a prolific author, producing a book a year, and was familiar with many of the best-selling authors of the day including Arnold Bennett, Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling. He was also on good terms with the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, and wrote two "spoof" Holmes stories which first appeared in The Idler and are included as an appendix in this collection of crime stories featuring Frenchman Eugene Valmont published in 1906.
