‘THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB is a clearing house for the best detective and mystery stories chosen for you by a select committee of experts. Only the most ingenious crime stories will be published under the THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB imprint. A special distinguishing stamp appears on the wrapper and title page of every THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB book—the Man with the Gun. Always look for the Man with the Gun when buying a Crime book.’
Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1929
Now the Man with the Gun is back in this series of COLLINS CRIME CLUB reprints, and with him the chance to experience the classic books that influenced the Golden Age of crime fiction.
COLLINS CRIME CLUB
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain as WO2 by Methuen & Co. 1913
Published as The Mystery of the Mud Flats by The Detective Story Club Ltd for W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1930
Introduction © Nigel Moss 2018
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1929, 2018
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008168926
Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780008137311
Version: 2017-11-17
Contents
I. CONCERNING A FOOL AND HIS MONEY
II. CONCERNING A STROKE OF GOOD LUCK AND AN ACT OF CHARITY
III. CONCERNING A COMPANY OF MERCHANT ADVENTURERS
IV. CONCERNING A CARGO OF POTATOES
V. IN THE MATTER OF A DESERTING SEAMAN
VI. OF A PRODIGAL’S RETURN
VII. CONCERNING A PENALTY FOR CURIOSITY
VIII. FURTHER RESULTS OF CURIOSITY
IX. OF CURIOSITY REWARDED
X. OF A PARTNERSHIP IN CRIME
XI. OF A LADYLIKE YOUNG PERSON
XII. CONCERNING THE ETHICS OF PARTNERSHIP
XIII. SHOWING A FOWLER IN HIS SNARE
XIV. OF A DIRECTORS’ MEETING
XV. CONCERNING MODERN MAIDENHOOD
XVI. OF A CONVIVIAL GATHERING
XVII. VOOGDT DESERTS AGAIN
XVIII. OF A NONDESCRIPT CREW
XIX. WHICH TELLS OF A WILD-GOOSE CHASE
XX. OF A DISSOLUTION OF PARTNERSHIP
XXI. OF COLLISIONS AT SEA
MAURICE DRAKE’s more enduring legacy to date has been as a leading artist in glass painting and eminent authority on medieval stained glass, working in the early twentieth century. By contrast, his fictional writings and reputation as an author of seven popular novels, originally published between 1906 and 1924, have been largely neglected. This new release of the Collins Detective Story Club edition of The Mystery of the Mud Flats (1930), the first in 88 years, provides an opportunity to appraise Drake’s most successful novel, alongside his other works; also, to reflect on his place within the Edwardian high adventure story genre, and to look more broadly at his influence on later authors of nautically themed mystery and espionage thrillers.
Born in 1875 in Newton Abbot, Devon, Frederick Morris Drake—better known by his pseudonym Maurice Drake—was educated at Teignmouth Grammar School. Along with his brother Wilfred, Maurice Drake represented the fourth generation of a famous glass painting family in Exeter, originally established by his great-uncle. He married Alice Wilson in 1897.The family home and glass painting studio were close to Exeter Cathedral, and he was an advisor to the Cathedral authorities on stained glass—a role to which his daughter succeeded him following his death. Maurice’s best known art publications, which have become leading works in their field, are A History of English Glass-painting (1912) and Saints and their Emblems (1916), both co-authored with Wilfred. He was retained by leading museums and became a renowned lecturer and expert advisor on old stained glass, travelling widely in the UK, Continental Europe and USA.
During WW1, Maurice served both with the Infantry and the RAF. In the early 1920s, he resumed his writing career, but in April 1923 died prematurely from pneumonia at the age of 48. It was the same year that saw the publication of his first novel since the Great War.
A popular British circulating magazine of 1913 described Drake as ‘a big, brawny, moustached sunburned man … who looks what he is … an ardent amateur yachtsman. Everything in connection with the sea interests him, and it was this love for salt-water that led him, some seven years ago, to try his hand at a novel about life on the ocean wave.’
In The Mystery of the Mud Flats (also known as WO2), Drake’s fourth novel, the sea and life aboard boats feature constantly. It proved to be his best-selling and best-received novel. Originally published by Methuen in 1913 under the curious title WO2 (the chemical formula of the valuable substance at the heart of the plot), it was also released in the USA and Canada that year under the same title. Acclaim from reviewers and popular commercial success swiftly followed on both sides of the Atlantic; between 1913 and 1930 the book was published in 26 editions world-wide and in three languages.