Greg Clark Noir Art

  GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #10 DR. FU MANCHU Created by Sax Rohmer, Dr. Fu Manchu was the ultimate villain, a Chinese master criminal of untold wealth, intellect and occult powers whose goal was world conquest.  The Boxer Rebellion at the turn of the 20th Century had aroused fears of a "Yellow Peril" and Rohmer recognized that popular literature was ready for an Oriental archcriminal.  Rohmer's research for an article on Limehouse, the Chinese district of London, had divulged the existence of a "Mr. King", a figure of immense power.  His enormous wealth was derived from gambling, drug smuggling, and the organization of many other criminal activities.  He was the apparent head of powerful tongs and their many unsavory members.  "Mr. King" was never charged with a crime and his very existence was in question.  One foggy night Rohmer saw him - or someone he believed to be Mr. King - from a distance.  His face was the embodiment of Satan an

GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #9 CRAIG KENNEDY, SCIENTIFIC DETECTIVE   "There is a distinct place for science in the detection of crime...the same sort of methods by which you chase out the presence of a chemical, or run an unknown germ to earth," said Craig Kennedy, one of the earliest and most popular "scientific detectives".  Clean cut, tall and handsome, pipe smoking Kennedy was a chemistry and science professor at Columbia University in New York City and at the height of his fame he was known as the "American Sherlock Holmes".  His popularity rivaled Holmes on this side of the pond and the Craig Kennedy mysteries were the first by an American to gain wide readership in England.  His use of submarines, dictaphones, gyroscopes, x-rays, lie detectors, and portable seismographs - while accurately predicted - must have seemed like science fiction to some readers.  Scientific "miracles" are commonplace in the Kennedy stories as he uses

  GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #8 FANTOMAS Fantomas was a criminal genius, ruthless and particularly elusive.  He was a merciless criminal who got away with his evil deeds by impersonating pretty much anyone (like every fictional detective or villain of this era, he was a master of disguise).  But where Raffles and Lupin drew the line at murder Fantomas had no such qualms.  He was a sociopath who enjoyed killing in a sadistic fashion.  Totally ruthless, he showed no mercy and was loyal to no one, not even his own children.  He was less a Gothic novel villain and more a modern day serial killer. The biography of Fantomas is vague.  He might be of British and/or French ancestry and was born in 1867.  In 1892 he called himself Archduke Juan North and lived in the German territory of Hesse-Weimar.  He fathered a child, Vladimir, with an unidentified noble woman, and for reasons not revealed was arrested and sent to prison.  But three years later in 1895 he was in India, in 1897

GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #7 FATHER BROWN   Called one of the three greatest detectives in literature by Ellery Queen, (the other two being Dupin and Sherlock Holmes) Father Brown is a quiet, gentle, commonplace Roman Catholic priest who views wrongdoers as souls needing salvation, not as criminals to be brought to justice.  He has a face "as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling...eyes as empty as the North Sea...a large shabby umbrella which constantly fell to the floor".  He is even given the "harmless, human name of Brown".  He appears dull-witted before his adversaries but possesses a sharp, subtle, sensitive mind.  There is no police procedure in Father Brown's life; the police, in fact, often make no appearance at all.  His sympathies lie with the criminals and he frequently allows them to go free in the hope that they will repent and reform.  The kindly priest does not rely upon cold logic and accumulated clues to catch his man.  He uses a

GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #6 ARSENE LUPIN   Lupin was often a force of good while operating on the wrong side of the law.  In this he shares certain similarities to Hornung's Raffles.  Lupin is a brilliant rogue who pursues a career of crime with carefree elan and mocks the law for the sheer joy of it rather than purely for personal gain.  Lupin is young, handsome, brave, and quick-witted; he has a joie de vivre that is uniquely and recognizably French.  His sense of humor and conceit make life difficult for the police who attribute most of the major crimes in France to Lupin and his gang of ruffians and urchins.  From the outset of the stories it is known that the light-hearted, philandering Lupin did it.  Rather than restoring the rule of law Lupin amuses himself by making fools of the police and living the life of a cultured rentier, while occasionally helping damsels in distress - Lupin relies upon a quaintly idiosyncratic code of honor that is sustained by robbe

GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #5 A. J. RAFFLES   Raffles was the greatest "cracksman" in the literature of rogues.  For the uninitiated, as I was, "cracksman" is an archaic term that means burglar or safecracker.  Raffles could have succeeded at any career but he chose a life of crime.  Once, penniless and desperate in Australia, he realized that his only salvation was to steal.  He had intended that the robbery would be his only such experience, but he had "tasted blood" and loved it.  "Why settle down to some humdrum, uncongenial billet." he once asked Bunny Manders, his devoted companion, "when excitement, romance, danger and a decent living were all going begging together?  Of course, it's very wrong, but we can't all be moralists, and the distribution of wealth is very wrong to begin with." In England his fame as one of the finest cricket players in the world, combined with his charming personality, brilliant wit

  GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #4 SEXTON BLAKE Created by Harry Blyth under the pseudonym Hal Meredith, Sexton Blake was a British detective who has appeared in more novels and stories than any other literary detective.  Blake made his first appearance on December 20, 1893 in the adventure story "The Missing Millionaire" in a boy's weekly paper called The Halfpenny Marvel .  The paper that became synonymous with Sexton Blake was Union Jack  that was launched six months later.  In 1933 it changed its name to Detective Weekly  and continued printing Blake stories until it went under in 1940.  But Blake stories were also printed in their own digest called the Sexton Blake Library which ran from 1915-1964.  The first issue was on September 20, 1915 with the Blake story "The Yellow Tiger" and produced 2-4 issues a month through the mid-1960s when the series was continued in paperback books until 1968.  All total, 200 different authors produced over 4000 S