Review: Move over Sherlock - make room for Dr. Thorndyke
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 21, 2014
All to the stories in this volume are really good. Starting with the Red Thumb Mark, then John Thorndyke's Cases, The Eye of Osiris and the Mystery of 31 New Inn.  Dr. Thorndyke's Cases consisted of 8 separate cases, The Man with the Nailed Shoes, The Stranger's Latchkey, The Anthropologist at Large, The Blue Sequin, The Moabite Cipher, The Mandarin's Pear, The Aluminum Dagger, and The Message from the Deep Sea.In each of these stories the reader is treated to Dr. Thorndyke's extreme powers of observation, his ability to use the relevant facts and clues to the mysteries and incidents, his remarkable use of the science and technology of his day to resolve known issues and clues, his lack of assumptions when given red herrings and false leads as well as his ability to be his own investigator.The reader also is presented with the same details as Dr. Thorndyke, but the reader too is given a face saving out if they don't come to the same conclusions as Dr. Thorndyke, because Dr. Jervis, Thorndyke's partner and foil, never seems to get it either and like the reader doesn't always have Thorndyke's extreme and diversified knowledge at their fingertips or memory cells.All in all I look forward to reading all of R. Austin Freeman's books, even though he does seem to go on on with some of his discussions, which sometimes aren't needed for the story, and is somewhat recondite with his writings - I have used my Kindle's dictionary feature quite extensively.These stories are also very informative in teaching the reader what the prevalent scientific knowledge and technologies were, relative to their applications to CSI as fostered by Freeman, in the very early 1900's (1907, 1907, 1911, & 1912).I really think some enterprising movie or TV director/producer ought to take these stories and develop them into a good series.  Not enough people are familiar with R. Austin Freeman's books, I certainly wasn't and I have been reading who done it's and other mysteries of and on for about 60 years, starting with the Hardy Boys.