Jimmie Lavender, gentleman detective, is back with a second collection of rare stories that have never before appeared in any book. Many have been lost in the detective story pulp magazines in the 1920s.

Lavender made his bow in 1916 in Wayside Tales and was one of the earliest American series of detectives, along with Martin Hewitt and Max Carrados, who helped to shape the future of the "cerebral" detective in literature.

Written in Starrett's inimitable literary style, these stories are sly imitations of the formula created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. They are great puzzles that will keep you reading into the night.

"Mr. Starrett has an enviable trick of plot and an ease of narration... He was one of the first American authors to discover that the mystery story may be well written and just as respectable as any other type of fiction." - Chicago Daily News