Sexton Blake: The Three Murrays (The Golden Age #3)

Synopsis:
“It is a very old method of arriving at the truth. One simply eliminates all the unlikely things, and gradually hits on the only possible answer.” Sexton Blake, The Black Bat, 1917

Four classic cases, three legendary authors. Andrew Murray, Robert Murray Graydon, and William Murray Graydon. Their combined work accounts for over 10 percent of the Blake canon, a long list of over 400 works that range from the mid-1900s to the mid-1930s. Each was instrumental in defining the era in which they wrote.

William Murray Graydon, (1864-1946) ‘the master of melodrama’ set the tone of the Edwardian era. In his debut tale The Mystery of Hilton Royal (1904) he moved Sexton Blake to Baker Street. In subsequent issues he created legendary characters Pedro the bloodhound and beloved landlady Mrs. Bardell. Graydon was highly prolific and was the first author to publish 100 Blake tales.

Andrew Nicholas Murray (1880-1929) wrote his first Sexton Blake tale, Sexton Blake, Boxing Trainer, in 1911. Murray was also highly prolific, and was the second Blake author to publish 100 tales featuring the great detective. He helped found and contributed greatly to the Age of Master Criminals, and was renowned for his “smooth, cheerful, light-hearted style”.

Last but by no means least, Robert Murray Graydon (1890-1937) son of William Murray Graydon, made his Sexton Blake debut with The Detective’s Ordeal (1916). His second tale The Hidden Hand (1916), marked the debut of the master criminal Dirk Dolland, aka “The Bat”. Gentleman cracksman, forger, confidence trickster, and master of disguise, the Bat immediately became one of the most popular characters in the Blake canon. Robert Murray Graydon is best remembered for action-packed, humour-filled prose and even more importantly for his great Criminals’ Confederation saga, a 70-tale epic which ran in the Union Jack and Sexton Blake Library from 1916 to 1926.

The first tale in this anthology, The Masquerader (SBL #85, 1919) by Robert Murray Graydon, features the Bat. Dirk Dolland accidentally becomes embroiled in someone else’s schemes. If you get a sense of déjà vu while reading it, it’s because Graydon repurposed much of it for The Man Who Died, a shorter Criminals' Confederation tale that featured in the Union Jack in 1920.

The second tale, The Case of the Suppressed Will, (SBL #14, 1916) by William Murray Graydon, marked the first year anniversary of the Sexton Blake Library. The tale begins during the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916. As can be seen from the title, the story has at its core one of the popular themes of the Victorian era: a stolen inheritance. Graydon gives the tale a nice little twist. Perhaps of greatest note to Blake fans, Sexton Blake reveals his Baker Street address for the first time.

The third tale, The Black Bat (SBL #42, 1917) by Andrew Murray, was considered by collectors to be an excellent case from the ‘Lost Era of Blake Works’ (1917 to 1925) when the detective’s adventures, due to paper shortages, were printed in microscopic type in The Union Jack and The Sexton Blake Library. It’s a grand tale set in a large country manor where Tinker gets to play cupid on top of assisting Blake to solve a mystery.

The last tale, The Mystery of the S.S. Olympic (Union Jack #857, 1920) by Robert Murray Graydon, is a novelization of the silent film of the same name, which was filmed in 1919 aboard the Olympic, the sister ship of the ill-fated Titanic.

This is the third title in a series of anthologies that collects tales from Sexton Blake’s Golden Age. We’ll draw from a wide list of authors: W. W. Sayer, R. C. Armour, John W. Bobin, G. H. Teed, William J. Bayfield, and many others. Enjoy!