logo

IFILL: The Strange Cases of Paul Toft
Douglas Newton
Illustrated by Kenneth Inns
Compiled and Edited by Mike Ashley

     

Douglas Newton was a prolific writer of crime, mystery and adventure fiction in the years from 1910-1940 and is probably best remembered today for his stories about Savaran, a soldier-of-fortune who carved a kingdom out for himself in deepest Africa. But he wrote so much more and his stories about Paul Toft, which ran over several years in Pearson’s Magazine in the 1930s, were among his own favourite and very popular with the magazine’s readers. Unaccountably they were never collected in book form so their publication here constitutes a first edition. Toft is a police detective who has intuitive feelings about each case to the extent that he is nicknamed "Ifill" by his colleagues because upon inspecting every case his first words are "I feel . . ." His feelings even cause him to suspect a crime when no one realizes one has been committed. His cases include a number of impossible crimes and a near perfect murder.

    Table of Contents

       The Forgotten Douglas Newton An Introduction by Mike Ashley
       The Strange Case of the Locked Chest
        The Riddle of the Red-Haired Hebrew
        The Railway Carriage Crime
        The Case of the Burnt-Out Car
        The Problem of the Scented Ticket
        The Mystery of the Tattered Man
        The Mystery of the Firework Man
        Fire Bugs About!
        Who Killed Tom Boker?
        The Whispering Death
        The Clue of the Seagulls
        The Bad Eggs
        A Feeling that Failed
        An Episode in the Snow
        Contrary To The Evidence
        Of Six Suspects

Quality Trade Paperback, 221+ pp.
ISBN 978-1-55497-459-7     $25.00

Adobe pdf e-book, 221+ pp.
ISBN 978-1-55497-460-3     $10.00