Burglars in Bucks [antikvár]

FOREWORDBy Michael Prendergast, M.D,It is to my friend Wilson that the design and method of the pages which follow is to be mainly attributed. Whether in or out of Scotland Yard, Wilson has always been an interested reader of detective novels, which he once declared to be " the beautiful roman-ticisation of my essentially uninteresting job."" I don't mean," he explained in response to my disclaimer, " that my job is uninteresting to me but then it's my job. It would make a very uninteresting meal for the devourers of detective novels. Why, take only one pointthat of chronology. We at the Yard have to take the evidence as it turns upand be glad to get it. If the important clue turns up at the beginning, we've got to have it then, and not save it, as your detective novelist can, till the crucial moment of the story. That's the enormous advantage of the narrative method; you can conceal as many as you like of the essential facts until you want them to appear, and so be dramatic without having to make your detective look a fool for having ignored clues that were lying under his nose. If you published the story of a caseI