Cleek the Man of Forty Faces by Thomas W. Hanshew

by Thomas Hanshew

Overview

An ex-cracksman turned Scotland Yard detective, Cleek's slim and faultlessly dressed form is topped by an india-rubber-like face, of which he has remarkable control. With the power to distort and transform his visage and mimic any mannerism he desires, Cleek (with the assistance of his cockney assistant "Dollops") makes a super natural detective!Cleek's exploits are, to say the least, highly improbable, but the book is enormous fun. The goodies are good and the baddies are very bad indeed, but beware - things are not always what they seem. Suspend your disbelief and enjoy a rattling good yarn!

Product Details

BN ID:	2940012911711
Publisher:	Granto Classic Books
Publication date:	05/30/2011
Series:	Thomas Hanshew , #1
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	357 KB

About the Author

Thomas W. Hanshew (1857 � 1914) was an American actor and writer, born in Brooklyn, N. Y. He went on the stage when only 16 years old, playing minor parts with Ellen Terry's company. Subsequently he played important roles with Clara Morris and Adelaide Neilson. Later he was associated with a publishing house in London, where he resided at the close of his life. He used, among others, the pen name "Charlotte May Kingsley," and wrote more than 150 novels.

Hanshew's best-known creation was the consulting detective Hamilton Cleek, known as "the man of the forty faces" for his incredible skill at disguise. The central figure in dozens of short stories that began to appear in 1910 and were subsequently collected in a series of books, Cleek is based in Clarges Street, London, where he is constantly consulted by Inspector Narkom of Scotland Yard. Hamilton Cleek is laughably unrealistic, at least to the modern reader, not only for his ability to impersonate anyone but for his physical derring-do and his frequent melodramatic encounters with Margot, "Queen of the Apaches", and her partner-in-crime Merode