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H(enry) C(hristopher) Bailey |
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Round Reggie Fortune, doctor and detective, debuted in 1920-as did Hercule Poirot-and the good-living and straight-talking agent of Providence remains the chief claim to fame of his prolific author, H.C. Bailey. Fortune is a stylish character whose stories and novels bear an unmistakable stamp. In them, Bailey creates a voice almost as individual, though not so compelling, as Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. When Fortune observes that "Providence expects a lot for its money" (in Shadow on the Wall, 1934), the statement is in his characteristic idiom. His creed, expressed in an early story, is similarly vivid: "I don't let anybody but me kill my patients." Bailey was acknowledged by his contemporary Howard Haycraft, writing in Murder for Pleasure (1968), as one of the five most important writers of Golden Age detective fiction of his time, and Julian Symons suggests in Mortal Consequences (1973) that Fortune was possibly the most popular sleuth in England between the world wars.
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