SOURCE: In an introduction to Best Martin Hewitt Detective Stories, Dover Publications, Inc., 1976, pp. vii-xiv.

In the following overview of Morrison's detective stories, Bleiler contrasts Martin Hewitt and Sherlock Holmes.

In detective stories the last decade of the nineteenth century was dominated by Sherlock Holmes. “A Scandal in Bohemia,” the first story of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, appeared in the July 1891 issue of The Strand Magazine, and was followed by a succession of stories that continued for some three years. But unfortunately for the publishers of The Strand Magazine, Holmes and A. Conan Doyle had to rest occasionally, and substitutions had to be made.

During the interregnum between the first and second series of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the editors of Strand ran as a stopgap a collection of cases by Dick Donovan, one of the hacks of the day. But recognizing that Donovan's work was...