Background

Joseph Fletcher was born on February 7, 1863, in Halifax, West Yorkshire.

Education

Joseph Fletcher attended Silcoates School in Wakefield. He also studied law before turning to journalism.

Career

Joseph Fletcher began his career as a journalist and was once the sub-editor for a London magazine called Practical Teacher in 1881-1883. After it, he served as a freelance journalist in London, and later became a staff writer and columnist for the Leeds Mercury newspaper.

By 1898, Joseph Fletcher had quit journalism so he could devote all of his time to writing books. Soon after, he published his three-volume A Picturesque History of Yorkshire, the first of several historical works that led him to become a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1918. As for his fiction, Fletcher had already penned a few romance novels during the 1890s. However, a keen interest in criminology led him to concentrate on creating detective and mystery novels.

Joseph Fletcher tasted his first success early in his career in Great Britain, rivaling Edgar Wallace, another famous detective writer, by 1920. He remained relatively unknown in the United States, however, until President Woodrow Wilson, who was a compulsive reader of detective fiction, praised Fletcher's The Middle Temple Murder, which is widely considered his best work. With Wilson's endorsement, many of Fletcher's previous writings were subsequently published in the United States, where they received a broad audience and sold many copies.

While Joseph Fletcher developed several different sleuths during his long career writing detective fiction, many critics consider two of his most important, to be Frank Spargo and Ronald Camberwell. Spargo appeared in many of Fletcher's most successful novels, including The Middle Temple Murder. Fletcher wrote the Ronald Camberwell series in the 1930s. It is about a private inquiry agent in London who is in partnership with a former inspector of the Criminal Investigation Department. The two men work in cooperation with Scotland Yard to solve crimes.

Joseph Fletcher reached his creative and productive peak during the 1920s and early 1930s. In the five-year period between 1920 and 1925, he published seventeen detective novels, a feat that drew the praise of a New York Times critic.

Achievements

• Joseph Fletcher was well known as a writer. He authored more than two hundred books. He was best remembered for his detective novels, which were popular both in North America and in Great Britain. Fletcher's short-story collections, The Adventures of Archer Dawe, Sleuth-Hound, and Paul Campenhaye, Specialists in Criminology, considered among his best work.

Works

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  • The Middle Temple Murder

    (An intrepid young journalist investigates the murder of a...)

    1919
  • Lynne Court Spinney

    (Doctor Hextall receives a call in the early hours of the ...)

    1916
  • Paul Campenhaye

    (Ten stories narrated by a likable private investigator wh...)

    1918
  • The Dressing Room Murder

    (Sir John Riversley, the famous actor-manager, was due to ...)

    1930
  • The Herapath Property

    (When Jacob Herapath, the wealthy property developer, is f...)

    1920
  • The Box Hill Murder

    (Someone killed Susan Wheeler by breaking her neck, hid he...)

    1929
  • The Orange-Yellow Diamond

    (On the outskirts of London, the body of a murdered pawnsh...)

    1920
  • The Passenger To Folkestone

    (It was early one morning when going down to bathe that Ro...)

    1927
  • The Guarded Room

    (Behind locked doors, young Morrison worked at his inventi...)

    1931
  • The Ransom for London

    (Bibliomystery features blackmailed Prime Minister The Rig...)

    1914
  • The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation

    (In the dim light, he saw a man looking out upon him - a m...)

    1917
  • The Kang-He Vase

    (The main character is Ben, a trainee lawyer who survived ...)

    1924
  • Sea Fog

    (I think my first notion was that this was the cry of some...)

    1925
  • The Secret of Secrets

    (Too many people are interested in an innovative invention...)

    1929
  • The Charing Cross Mystery

    (Hetherwick, a young barrister, is heading home late one n...)

    1923
  • The Matheson Formula

    (Robert Matheson discovers a new explosive, "so effective ...)

    1929
  • The Bedford Row Mystery

    (Mister Henry Marchmont is a prosperous and respectable so...)

    1925
  • The Pinfold

    (This story is written around the scenes and folk of a Yor...)

    1911
  • In the Mayor's Parlour

    (This locked-room mystery will leave you guessing until th...)

    1922
  • Todmanhawe Grange

    (The book was published after Joseph Fletcher's death in 1...)

    1937
  • And Sudden Death

    (The book was published after Joseph Fletcher's death in 1...)

    1938
  • The Safety Pin

    (An elderly man called Deane is murdered in an English tow...)

    1924
  • The Borough Treasurer

    (The small Yorkshire town of Highmarket was a quiet place....)

    1919
  • Scarhaven Keep

    (Scarhaven Keep is a classic missing-man mystery. When a f...)

    1920
  • The Solution Of A Mystery

    (We all have secrets. Those secret secrets that we keep to...)

    1932
  • Frank Carisbroke's Stratagem 1888
  • Andrewlina 1889
  • Mr. Spivey's Clerk 1890
  • The Winding Way 1890
  • Through Storm and Stress 1892
  • Old Lattimer's Legacy 1892
  • The Quarry Farm 1893
  • The Remarkable Adventure of Walter Trelawney 1894
  • The Wonderful City 1894
  • Where Highways Cross 1895
  • At The Gate of The Fold 1896
  • In the Days of Drake 1897
  • Life in Arcadia 1896
  • Mistress Spitfire 1896
  • The Builders 1897
  • The Making of Matthias 1898
  • The Paths of the Prudent 1899
  • The Harvest Moon 1908
  • The Golden Spur 1901
  • The Three Days' Terror 1901
  • The Investigators 1902
  • Anthony Everton 1903
  • Lucian the Dreamer 1903
  • The Secret Way 1903
  • David March 1904
  • The Pigeon's Cave 1904
  • The Threshing-Floor 1905
  • Highcroft Farm 1906
  • A Maid and Her Money 1906
  • Daniel Quayne 1907
  • The Harringtons of Highcroft Farm 1907
  • The Queen of a Day 1907
  • Mothers in Israel 1908
  • Paradise Court 1908
  • The Mantle of Ishmael 1909
  • Marchester Royal 1909
  • Hardican's Hollow 1910
  • The Fine Air of Morning 1912
  • The Bartenstein Case 1913
  • I'd Venture All for Thee! 1913
  • Perris of the Cherry-Trees 1913
  • The Secret Cargo 1913
  • The Shadow of Ravenscliffe 1914
  • The Wolves and the Lamb 1914
  • The King versus Wargrave 1915
  • The Annexation Society 1916
  • Malvery Hold 1917
  • The Perilous Crossways 1917
  • The Talleyrand Maxim 1919
  • The Valley of Headstrong Men 1919
  • The Lost Mr. Linthwaite 1920
  • The Paradise Mystery 1920
  • The Root of All Evil 1921
  • The Heaven-kissed Hill 1922
  • The Markenmore Mystery 1922
  • The Middle of Things 1922
  • Ravensdene Court 1922
  • The Ambitious Lady 1923
  • The Copper Box 1923
  • The Mazaroff Murder 1923
  • The Cartwright Gardens Murder 1924
  • False Scent 1924
  • Rippling Ruby 1923
  • The Time-Worn Town 1924
  • The Great Brighton Mystery 1925
  • The Mill of Many Windows 1925
  • The Mortover Grange Mystery 1926
  • The Stolen Budget 1926
  • The Green Rope 1927
  • The Murder in the Pallant 1927
  • Cobweb Castle 1928
  • The Double Chance 1928
  • The Wild Oat 1928
  • The Wrist Mark 1928
  • The House in Tuesday Market 1929
  • The Borgia Cabinet 1930
  • The South Foreland Murder 1930
  • The Yorkshire Moorland Murder 1930
  • Murder at Wrides Park 1931
  • Murder in Four Degrees 1931
  • The Burma Ruby 1932
  • Murder in the Squire's Pew 1932
  • Murder of the Ninth Baronet 1932
  • Murder of the Only Witness 1933
  • The Mystery Of The London Banker 1933
  • The Ebony Box 1934
  • Murder Of The Secret Agent 1934
  • The Eleventh Hour 1935
  • The Wonderful Wapentake 1895
  • God's Failures 1897
  • At the Blue Bell Inn 1898
  • Pasquinado 1898
  • From the Broad Acres 1899
  • Mr. Poskitt's Nightcaps 1910
  • Exterior to the Evidence 1920
  • The Secret of the Barbican and Other Stories 1924
  • The Massingham Butterfly 1926
  • Behind the Monocle and Other Stories 1930
  • The Malachite Jar, and Other Stories 1930
  • The Marrendon Mystery, and Other Stories of Crime and Detection 1930
  • The Juvenile Poems of J.S. Fletcher 1879
  • Early Poems 1882
  • Anima Christi 1887
  • Poems 1893
  • Ballads of Revolt 1897
  • A Short Life of Cardinal Newman 1890
  • When Charles the First was King 1892
  • Baden-Powell of Mafeking 1900
  • A book about Yorkshire 1908
  • The Enchanting North 1908
  • Nooks & Corners of Yorkshire 1911
  • Memories of a Spectator 1912
  • Memorials of a Yorkshire Parish 1917
  • The Making of Modern Yorkshire, 1750-1914 1918
  • The Cistercians in Yorkshire 1919
  • Sheffield 1919
  • Leeds 1919
  • Pontefract 1920
  • Yorkshiremen of the Restoration 1921
  • Harrogate and Knaresborough 1920
  • The Reformation in Northern England 1925

Views

Quotations: "I believe I got my interest in criminology right from the fact that a famous case of fraud was heard at the Quarter Sessions at a town where I was at school."

"When I left school, I meant to be a barrister, and I read criminal law and attended a great many queer trials for some time. Turning to journalism instead, I knew of a great many queer cases and mysteries, and now and then did "special commissions" for various prominent papers on famous murder trials."

Membership

• 

  Royal Historical Society , United Kingdom

Connections

Joseph Fletcher's wife was Rosamond Langbridge. They had a son, Wilfrid Fletcher.

Wife:

Rosamond Grant Langbridge

Rosamond Langbridge was an English writer. She was the author of The White Moth.

Son:

Wilfrid Fletcher