The fourth volume in the Curated Crime Collection is available for sale. Titled The Complete Crimes of Romney Pringle, it offers all of Clifford Ashdown’s tales regarding their master criminal.
Clifford Ashdown was a pen name used by two medical doctors, both with experience in the penal system. In fact, it’s entirely likely that R. Austin Freeman and John James Pitcairn met while serving at London’s Holloway Prison before collaborating on writing projects. Certainly, their individual experiences there would have given them insight into criminal life, and the final chapters of Complete Crimes are set in an unnamed prison.
That said, Pringle is far from an ordinary criminal. Freeman and Pitcairn apparently sensed that readers might find little interest in a thief like those they met at Holloway. Instead, they created one whose crimes are not motivated by financial need, whose life is filled with high adventure, and whose sense of right and wrong at least flirts with that of Robin Hood. Regarding the latter, Pringle often targets other criminals, and in one case, even uses his criminal skills to rescue a victim of foul play. Nonetheless, he also somehow seems to personally benefit from whatever unlawful opportunity comes his way.
Pringle is an excellent example of how authors responded to the wild popularity of Sherlock Holmes — not by creating yet another detective character, as so many of their colleagues did — but by introducing a villain character engaging enough to sustain, in this case, a series of twelve short stories. Keeping this storytelling challenge in mind has been vital to my selection process as I proceed through the nine-volume Curated Crime Collection. The criminals don’t have to likeable, mind you. But they do have to be entrancing.
And The Complete Crimes of Romney Pringle starts the second phase of these releases: The Crime Wave Crests. The next book, which will be released soon, is a “partners in crime” volume combining Josiah Flynt’s The Rise of Ruderick Clowd and Miriam Michelson’s In the Bishop’s Carriage. That will be followed by The Complete Crimes of the Motor Pirate, which brings together a novel and its sequel featuring G. Sidney Paternoster’s title super-villain.
Then I begin work on the final three volumes, which I’m designating The Crime Wave Crashes. For now, though, let me nudge you take a look at the trio of works comprising the first phase: The Crime Wave Rises.
— Tim
BROM BONES BOOKS 