Showing results by author "Austin Small" in All Categories

Austin J. Small (1894-1929) was a popular British mystery and thriller writer who was published in the United Kingdom under the pseudonym 'Seamark'. The Man They Couldn't Arrest - written in 1925 - is a fast paced thriller about Valman Dain, an inventor who (amongst numerous other intriguing gadgets) develops a mechanism for eavesdropping on conversations using the telephone network.

It takes two years for the elderly bank clerk to plan and commit the perfect crime. The crime where nobody will ever pursue the criminal and where he will be free to enjoy his ill-gotten gains for the rest of his life. His crime is so brilliantly planned that nobody will ever know...nobody need ever have known...had he not inadvertently given himself away with one tiny slip....

Thomas Masterick had spent the best years of his life trying to solve the problem. Why had he been convicted of the murder of Fred Smith? Why had life and "the system" been so unfair to him? He knew he had not killed Fred Smith. He wasn't even sure that Fred Smith had been killed. Eventually Masterick solves the problem and sends a greater shock through the legal world than it has ever known.