The Case of the Curious Client: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

Near the right temple was a hole, and down the forehead and along the nose was dried blood.

“Shot, by God! No wonder the poor old devil couldn’t hear.”

When the telephone bell rings in Bill Ellice’s Broad Street Detective Agency, it happens to be Ludovic Travers who takes the call. The new client is certainly out of the ordinary, for he claims that his life is in danger. He wants the firm to trace a nephew who would be a protection. Travers finds the Curious Client puzzling—and that night the client is murdered.

All that confronts the police is a series of perfect alibis and yet the enquiry has to go on. It leads to a night-club and a country house and to the queer business of a mink coat and a poultry-farm. And after that to a second murder.

Here are both Ludovic Travers and Christopher Bush at their best. To the legion of their admirers there is no need to say more.

The Case of the Curious Client was originally published in 1947. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

“There is something fine . . . about Bush’s writing that stands his work apart from the helter-skelter concoctions of the majority of his competitors.” Hoofs and Horns

Christopher Bush was born Charlie Christmas Bush in Norfolk in 1885. His father was a farm labourer and his mother a milliner. In the early years of his childhood he lived with his aunt and uncle in London before returning to Norfolk aged seven, later winning a scholarship to Thetford Grammar School. As an adult, Bush worked as a schoolmaster for 27 years, pausing only to fight in World War One, until retiring aged 46 in 1931 to be a full-time novelist. His first novel featuring the eccentric Ludovic Travers was published in 1926, and was followed by 62 additional Travers mysteries. These are all to be republished by Dean Street Press. Christopher Bush fought again in World War Two, and was elected a member of the prestigious Detection Club. He died in 1973.