Dr John Evelyn Thorndyke is a fictional detective in a long series of novels and short stories by R. Austin Freeman (1862-1943). Thorndyke was described by his author as a 'medical jurispractitioner': originally a medical doctor, he turned to the bar and became one of the first - in modern parlance - forensic scientists. His solutions were based on his method of collecting all possible data (including dust and pond weed) and making inferences from them before looking at any of the protagonists and motives in the crimes. (Freeman, it is said, conducted all experiments mentioned in the stories himself.) It is this method which gave rise to one of Freeman's most ingenious inventions, the inverted detective story, where the criminal act is described first and the interest lies in Thorndyke's subsequent unravelling of it.
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Thorndyke resided at 5A King's Bench Walk, Inner Temple. He was often assisted by his friend and foil Christopher Jervis, who usually acts as narrator, and always by the resourceful Nathaniel Polton, his crinkly-faced lab technician. Thorndyke tended to have a better relationship with the police (usually in the form of Superintendent Miller) than Sherlock Holmes did, despite proving them wrong on numerous occasions. Thorndyke, although tall, athletic, handsome and clever, never married.
Between 1907 and 1942 Thorndyke appeared in around 60 novels and short stories.
The short-story collections are:
Two different omnibus editions of the collected Dr. Thorndyke short stories exist. The British edition is R. Austin Freeman, The Famous Cases of Dr. Thorndyke: Thirty-seven of His Criminal Investigations as set down by R. Austin Freeman (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1929 and later reprintings). The American edition is R. Austin Freeman, The Dr. Thorndyke Omnibus: 38 of His Criminal Investigations as set down by R. Austin Freeman (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1932 and later reprintings). The American edition includes one story, "The Mandarin's Pearl," printed in the first Thorndyke short-story collection, John Thorndyke's Cases, but omitted from the British omnibus. Two other stories, "The Man with the Nailed Shoes" and "A Message from the Deep Sea", though also appearing in the first Dr. Thorndyke short-story collection, John Thorndyke's Cases, were omitted from the British and American editions of the omnibus collection.
The order in the list appearing below is that of the American edition, which reprinted the five collections of stories in the following order (with two omissions already noted and also indicated below): The Singing Bone, Dr. Thorndyke's Cases, The Magic Casket, The Puzzle Lock, and The Blue Scarab. The British edition gives the stories in a different order from that of the American edition, indicated below by a bracketed note appearing after each story title giving its place in the British edition, denoted by the abbreviation UK and a two-digit number.
The first six stories of the list are "inverted" detective stories, divided into two parts. In the first part of each story, Freeman presented an account of the commission of a crime; in the second part, he presented an account, by Thorndyke's colleague Dr. Christopher Jervis, of Dr. Thorndyke's solution of the crime. These inverted stories are generally deemed by critics and scholars of the field to be his most creative contributions to the writing of detective stories, but the remaining stories, called "direct" stories, are also well-wrought and entertaining.
A modern publisher, Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, has issued a 10-volume edition of the complete works of R. Austin Freeman, including all the Thorndyke novels and short stories. Its current availability is unclear.
A short series featuring Dr Thorndyke was produced by the BBC in 1964. Entitled Thorndyke, the title character was played by veteran British actor Peter Copley.
Based on the stories written by R Austin Freeman, the episodes, all of which except the pilot are missing from the BBC archive, were as follows:
Two stories were also adapted as part of the Thames TV series The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes in 1971-3. These were:
Both series are available on DVD - in the UK from Network Video and in the USA from Acornmedia.
In 2011 the BBC aired a radio adaptation of some of the Thorndyke short stories, Thorndyke: Forensic Investigator, read by Jim Norton, on BBC Radio 4 Extra.[1]