The Black Bag Left on a Doorstep | Catherine Louisa Pirkis | A Bitesized Audiobook

When thieves steal some valuable jewellery from a country house, the police suspect an inside job and focus their investigation on the servants. 'Lady Detective' Loveday Brooke is asked to investigate, but for some reason she seems more interested in the mystery of a black bag abandoned on an elderly lady's doorstep...

A new recording of a classic public domain text. Read by Simon Stanhope for Bitesized Audio.

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Catherine Louisa Pirkis (1839–1910), often credited as C. L. Pirkis, was born Catherine Louisa Lyne to a middle class family in London. She became a prominent author of detective and mystery fiction in the final quarter of the 19th century, publishing 14 novels between 1877 and 1894, after which she gave up writing in order to focus on campaigning for animal rights. She co-founded, with her husband Frederick Edward Pirkis and some like-minded friends, the British National Canine Defence League, which still exists today under the name 'The Dogs Trust'. As a writer she is best remembered for her last published work, 'The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective', a series of adventures featuring the eponymous sleuth, almost certainly the first professional female detective in fiction, and the first to be created by a female author. An insight into contemporary attitudes to the revolutionary nature of the character may be seen in an 1893 review in the Glasgow Herald, which, after praising Brooke's insights and detective skill, added "We are just afraid Miss Brooke is too clever in catching criminals ever to catch a husband." Almost inevitably "Miss Brooke" became known as "The female Sherlock Holmes"; she certainly shared Holmes' eye for detail and ability to see past the obvious solution to find the truth behind the crime. Pirkis died after a long illness in October 1910, just two days before her husband also died; they were survived by their two children.

'The Black Bag Left on a Doorstep' was the first story to feature Loveday Brooke. It first appeared in January 1893, when it was printed in the February 1893 issue of the Ludgate Monthly magazine; the complete series was subsequently published in book form by Hutchinson in 1894 under the title 'The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective'.

Recording © Bitesized Audio 2022.