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  • Published: 18 February 2021
  • ISBN: 9781529127744
  • Imprint: BBC DL
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Length: 3 hr 0 min
  • Narrators: Jim Norton, William Gaminara

Thorndyke: Forensic Investigator

A BBC Radio Collection



Short stories from thriller writer R Austin Freeman

A thrilling collection of stories from R Austin Freeman

John Evelyn Thorndyke, medical doctor, scientist and barrister, was the creation of R Austin Freeman, himself a medical man and something of an adventurer. Freeman wrote the Thorndyke stories over almost a forty year period from 1907 to 1941, from the early Edwardian period to the middle of the Second World War.

Thorndyke is arguably the first true forensic detective for, while we remember Sherlock Holmes for his genius in unearthing significant detail, only Thorndyke's methods pass the test of real-world authenticity.

It might be maintained that while Holmes perhaps did it with style, Thorndyke does it with science.

Read by William Gaminara and Jim Norton.

Produced by John Taylor
A Fiction Factory production

©2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

  • Published: 18 February 2021
  • ISBN: 9781529127744
  • Imprint: BBC DL
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Length: 3 hr 0 min
  • Narrators: Jim Norton, William Gaminara

About the author

R. Austin Freeman

Richard Austin Freeman (11 April 1862 London – 28 September 1943 Gravesend) — known as R. Austin Freeman — was a British writer of detective stories, mostly featuring the medico-legal forensic investigator Dr. Thorndyke. He claimed to have invented the inverted detective story (a crime fiction in which the commission of the crime is described at the beginning, usually including the identity of the perpetrator, with the story then describing the detective's attempt to solve the mystery). Freeman used some of his early experiences as a colonial surgeon in his novels.

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