Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia

Начало книги

The price of this magnificent volume is not twenty-five dollars as you might expect, not even fifteen or ten, but a paltry two-ninety-five. It sounds preposterous, I know, but it’s really true! All the wisdom of all the ages for only two ninety-five!”

The “magnificent volume” in question is The Compendium of Human Knowledge, a handy dandy single volume which offered “all you will ever need to know, the answer to every question… Classified, condensed and abbreviated.”

A variation of that huckster’s spiel lies at the heart of every story Frank Gruber wrote about Oliver Quade, the self-proclaimed Human Encyclopedia, and one of the more intriguing sleuths to appear in the hard-boiled detective pulps of the 1930s.

Intriguing, because in a world of steel-eyed cops and men who made trouble their business, when it came to sleuthing Quade was undeniably a rank amateur, with no more business sticking his nose into a murder investigation than the average reader. He had absolutely no franchise upon which to build a series — not even the flimsy guise of an advice columnist for the love-lorn (Frederick C. Davis’ Lora Lorne) or the shaky premise of an employment agency specializing in “odd jobs” (Alan Farley’s Mike Tyre).

Читать дальше →