Description

The weird-and weirdly delightful-adventures of fiction’s first occult detective.

Flaxman Low, literature’s first professional, full-time “occult detective”-that is, an intrepid investigator who deploys the scientific method when tackling paranormal phenomena-appeared in a dozen stories first published from 1898-1899. His creators, the mother-and-son team Kate O’Brien Ryall Prichard and Hesketh “Hex” Prichard (who published as “E. and H. Heron”), endowed the Oxford-trained psychologist with the bravery and acumen to tackle every sort of adversary from ghosts, mummies, and vampires to a mushroom mannequin. Both less credulous and less cynical than earlier fictional investigators of the spirit world, Low always triumphs in the end . . . but not before scientifically demonstrating that even the most outre incidents and situations can’t hold a candle to the bizarre capacities of the human mind.

Publisher Review

ENDORSEMENTS

“At once dashing and cerebral, Flaxman Low is a supernatural Sherlock Holmes investigating the surreal and impossible, created by a mother and son duo who themselves seem to have come from a pulp story. Great to see these stories in a new edition!”
-Daniel Polansky, author of the Low Town book series

“New, disgusting, delightful thrills.”
-The Outlook (1899)