Henry Wade was the pseudonym of Major Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher. That’s right: he had two titles and 3 names (four if you count the hyphenated name as two). But don’t let that mislead you. If you’re expecting Henry Wade’s detective novels to have a sleuth à la Lord Peter Wimsey running around, making pedantic comments and a general nuisance of themselves, you’re entirely wrong.
No, his detective is Inspector John Poole, one of the most likeable police detectives I’ve ever come across. He has a college education, but he doesn’t go off into irrelevant asides about the limits of translating The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám into Swahili. He does have a romantic interest in this novel, but it’s delightfully subdued, producing extremely memorable moments of banter.