The Riddle of the Lilac Room

Thomas W Hanshew was born in 1857 in Brooklyn, New York.Little is known of his life. As a 16 year old he began a career as an actor playing minor parts with various companies, but he made little progress.However, as an author he made rather more progress but perhaps in quantity not quality. Over his lifetime he wrote over 150 novels and numerous short stories. He wrote several of these works with his wife, Mary and also occasionally wrote as Charlotte May Kingsley along with other more exotic pseudonyms such as Dashing Charley, Old Cap Collier, H O Cooke, Old Cap Darrell and R T Emmett. His most enduring character was the detective Hamilton Cleek. The Victorian era was awash with detectives and their stories filling pages in periodicals and magazines, with their authors in pursuit of the financial gains and the audience popularity of a certain Sherlock Holmes.Hanshew’s attempt at a rival character was Hamilton Cleek who began his career as a thief, as well as being the King of Maurevania, and was known to all as ‘the man with 40 faces’, due to his skills at disguising himself. He also spoke a wide range of languages and so was able to slip into situations to gather valuable information that lesser detectives could not.Thomas W Hanshew died on the 3rd March 1914, in London, England.