J. S. Fletcher

[2] Michael Sadleir stated that Fletcher's historical novel, When Charles I Was King (1892), was his best work.

[4] Fletcher wrote several novels of rural life in imitation of Richard Jefferies, beginning with The Wonderful Wapentake (1894).

[4] In 1914, Fletcher wrote his first detective novel and went on to write over a hundred more, many featuring the private investigator Ronald Camberwell.

Most of his detective fiction works considerably pre-date that era, and even those few published within it do not conform to the closed form and strict rules professed, if not unfailingly observed, by the Golden Age writers.

[2][8] Ellis, Roger and Richard Williams, J. S. Fletcher: A Bibliographical Checklist of the British First Editions.