William Edward Vickers

[1] Vickers is now remembered mostly for his attribution to Scotland Yard of a Department of Dead Ends, specialized in solving old, sometimes long-forgotten cases, mostly by chance encounters of odd bits of strange and apparently disconnected evidence.

In 1924 he published The Exploits of Fidelity Dove under the name David Durham, one of the rarest mystery books of the twentieth century.

[3] In September 1934, The Rubber Trumpet, the first of thirty-eight stories featuring the fictitious Department of Dead Ends, appeared in Pearson's Magazine.

The Manchester Evening News called one of his collections, "one of the half-dozen successful books of detective short stories published since the days of Sherlock Holmes.

"[4] Vickers's work has been adapted for film and TV, including Girl in the News (1940), Violent Moment (1959), A Question of Suspense (1961), and three episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (Season 3: 1957–58).