The Compleat Deteckative Memoirs of Philo Gubb, Esquire

by Ellis Parker Butler, Douglas G. Greene (Introduction ), Rea Irvin (Illustrator )

There are forty stories by Ellis Parker Butler; 37 written for The Red Book Magazine about his ludicrous paper-hanger-detective, Philo Gubb, graduate in twelve complete lessons of the Rising Sun Correspondence School of Detecting.

That’s surely a record—37 stories about the same character in the same magazine! The reason, of course, is simple: Mr. Butler has used his wonderful facility for writing humor and added a rare sense of detective-mystery plot-making. Each of the Philo Gubb situations, handled seriously, might have made a good straight detective story.

We think these are the most consistently funny stories any American magazine ever published. Long live Philo Gubb!

In 1913 the great American humorist created the one of the best comic detectives of all times in the paper-hanger sleuth Philo Gubb, who received his training from The Rising Sun Correspondence School of Detecting. He had, wrote Butler, "a number of notable successes. It was true that ... he had never succeeded in solving a mystery he had undertaken or in capturing a malefactor he had sought, but as he invariably solved something else or caught some other malefactor, he was well satisfied." For the first time, this book collects all of Philo Gubb’s "notable successes."

547 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2010

About the author

Ellis Parker Butler was an American author. He was the author of more than 30 books and more than 2,000 stories and essays. His career spanned more than forty years, and his stories, poems, and articles were published in more than 225 magazines.