James M'Levy

Back in January, our campus book club began reading a short story collection that included a story by M'Levy. M'Levy, who wrote this collection of stories at the end of his Scottish law enforcement career in the mid-nineteenth century, wrote about cases he solved over the years. His expertise in catching thieves manifested itself in the volume, but the stories do not engage twenty-first century readers who expect more from their crime stories. While not sorry I read the collection, I recommend it only for people who truly want to read true stories of nineteenth-century thieves caught by a clever detective. Gale Making of the Modern Law, Legal Treatises, 1800-1926 series reprinted this edition from a copy in the the Harvard Law Library collection. A few pages were missing or damaged, and pages were inserted to alert the reader to these issues.… (more)