Welcome to a series of short mystery stories set in Victorian times. The focus of the stories is a travelling hat seller, Mr. Bainton Gray, who uses his sharp powers of observation to solve crimes. The stories are essentially whodunnits, though do not always revolve around a murder plot.
The stories were written by a young lady who goes by the pen name of "Miss Quin". Miss Quin has previously described herself as very "shy" - and doesn't like to reveal her true identity! All she will reveal is that she lives in the UK and that this is her first attempt at writing stories.
Miss Quin wrote the original versions of the Bainton Gray stories as a light hearted effort to amuse other forum members at www.agathachristie.com. She never intended her forum stories to be great works of fiction, so the original versions weren't word perfect. As space was limited on the forum, the original stories were kept short.
Despite this, her crime solving milliner has now proved so popular that she has had comments from Bainton Gray fans in several different countries.
The original short forum stories were written in several instalments, with each instalment being uploaded to the forum as it was written. Each chapter contained clues for forum members to solve, with the final instalment containing the Solution to the plot, hence revealing the identity of the guilty party. Forum members would try to guess "whodunnit" before the solution was revealed - but not many got it right!
Miss Quin has received lots of appreciative comments about her stories. As a result of their popularity, she is now in the process of rewriting the original stories as longer more detailed mysteries.The stories have been uploaded to this blog for reader feedback, so please be aware that these are early drafts and not the finished versions. Work is still in progress and the plots and characters are still being worked on.
Please click on the links to the stories in the menu on the right hand side. It's best to read the stories in the correct order, as listed, because they're a continuing series and do follow on from each other.
The correct order is as follows:
- The Mystery of Barnaby Hall
- The Hatshop Mystery
- The Mystery of Cunningham Court (not on the site yet)*
- The Churchyard Mystery
- The Secret of Tryphena Salt
- The Sweetshop Murders
*this story is being rewritten
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Update 1st June 2012:
Miss Quin is currently working on a new story :
