Blackshirt Passes By

By Rederic Jeffries

For once Richard Verrell was minding his own business.

Taking an evening constitutional stroll.

Passing by, as it were.

But his detached state of mind changed abruptly when he saw his own car being driven dangerously along a quiet street at the back of the British Museum.

Verrell was not the man to stand still and wonder. He wanted to know what was going on – and quickly.

Before long he learned that the driver of the car had just perpetrated a daring ‘snatch’ raid on the British Museum, where he had stolen only one article: a gold and ruby horse from the Saladin collection.

But why only the one article?

A pretty problem which could scarcely fail to interest Blackshirt.

Blackshirt Passes By moves with a pace that has come to be expected by the many millions of readers who have delighted in the past exploits of this immortal character.

Roderic Jeffries was born in London in 1926 and was educated at Harrow View House Preparatory School and the Department of Navigation, University of Southampton. In 1943, he joined the New Zealand Shipping Company as an apprentice and sailed to Australia and New Zealand, but later transferred to the Union Castle Company in order to visit a different part of the world. He returned to England in 1949 where he was admitted to the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn and read for the Bar at the same time as he began to write. He was called to the Bar in 1953, and after one year’s pupilage, practiced law for a few terms during which time there to write full time. His first book, a sea story for juveniles, was published in 1950.