Geoffrey Boscobell

Created by Cecil M. Wills
(1891-1966)

“Share your suspicions with Ex-Inspecor Boscobell”
–front cover tagline on 1st edition of Defeat of a Detective

When we first meet him, in Author in Distress (1934), DETECTIVE INSPECTOR GEOFFREY BOSCOBELL is a rising star in Scotland Yard, his boyish demeanor and easy-going facade never quite hiding a shrewd and cunning mind. People must have noticed, though, because by The Murder of the Chamois (1935), he was a superintendent.

But it all came tumbling down about a few books later, when his wife and son were abducted and went missing, and suspicion pointed to a criminal gang the young inspector had run afoul of. Completely devastated, he resigned from the Yard, and set himself up as a private investigator, in a series of books by Maitland Cecil Melville Wills.

Wills was born in Bristol, and educated at Charterhouse and Manchester University, and served as a captain in the British Army during the First World War. He began writing in the thirties, and worked for the War Office during World War II. He published more than twenty-five detective novels, in all, including three books featuring Superintendent Roger Ellerdine (and his Detective Sergeant “Cherry” Blossom), who had appeared earlier in the Boscobell books and who appeared in thes–a sneaky way for Wills to ensure a smooth transition between the two series.

UNDER OATH

“Wills’s books are pedestrian two-man investigations in the tradition of George Bellairs.”
— gadetection
“Another generally competent product of the Golden Age…”
–Allen J. Hubin on Fatal Accident