Sexton Blake Wins

Sexton Blake is a fictional detective who has been featured in many British comic strips, novels, and dramatic productions since 1893. He began following the Sherlock Holmes trope as is evident even by the illustrations but later morphed into an adventurer-sleuth rather than just a conventional detective. Blake was featured in various publications from 1893 to 1978 in a variety of formats: single-issue adventures, short stories, serials and comic strips. In all, Blake appeared in over 4,000 stories by more than 200 different authors. During its heyday (1920s–1940s), Blake’s adventures were widely read and translated into at least twenty different languages, including Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Dutch, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Italian, French, Arabic, Hindi and Afrikaans.
The first Sexton Blake story was “The Missing Millionaire”. Written by Harry Blyth (using the pseudonym Hal Meredeth), it was published in The Halfpenny Marvel number 6, on 20 December 1893, a story paper owned by the Amalgamated Press. Blyth wrote six more Sexton Blake tales, three for the Marvel and three for The Union Jack, a story paper launched in April 1894. The Amalgamated Press purchased the rights to Blake along with the first story Blyth had submitted and from 1895 onwards several authors began to pen Blake tales beginning a very profitable syndicate structure. From August 1905, Blake became the resident character in The Union Jack, appearing in every issue until its transformation into the Detective Weekly, in 1933.
Blake’s popularity began to grow in the early twentieth century, and he was syndicated in several different story papers. These ranged from serials in the tabloid-sized The Boys’ Friend, complete tales in the compact Penny Pictorial, and short stories in Answers, one of the Amalgamated Press’ most popular papers. Longer tales over 50,000 words appeared in The Boys’ Friend Library and the success of these led to the creation of The Sexton Blake Library, in 1915. This digest-sized publication specialized in longer tales, and at the height of its popularity was published 5 times a month. It ran for almost 50 years.
In 1959, Fleetway Publications acquired the rights to Sexton Blake adventures and published The Sexton Blake Library until the title’s demise. The final tale, The Last Tiger, was published in June 1963. In 1965, Blake's editor William Howard Baker licensed the rights of the Sexton Blake character. He published the fifth series of The Sexton Blake Library independently via Mayflower-Dell Books, which ran until 1968. He then issued a final series of four Sexton Blake novels, using his Howard Baker Books imprint, in 1969. From 1968 to 1971, Valiant published new comic strips in the style of the Knockout strips from decades earlier. Blake’s last original appearance was in Sexton Blake and the Demon God, a period thriller with ancient curses and cliff-hanger endings, in 1978.
There are several classic characters from great thriller writers and this first volume introduces some of them.