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The Club of Queer Trades (1905) is G.K. Chesterton's sparkling collection of six linked mysteries built around the narrator's discovery of a most unusual London society — the Club of Queer Trades, whose members must each practise a profession so singular that no one else could do it. Through the eyes of the young writer (here named Swinburne), his friend Basil Grant — a former judge who resigned the bench after publicly renouncing its "mountainous frivolity" — and Basil's detective brother Rupert, we meet Major Brown and the Tremendous Adventures of his garden; the painful fall of a great reputation and the gentleman who answers "Sir Walter Cholmondeliegh"; the awful reason of the Vicar's visit; the singular speculation of the house-agent; the noticeable conduct of Professor Chadd; and the eccentric seclusion of the Old Lady. Each tale is a paradox and a puzzle: the queer trades turn out to be private courts of honour, adventure agencies and other astonishing inventions through which Basil, now president of the Club, dispenses a justice kinder and stranger than the law. Witty, whimsical and quietly profound, it is one of the great detective novelist's most charming early books.
