Mr Bazalgette's agent

When Miriam Lea falls on hard times, an advertisement calling for private agents catches her eye, and within weeks she finds herself in Mr Bazalgette's employ as a private detective, travelling on a train to Hamburg in pursuit of an audacious fraudster.

What follows is a journey through some of the great cities of Europe - and eventually to South Africa - as Miss Lea attempts to find her man.

Miriam Lea is only the third ever British professional female detective to appear in a work of crime fiction. Originally published in 1888, Mr Bazalgette's Agent presents a determined and resourceful heroine in the figure of Miss Lea, who grapples with some very modern dilemmas of female virtue and vice.

Leonard Merrick said of the book, his first: 'It's a terrible book.

It's the worst thing I ever wrote. I bought them all up and destroyed them. You can't find any.' It seems Merrick was true to his word since copies of the book can now only be found in private collections and in a handful of university and national libraries throughout the world.

This new edition offers the modern crime fiction fan an opportunity to rediscover an enticing and rare detective story.