''Proceed with Caution'' is a 1937

detective novel Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as s ...

John Rhode Cecil John Charles Street (3 May 1884 – 8 December 1964), who was known to his colleagues, family and friends as John Street, began his military career as an artillery officer in the British Army. During the course of World War I, he became a ...

, the pen name of the British writer Cecil Street. It is the twenty-seventh in his long-running series of novels featuring

Lancelot Priestley Dr. Lancelot Priestley is a fictional investigator born in July 1869 in a series of books by John Rhode After 1924, Dr. Priestley took over from Dr. Thorndyke as the leading fictional forensic investigator in Britain, and featured in 72 novels ...

, a

Golden Age The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the '' Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages, Gold being the first and the one during which the G ...

armchair detective An armchair detective is a fictional investigator who does not personally visit a crime scene or interview witnesses; instead, the detective either reads the story of the crime in a newspaper or has it recounted by another person. As the armcha ...

. It was published in the United States the same year by Dodd Mead under the

alternative title An alternative title is a media sales device most prominently used in film distribution. Books and films are commonly released under a different title when they are screened or sold in a different country. This can vary from small change to the ...

''Body Unidentified''.Reilly p.1257

Synopsis

Superintendent Superintendent may refer to: *Superintendent (police), Superintendent of Police (SP), or Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), a police rank *Prison warden or Superintendent, a prison administrator *Superintendent (ecclesiastical), a church exec ...

Hanslet and Inspector Waghorn of Scotland Yard respectively investigate a

diamond Diamond is a solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the chemically stable form of carbon at room temperature and pressure, ...

robbery and a suspicious death. A consignment of valuable jewels have gone missing while being transported from

Hatton Garden Hatton Garden is a street and commercial zone in the Holborn district of the London Borough of Camden, abutting the narrow precinct of Saffron Hill which then abuts the City of London. It takes its name from Sir Christopher Hatton, a favouri ...

. Meanwhile a corpse is found in a

tar Tar is a dark brown or black viscous liquid of hydrocarbons and free carbon, obtained from a wide variety of organic materials through destructive distillation. Tar can be produced from coal, wood, petroleum, or peat. "a dark brown or black bi ...

burner in a

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

village, completely unrecognisable. It takes the genius of Dr. Priestley to demonstrate how these two events are linked.

Literary Significance

E.R. Punshon writing in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' felt " If only Mr. Rhode were a little more careful with his characterisation, if only his literary style were a little less pedestrian, he would take an even higher place than that his persistent—and consistent—ingenuity has won for him."

References

Bibliography

* Evans, Curtis. ''Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961''. McFarland, 2014. * Magill, Frank Northen . ''Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction: Authors, Volume 3''. Salem Press, 1988. * Reilly, John M. ''Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers''. Springer, 2015. 1937 British novels Novels by Cecil Street British crime novels British mystery novels British detective novels Collins Crime Club books Novels set in London Novels set in Kent {{1930s-crime-novel-stub