Sherlock Holmes remains the most famous of all fictional detectives. But he was not the only solver of crimes to patrol the gaslit streets of late Victorian and Edwardian London. The years between 1890 and 1914 were the heyday of the English (and American) story magazines and their pages were filled with platoons of private detectives, police officers and eccentric criminologists.

These were the 'Rivals of Sherlock Holmes' and this second anthology of stories edited by Nick Rennison, author of Sherlock Holmes: An Unauthorised Biography, highlights fifteen of them:

Mr Booth created by Herbert Keen
Max Carrados created by Ernest Bramah
Florence Cusack created by LT Meade and Robert Eustace
John Dollar, 'The Crime Doctor' created by EW Hornung
Dick Donovan created by JE Preston Muddock
Horace Dorrington created by Arthur Morrison
Martin Hewitt created by Arthur Morrison
Judith Lee created by Richard Marsh
Madelyn Mack created by Hugh Cosgro Weir
Lady Molly of Scotland Yard created by Baroness Orczy
Addington Peace created by Fletcher Robinson
Mark Poignand and Kala Persad created by Headon Hill
John Pym created by David Christie Murray
Christopher Quarles created by Percy Brebner
John Thorndyke created by R Austin Freeman