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The Other Baker Street Detective
 In 1904 Amalgamated Press decided to build Blake up into a replacement for Holmes, whose disappearance was still mourned by mystery readers. So Blake was moved to Baker Street and equipped with dressing gown, violin and pipe. He was also given an assistant, Tinker - an orphan waif who was a cross between Doyle’s Billy the Page and Wiggins of the Baker Street Irregulars, and who was the perfect identification figure for juvenile readers. Norman Wright is the co-author of SEXTON BLAKE: A CELEBRATION:
"To start with, Blake didn’t have a regular assistant. But, as we know, all good detectives need assistants, that way they don’t have to soliloquise to themselves. One early assistant had the unfortunate name of ‘We-wee’ but the definitive Blake assistant was Tinker. To start with Tinker is rather a quietish sort of character; a cheeky little monkey. But, as the years passed, Tinker became far more important to the stories and the plots. He became more assertive, he aged a little, and by the late ‘20s he could pilot a plane as well as Blake (who he always referred to as his ‘Guv’nor’), he could drive The Grey Panther (Blake’s bullet-proof Rolls), and he was very useful in a tight corner; he had a good right hook. His other jobs included keeping the Baker Street scrap-book, helping with experiments, and also looking after one of the other members of the team: Pedro the bloodhound. When Sherlock Holmes needed a dog he had to go and borrow one but Sexton Blake had Pedro, a real wonder-dog, something of a cross between Lassie and Rin Tin Tin." There can be no doubting Blake’s popularity. His adventures appeared in a wide variety of publications but, most noticably, in the weekly magazine UNION JACK and its successor DETECTIVE WEEKLY more or less continuously from 1904 to 1940 and simultaniously in THE SEXTON BLAKE LIBRARY, monthly stories which appeared regularly from 1915 to 1963. The visual image of Blake and his world was firmly and indelibly established by the artist Eric Parker: "There’s a wonderful atmosphere in his work. Whether he was depicting a sinister brooding house or an action-packed punch-up, Parker put vitality and life into it. He had a dymanic style. His line work was vibrant and full of action. It has been said that Eric Parker couldn’t draw a stiff figure. He gave Blake a lean, powerful look. In 1929, Parker began to paint the full-colour covers for the Sexton Blake Library and, all in all, he painted around 900 covers. Not only did he paint the covers, he also hand-painted the lettering on each cover."  The appeal of the Blake stories in their heyday lay in the breathtaking action, the colourful locations and, in particular, the extraordinary gallery of villains such as Mr Reece and the Criminals’ Confederation. Each of the Blake writers had his own villain and the readers had their favourites too. There was the renegade policeman, George Marsden Plummer; the renegade surgeon, Dr Huxton Rymer; the elegant opium smoking Zenith the Albino; His Criminal Majesty, King Karl II of Serbovia; and then there were those leaders of conspiracies against the British Empire: sinister Chinese master mind Prince Wu Ling, head of the Brotherhood of the Yellow Beetle and the wealthiest man in China; sinister Egyptian master mind Prince Menes, head of the ancient order of Ra and leader of a white slave gang; and also sinister Indian master mind, Gunga Das. |