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The Odyssey of Sexton Blake  BLAKE'S WOMENLater stories described Blake as working in Wych Street, off the Strand, and it was much later that Blake moved to Baker Street where, of course, he lived and worked until the removal of his offices to fashionable Berkeley Square. "Even at this early stage," Mr. Turner continues, "there was a woman in Blake's life. Not for the last time the detective was to feel tenderly towards a young woman who was destined to be kidnapped and not restored till the last chapter. The style of Hal Meredeth's (first Blake chronicler) Blake is worth quoting: 'I never believed until now,' reflected Sexton Blake, 'that I should ever seriously fall in love and especially at first sight; but I must confess that if I could succeed in winning the affections of Lillie Ray I should account myself the luckiest of earthly mortals...' " Those few readers who have decried the modern Sexton Blake's encounters with the fair sex would do well to take note that the above incident occurred before the turn of the century and readers were assured that Miss Ray had: "Given him (Blake) more than half a promise that she will some day reward his devotion to her in the way he most desires." It is likely, as we learned in later stories, that Blake subsequently decided to put his passion for fighting crime first and other passions second. Blake remained a bachelor. The detective's exploits proved so popular with readers of The Marvel ("Exceeding the Editor's most sanguine expectations") that he soon became a regular hero in other papers. "Then in Number 25," Mr. Turner tells us, "came the announcement that 'Sexton Blake has been secured by the Union Jack,' due to make its debut in April, 1894. It was this pink-jacketed newcomer, then also a halfpenny paper, which was to make Sexton Blake famous. Not that it held any exclusive title to him, for he has appeared in Boys' Friend, Boys' Herald, Penny Popular, The Jester, and, of course, the Sexton Blake Library, which started as a separate institution during the First World War." |