1/18/1882 A.A. Milne arrives

January 18, 1882.  On this date Alan Alexander Milne was born in Hampstead, England.  Okay, you might be saying, but why is he appearing in Mystery History?  True, Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet did some valient detective work in pursuit of the heffalump, but does that count?

No.  But Milne also wrote The Red House Mystery (I love that cover, by the way), considered a classic of the Golden Age.  Alexander Woolcott called it "one of the three best mystery stories of all time."  Not surprisingly, Raymond Chandler felt otherwise.

It doesn't get a lot of love these days but this amateur-sleuth locked-room tale involves a variation that even Dame Agatha didn't hit upon.

By the way, Milne had something in common with Arthur Conan Doyle: both came to see their most famous creations as millstones around their necks.  Fortunately Milne never threw Pooh over the Reichenbach Falls.