Leo Bruce is a pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 for Rupert Croft-Cooke

Rupert Croft-Cooke

Rupert Croft-Cooke was an English biographer and author of fiction and non-fiction.He also published detective stories under the pseudonym of Leo Bruce.-Life:...

 (1903-1979). Under this name, Bruce wrote several mystery

Mystery fiction

Mystery fiction is a loosely-defined term.1.It is often used as a synonym for detective fiction or crime fiction— in other words a novel or short story in which a detective investigates and solves a crime mystery. Sometimes mystery books are nonfiction...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

s. He created two series, one featuring Sergeant Beef, a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 police officer, and a second in which Carolus Deene, senior history master at the fictional Queen's School, Newminster, is an amateur detective.

Most Leo Bruce books are now out of print. Croft-Cooke also wrote a large number of books, plays, short stories, and other work under his own name.

Sergeant Beef series

• Case for Three Detectives (1936) ISBN 0897330331

An example of the locked room type of murder mystery, this book spoofs three famous fictional detectives, Lord Peter Wimsey

Lord Peter Wimsey

Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey is a bon vivant amateur sleuth in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers, in which he solves mysteries; usually, but not always, murders...

, as Lord Simon Plimsoll, Hercule Poirot

Hercule Poirot

Hercule Poirot is a fictional Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie. Along with Miss Marple, Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-lived characters, appearing in 33 novels and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975 and set in the same era.Poirot has been portrayed on...

 as Monsieur Amer Picon, and Father Brown

Father Brown

Father Brown is a fictional character created by English novelist G. K. Chesterton, who stars in 52 short stories, later compiled in five books. Chesterton based the character on Father John O'Connor , a parish priest in Bradford who was involved in Chesterton's conversion to Catholicism in 1922...

, under the name of Monsignor Smith.

The remaining books in the series are out of print.

• Case Without a Corpse (1937)
• Case With Four Clowns (1939)
• Case With No Conclusion (1939)
• Case With Ropes and Rings (1940)
• Case For Sergeant Beef (1947)
• Neck and Neck (1951)
• Cold Blood (1952)

Carolus Deene series

• At Death’s Door (1955)
• Dead for a Ducat (1956)
• Death of a Cold (1956)
• Dead Man’s Shoes (1958)
• A Louse for the Hangman (1958)
• Our Jubilee Is Death (1959)
• Furious Old Women (1960)
• Jack on the Gallows Tree (1960)
• Die All, Die Merrily (1961)
• A Bone and a Hank of Hair (1961)
• Nothing Like Blood (1962)
• Such Is Death (1963)
• Death in Albert Park (1964)
• Death at Hallows End (1965) (reprinted in paperback by Academy Chicago Publishers, May 2008)
• Death on the Black Sands (1966)
• Death of a Commuter (1967)
• Death at St. Asprey’s School (1967)
• Death on Romney Marsh (1968)
• Death with Blue Ribbon (1969)
• Death on Allhallowe’en (1970)
• Death by the Lake (1971)
• Death in the Middle Watch (1974)
• Death of a Bovver Boy (1974)