David Stuart Davies

David Stuart Davies (1946-2024), General Editor of Wordsworth’s Mystery and Supernatural series, was an editor, novelist, playwright and film historian.

He was an expert on Sherlock Holmes, writing ten Holmes novels between 1991 and 2022. He also wrote a trio of plays exploring the darker side of the great detective, as well as three studies of the stage, film and TV career of Arthur Conan Doyle’s character. He edited Sherlock, the detective magazine, for ten years and also contributed commentaries to DVDs of Granada TV’s Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett, the Basil Rathbone films of the 1930s and 1940s, and A Touch of Frost starring David Jason.

His wartime private eye Johnny Hawke featured in six novels, and DI Paul Snow, his Huddersfield detective, appeared in a Yorkshire noir trilogy, beginning with Brothers in Blood, set in the homophobic world of the 1980s police force. His short ghost stories were collected in an anthology entitled The Halloween Mask. Amongst his other books was Bending the Willow, an acclaimed biography of the actor Jeremy Brett that benefited from Davies’ close association with one of the key players of Holmes on TV and on stage.

David gave literary presentations in locations as diverse as the House of Commons, New York’s National Arts Club, the National Film Theatre and on the Queen Mary II.

He passed away in Yorkshire in August 2024.