Cover of The Talleyrand Maxim by Joseph Smith Fletcher Audiobook The Talleyrand Maxim
Audiobook · Sovereign

The Talleyrand Maxim

Author
Joseph Smith Fletcher
Read by
Eloise Fairfax
Language
English
Length
6 hours 50 minutes
ISBN
9781836104575
Published
24 July 2026
Imprint
Sovereign
  • inheritance
  • hidden will
  • antiquarian bookseller
  • moral dilemma
  • greed
  • family secrets
  • deception
  • legal intrigue
  • ambition
  • classic mystery fiction

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Description

Ambitious clerk Linford Pratt learns of a hidden will after an antiquarian bookseller dies unexpectedly, and must choose honesty or gain while greed and deception close in. Inheritance becomes a moral trap. Spoken as when the Talleyrand maxim still asks what a secret document is worth to a hungry man.

Author

J. S. Fletcher (1863–1935) treated the detective story as a trade, and honoured it. He produced at a Victorian-Edwardian pace that later Golden Age writers would recognise: wills, country houses, city chambers, and the long English suspicion that respectability is a costume. Fletcher is not flashy. He is reliable — which, in crime fiction, is a kind of style.

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