From his rooms in Portman Square, London, Hercule Hippot, the greatest detective of the 1930's, solves the most perplexing mysteries by the use of his incomparable "little grey cells."

With his friend Colonel Pastings, his devoted secretary Miss Pinkie, and the stoical Chief Inspector Naff of Scotland Yard, Hippot will amuse young and old alike with his amazing powers of deduction -- and his amazing capacity for pastries, desserts, and sweets of any kind.

Whether on the track of the Loch Ness Monster, a missing chocolate moose, a sinister rabbit terrorizing the Welsh countryside, or the renowned jewel thief Willie the Weasel, Hippot's adventures are designed to entertain readers in the years between Paddington Bear and Harry Potter with challenging vocabulary and a smattering of art, mathematics, physics, logic, history, literature, and geography. Parents and grandparents will encounter in the stories intriguing references to classic books and films, and will finally learn, for example, the real story of how Vivian Leigh came to be cast as Scarlett O'Hara in the classic film Gone With the Wind.

Hippot's adventures, recorded for posterity by his contemporary P.E. Marston, run from 2000 to13,500 words in length, averaging about 4000, and are illustrated with simple line drawings in Marston's own hand, depicting only the great detective and leaving the rest to the imagination of his readers.