J. E. Preston Muddock

> James Edward Preston Muddock also known as Joyce Emmerson Preston Muddock (1843-1934), an English journalist and author of mystery and horror fiction, authored more than fifty detective volumes under the pseudonym Dick Donovan. Many were novels, but most were collections of Donovan's supposedly autobiographical tales. The physically active Donovan prefigured other "tough guy" detectives like "Bulldog" Drummond and Mike Hammer. The short stories regularly appeared in the Strand Magazine and elsewhere, the first in July 1892, contemporaneous with the Sherlock Holmes tales. >>Leslie S. Klinger, In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes (2011). >Between 1889 and 1922 he published nearly 300 detective and mystery stories. >>-Wikipedia