The Seven Black Chessmen

Schoolmaster Jack Kent is taking his holiday with rod and reel in a small village along the Welsh border, when he stumbles across the body of an elderly man sitting in a car in the middle of the road early one morning. So begins Kent's extraordinary adventure as he joins the eccentric, but brilliant, Horton Forbes in the investigation of the man's death and the curious behavior of a secretive group with malign intent. Thrown into the action, Kent gathers clues while never quite knowing who he can trust (all while attempting to aid the lovely Miss Mary Cheney as much as he can).

The Seven Black Chessmen is an atmospheric Holmesian pastiche, with action, deductions, and a suitably malevolent adversary.

Gerald William Phillips (1884-1956), writing as John Huntingdon, published his sole mystery in 1928. Phillips was an educator and a Shakespearean scholar.