Plots and Gunpowder

John Robert Stuart Pringle was born in London in 1897 and became a leading writer of detective thrillers debuting in 1927. His early novels, including numerous Sexton Blake stories, were issued under the name of Donald Stuart. But after his first novel as Gerald Verner, The Embankment Murder (1933) Verner became his adopted name, although he continued to write occasionally as Stuart, and as Derwent Steele and Nigel Vane. He has written several plays the best known being Towards Zero adapted from