Hamilton Cleek
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Thomas W. Hanshew (1857 – 1914) was an American writer and male actor. He was born in
Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...
,
New York (state) New York, also called New York State, is a U.S. state, state in the northeastern United States. Bordered by New England to the east, Canada to the north, and Pennsylvania and New Jersey to the south, its territory extends into both the Atlanti ...
.


Life and career

Hanshew began a career as an actor when only 16 years old, playing minor parts with
Ellen Terry Dame Alice Ellen Terry (27 February 184721 July 1928) was a leading English actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born into a family of actors, Terry began performing as a child, acting in Shakespeare plays in London, and toured ...
's company. Subsequently he played important roles with
Clara Morris Clara Morris (1846-9 – November 20, 1925) was a Canadian/American stage actress of the Victorian Era. Early life Actress Clara Morris was born in Toronto, the eldest child of a Bigamy, bigamous marriage. Sources disagree on the year of her bi ...
and
Adelaide Neilson Lilian Adelaide Neilson (3 March 184815 August 1880), born Elizabeth Ann Brown, was a British stage actress. Early life Neilson was the daughter of a strolling actress, Anne Brown, and was born, out of wedlock, at 35 St Peters Square Leeds ...
. Later he was associated with a publishing house in
London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
, where he resided at the end of his life. He used, among others, the
pen name A pen name or nom-de-plume is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen name may be used to make the author's na ...
"Charlotte May Kingsley," and wrote more than 150 novels, some of which were co-authored with his wife, Mary E. Hanshew. Hanshew's best-known character was the consulting detective "Hamilton Cleek" (the assumed name of the ''King of Maurevania''), a reformed thief now working for law enforcement. Cleek is known as "the man of the forty faces" for his incredible skill at disguise. The main character of dozens of short stories that began to be published during 1910 and were subsequently collected in a series of books, Cleek is based in Clarges Street, London, where he is consulted continually by Inspector Narkom of
Scotland Yard Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's London boroughs, 32 boroughs. Its name derives from the location of the original ...
.


Bibliography

(this list is incomplete) * ''Dark Corners of New York'' (1888) * ''My Maid'' (1888) as "Charlotte May Kingsley"


Edison’s ''The Chronicles of Cleek'' series

Ben F. Wilson appeared as Detective Hamilton Cleek in a series of silent film shorts: * The Heritage of Hamilton Cleek (1914) * The Mystery of the Sealed Art Gallery (1914) * The Mystery of the Glass Tubes (1914) * The Mystery of the Octagonal Room (1914) * The Mystery of the Lost Stradivarius (1914) * The Mystery of the Fadeless Tints (1914) * The Mystery of the Amsterdam Diamonds (1914) * The Mystery of the Silver Snare (1914) * The Mystery of the Laughing Death (1914) * The Mystery of the Ladder of Light (1914) * The Mystery of the Talking Wire (1914) * The Mystery of the Dover Express (1913) * The Vanishing Cracksman (1913)


Reception

Even by the standards of the adventure fiction of the era, Hamilton Cleek is a notably unrealistic character, not only for his ability to impersonate anyone (including speaking multiple foreign languages perfectly) but for his physical derring-do and his frequent melodramatic encounters with Margot, "Queen of the
Apaches The Apache ( ) are several Southern Athabaskan language-speaking peoples of the Southwestern United States, Southwest, the Southern Plains and Northern Mexico. They are linguistically related to the Navajo. They migrated from the Athabascan ho ...
", and her partner-in-crime Merode.


Further reading

* * * * * Thomas W. Hanshew
The World's Finger: An Improbable Story
London: Ward, Lock, 1901. * * * * * * * *


See also

*
Charlotte Mary Brame Charlotte Mary Brame (usually known as Charlotte M. Brame, last name sometimes mistakenly given as Braeme; appeared under pseudonyms in America, notably Bertha M. Clay, and was sometimes identified by the name of her most famous novel, Dora Thorne ...
(Bertha M. Clay)


References


External links

;Thomas W. Hanshew * under that name, and 1 as Charlotte May Kingsley, linked * * ;Mary E. Hanshew * * * ;Thomas and Mary Hanshew * 1857 births 1914 deaths 20th-century American novelists American male stage actors Writers from Brooklyn Novelists from New York City American male novelists 20th-century American male writers {{US-novelist-1850s-stub