C L Pirkis

Catherine Louisa Pirkis (1839-1910) was a British author of detective fiction. She wrote fourteen novels between 1877 and 1894 and contributed stories to magazines such as Belgravia. The Loveday Brooke stories were serialzed in the Ludgate Monthly from February to July 1893 and published in book form by Hutchinson in 1894. The series was notable for being the first collection of detective stories that featured a female heroine created by a female author. Loveday Brooke was dubbed the "female Sherlock Holmes," and her stories were among the bestselling successors to those of Holmes.