The Art of Stealing: "The Episode of the Nine Monets" (2020) by Jamie Probin

Jamie Probin is a British-born mathematician currently living in Charleston, South Carolina, where he teaches mathematics at Charleston Southern University and writes detective novels and short stories featuring his mathematician-detective, Dr. Samuel Harris – who's something of a locked room specialist. I should have gotten to this series before now, but it got loss in the mass of reprints, translations and neo-Golden Age mysteries. That's until Jim Noy, of The Invisible Event, reviewed Probin's newest, non-series short story "Chapter 17: Perroquet Explains" (2026). So moved this series up the big pile.I wanted to begin with Probin's The Thirteenth Apostle (2020), but the short story "The Episode of the Nine Monets" (2020) is a prequel and Jim's review suggested reading it before the novel ("...because it sets up the world well..."). What it sets up, or rather introduces, is a duel between the master criminal Le Fantôme and the Sûreté, Scotland Yard and Dr. Harris.Henry Toussante,…