English novelist Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) began his working life employed by his father, engaged in the joy of rent collection. He managed to work in a little journalism in his spare time out of boredom, but his breakthrough didn't come until he moved to London and won a literary competition in 1889 in Tit-Bits magazine (no, no porn; a weekly features magazine, albeit with a focus on drama and sensation).

He was ambitious and hardworking, and—like the future King George VI—had to overcome a stammer. When Bennett became assistant editor of the periodical Woman and noticed the material offered by a syndicate to the magazine wasn't terribly good, he wrote his own serials, one of which turned into The Grand Babylon Hotel.

Novels came next, and plenty of them, one to two per year, as well as various nonfiction books, articles, essays, some short stories and plays, even during the outbreak of World War I. He once allegedly admitted he often wrote out of financial considerations, saying "Am I to sit still and see other fellows pocketing two guineas apiece for stories which I can do better myself? Not me. If anyone imagines my sole aim is art for art’s sake, they are cruelly deceived."

But he eventually developed enough of a reputation that Charles Masterman, the head of the War Propaganda Bureau, asked twenty-five leading British authors to a meeting to discuss how to promote Britain's interests during the war. Bennett joined the likes of Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, G. M. Trevelyan and H. G. Wells. Bennett also served on the British War Memorial Committee and was appointed Director of British Propaganda in France.

He wasn't particularly known for crime fiction per se, but his second fiction work, the 15-part serial Grand Babylon Hotel was in that vein (written in 15 days, purchased for all of 100 pounds) and first appeared in The Golden Penny in 1902, which described it as "the most original, amusing, and thrilling serial written in a decade." On the other hand, another of his quasi-detective-themed novels, Teresa of Watling Street, drew reviews such as "It is a farrago of improbable detective adventure that the merest tiro might write" and "readable trash." He also wrote a column, entitled "Books and Persons," that included his criticism and analysis of the detective novel at the end of the 1920s.

The plot of Babylon centers around Theodore Racksole, a rich American multi-millionaire, who buys the luxurious Grand Babylon Hotel in London on a whim after his 23-year-old daughter wants a steak and a beer, but is refused. Racksole soon finds there are strange goings on in his new hotel:  first, a German prince is supposed to arrive but never turns up; a hotel clerk disappears; then the body of a retainer sent to prepare for a visit by Prince Eugen is found murdered, but that body also disappears. Aided by his independent revolver-wielding daughter Nella (this is 1902, remember) and another German prince, Racksole sets out on an international hunt to solve the mystery that includes early archetypes of evil villains, physical danger, kidnapping, plot twists and even secret passages.

The book is a fluffy read that the author subtitled "a fantasia on modern themes" and Mike Grost referred to as "a Nancy Drew story for adults" that you can read for free via Project Gutenberg, perhaps while munching on an "Omelette Arnold Bennett" that the Savoy Hotel in London created for the author. He liked it so much, he had it prepared wherever he traveled, and the Savoy officially named it the "Omelette Arnold Bennett," and has been serving it ever since.