Charles Kingston O'Mahony, who published under the pen name Charles Kingston, was an Irish journalist and author active in England during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction in the 1920s and 1930s. Born around 1884, he established a career writing both crime fiction and popular non-fiction. His fictional works were frequently set in London, drawing on his deep familiarity with the city's criminal underworld.
Kingston is perhaps best remembered for his seven-book detective series featuring Chief Inspector Wake of Scotland Yard. While contemporary critics and historians often describe his mystery novels as competent rather than groundbreaking, they remain notable examples of the era's procedural and detective storytelling.
Beyond his detective fiction, Kingston was a prolific writer of non-fiction. He compiled numerous popular volumes detailing the lives of fraudsters, murderers, and other historical rogues, alongside accounts of famous legal trials and notable judges. His broader bibliography also includes historical and regional studies, such as his debut work, The Viceroys of Ireland (1912), an examination of morganatic marriages, and a local history of Esher and Thames Ditton, where he spent his final years before his death in 1944.
