Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Crime Fiction 2

Surprise, surprise! I am again at a loose end this evening before retiring to read more of Neal Stephenson’s latest novel Reamde, which I have been enjoying immensely and trying to eke out as long as I can.

So, to continue with detective fiction, firstly with the novels of Nicholas Blake , the pseudonym under which Cecil Day Lewis penned detective novels. His prime detective is Nigel Strangeways, based originally, according to Wikipedia, on the poet W. H. Auden. He’s rather effete I thought when I recently reread one of the books The Widow’s Cruise it was.  Still the books are civilised and quite readable.

blake_widowscruise blake_snowman
   
blake_wormofdeath blake_sadvariety

blake_privatewound

Gore Vidal , author of many mainstream novels, wrote several detective stories under the name of Edgar Box. I appear to have only one of them – Death Likes It Hot with a rather good cover.

box_deathlikesithotjpg

Starring Inspector John Coffin, Gwendoline Butler’s mystery novels are first class – suspenseful and gripping page turners. I collected a number of them in various editions, displayed below.

butler_coffinforpandora butler coffinforthecanary
   
butler_coffin_darknumber butler_coffin_paperman

butler_coffinfrom past

And to finish this post, a stray Raymond Chandler novel – The Lady in the Lake, Pan edition published in 1979.

chandler_ladyinlake1979

Coming next – Sherlock Holmes

Monday, October 3, 2011

Crime Fiction 1

How time flies when you’re not doing much in particular. I noticed today that my last post on this blog was back in early September. Tonight finds me at a loose end so I will start posting on my general crime/detective fiction collection.

Alphabetically as usual I will start with the crime novels of Lesley Grant Adamson who has written sixteen novels in this genre, her first being Patterns in the Dust published in 1985 by Faber. I remember her novels as being quite good, so much so that I collected them for a time, but appear to have only three of them on my bookshelf.

adamson_dangerousedge adamson_faceofdeath

adamson_flynn

Joan Aiken, sadly no longer with us, was well known as a children’s book author, but she also tried her hand at other types of literature, crime fiction being one of them. I have only Blackground, which is characterised by her wonderful quirky style.

aiken_blackground

Another grand dame of crime fiction was Margery Allingham who wrote many novels, most of them featuring her literary detective Albert Campion of which the following is one.

allingham_chinagoverness

Next, a curious collection of omnibus editions under the imprint of Black Box Thrillers published by Zomba, quite a rarity these days I assume. They have great faux retro covers.

blackbox_thrillers_behm blackbox_thrillers_boucher
   
blackbox_thrillers_goodis blackbox_thrillers_thompson

I will continue this thread soon with the crime novels of Nicholas Blake, Edgar Box  and Gwendoline Butler.