Crime – Penguin Crime

For the next however many posts it takes me to write about old paperback crime, I trust you will find it amusing, edifying and of course, eye pleasing.
I’ll start with Penguin Crime, which was distinguished in the 1960s and early 1970s with classy covers. I don’t have than many of them, but do have a smallish Penguin Crime collection.

First The Beckoning Lady an Albert Campion detective mystery by Margery Allingham, published by Penguin in 1978.



John Franklin Bardin is best known for three novels The Deadly Percheron, The Last of Phillip Banter and Devil Take The Blue Fly, which were published in an omnibus by Penguin in 1979. They are noir psychological thrillers, very atmospheric and excruciatingly tense. The Deadly Percheron cracks a mention in the film Mona Lisa.



I don’t know much about about Sarah Caudwell or remember anything about this novel of hers in my crime bookshelf. (pub 1986)



Raymond Chandler needs no introduction. The Phillip Marlowe novels still hold up after all this time and remain the classic hard boiled detective fiction on which all others are styled. These Penguin editions were all issued between 1976 and 1978.





G K Chesterton author of the bizarre fantasy, The Man Who Was Thursday, also wrote a series of short stories featuring Father Brown. Penguin published The Complete Father Brown in 1981.



And finally for this entry a 1971 of Edmund Crispin’s The Moving Toyshop with a classic old green Penguin cover design .



To be continued with more Penguin Crime

Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series - Part 2

Here for you delectation are more covers from the fabulous Ballantine Adult Fantasy series.

Firstly, Evangeline Walton's retelling of the Mabinogian in her series of four books.

Then there are the strange fantasies of E R Eddison. I haven't read any of these books for over 30 years so I can't remember much about their contents. The only image that has stayed with me through the years is Florinda (?) in Fish Dinner at Memison leaning forward and pricking the bubble of fantasy with a pin. Whether this is actually in the book or not, I can't say.

A few solitary novels from various authors...

One of the rarest of the Adult Fantasies is G K Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday - a bizarre novel involving anarchists and a secret society whose members are known by days of the week.

And Hope Mirrlees wonderful Lud-in-the Mist - a delightful fairy tale and her best known novel.

Enough for tonight, or else the post won't load from Live Writer which is my preferred way of composing blog entries these days.

There are more in this series to come...