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.

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.

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.

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

Coming next – Sherlock Holmes

General Fiction – Janwillem van de Wetering, Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut & Edith Wharton

This will be the last mass market paperback post for the moment, though I will be returning to this sort of book later on.

The two Janwillem van de Wetering books below are not actually fiction, but rather his description of his experiences in Zen Buddhist monasteries in Japan and America, They are quite entertaining to read. He is best known for his series of detective novels set in Amsterdam featuring engaging detectives, Grijpstra and De Geir, which I will get to later on and have already mentioned in an earlier post.

Next, the sole book by Gore Vidal in my collection – Myra Breckinridge with a really cool cover published by Panther in 1969.

So, onto my paperback collection of Kurt Vonnegut, published in the early to late 1970s – a mix of British and American editions.

And finally a rather pretty set of Edith Wharton novels published by Berkley in 1981.

Coming soon – Picador books