Crime Classics

Lizzie Hayes on the prolific John Creasey

“ Creasey was a remarkably prolific writer and, over his forty-year career as a published writer, wrote  the incredible total of 562 full-length novels (that's over 14 a year.) He knew that it would be folly to flood the market with a new John Creasey every 27 days and so he wrote under a grand total of 28 different pseudonyms. Creasey wrote between 7,000 and 10,000 words a day and claimed that he could write a book in two weeks and still have half a day free to play cricket. He also once suggested he could be shut up in a glass box and left there to write a whole book. In the 1930s and 1940s Creasey also wrote Westerns under the pseudonyms William K. Reilly, Tex Riley and Ken Ranger. Initially Creasey's knowledge of America came from books and films but later he visited the US and made a second home in Arizona. His third wife, Jeanne Williams, was American and wrote historical western novels.”  Read more: http://promotingcrime.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/detectives-of-golden-age-john-creasey.html

“It was a funny twisting and turning of expectations, this novel. I'm familiar with Allingham from her later work - The Tiger in the Smoke and Hide My Eyes - both London novels, both thrillers rather than mysteries. This early venture begins with much more conventional murder mystery set-up, albeit with some humdinger prose and crackling dialogue. Then, as soon as you think it's going to be a mystery, everything comes out - it becomes a siege novel, a sort of nightmare. That's where I think it became indisputably Allingham - that sense of a real situation made uncanny by the force of a personality that is, to some degree, unhinged. “

Death in Green Bands ... The Crime at Black Dudley, by Margery Allingham  - http://leaf-pile.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/death-in-green-bands-crime-at-black.html

Brand new website for George Bellairs over here

The wonderful @jacquiwine on Eric Ambler’s  The Light of Day

“The novel is narrated by Arthur Abdel Simpson, a small-time thief who makes a living by hustling tourists on their arrival at Athens airport. As the story opens, Simpson is recounting the tale of how he got mixed up with Harper, a man who turned out to be more dangerous than he appeared at first sight. As Simpson looks back on past events, here’s how his story begins:

‘It came down to this: if I had not been arrested by the Turkish police, I would have been arrested by the Greek police. I had no choice but to do as this man Harper told me. He was entirely responsible for what happened to me.

I thought he was an American. He looked like an American – tall with the loose, light suit, the narrow tie and button-down collar, the smooth, old-young, young-old face and the crew cut. He spoke like an American, too; or at least like a German who had lived in America for a long time. Of course, I now know that he is not an American, but he certainly gave that impression. His luggage, for instance, was definitely American: plastic leather and imitation gold locks. I know American luggage when I see it. (pg. 1)’

It’s a good opening, one that pulled me into narrative – you know from the start that something bad has happened to the narrator, and he holds Harper responsible for it.”

Read more - https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2015/09/15/topkapi-the-light-of-day-by-eric-ambler/

Mysteryfile on John Creasey

“ Mystery writer John Creasey fathered a small army of detectives, all of whom had “smarts” and physical prowess, though none were especially colorful. Understandably, but perhaps unfairly, Creasey’s name has often made mystery readers smile. The most prolific mystery writer, he started by writing some dreadful books in his early days.“

http://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=1251

“At the moment [Donna Beatrice] was dressed in a long Florentine gown of brocade, strongly reminiscent of Burne-Jones but cut with a curtsy to Modernity, so that the true character of the frock was lost and it became an odd nondescript garment covering her thin figure from throat to ankle. To complete her toilet she had draped a long pink and silver scarf across her shoulders and the two ends rippled beneath her with the untidy grace of a nymph on the cover ofPunch… Campion walked behind the Bishop…The reception was drawing slowly to a close… The Ambassador and his satellites were still hovering… The melancholy Mr Potter [was looking at] the dismal display of prints upon the curtain…. Tommy Dacre [was] leaning on the table where the jewellery made by Donna Beatrice’s protégées, the Guild of Women Workers in Precious Metal, was displayed… Donna Beatrice was talking volubly to Max Fustian.”

http://clothesinbooks.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/death-of-ghost-by-margery-allingham.html

Join the @IpsoBooks community for free crime classics ebooks...

These are not suave proto-Bonds but characters readers can identify with. When they try to hit bad guys they tend to miss. Glamorous women find them resistible. They have trouble keeping the upper lip stiff: “No man enjoys confessing to tears,” says Vadassy, but “the pillow, I remember, became sodden with the moisture”. But they get over their wobbles and, usually thanks to a hefty slice of luck, win the day.

Jake Kerridge on Amber’s heroes

ericamblerbooks.com

georgessimenon.co.uk

Born in Liege, he began work as a reporter for a local newspaper at the age of sixteen, and at nineteen he moved to Paris to embark on a career as a novelist. Shortly before his death, his crime fictions were selling 300,000 copies a year in the mid-eighties in the USA alone. "  Simenon in RTE

georgessimenon.co.uk

Have you got your free Margery Allingham short stories yet?

"In any country, the spy remains a timeless figure of fascination. In Britain, a culture and society surrounded by the sea, the spy is the secret harbinger of invasion. Britons have always had an anxiety about hostile fleets, especially since the age of the Spanish Armada. Not long after Drake’s heaven-sent victory, the association of spies and literature begins with the playwright Christopher Marlowe. In 1593 his controversial death in Deptford becomes a founding text of British spy mythology. Marlowe’s “C”, Francis Walsingham, exposed many plots, but missed out on the greatest outrage of all, the attempt to blow up the establishment on 5 November 1605.  It says a lot about our obsession with conspiracy that we still “remember, remember the fifth of November”, a date when nothing actually happened. "

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/18/literary-spy-fever-bond-le-carre

John Creasey is re-published! 

johncreaseybooks.com

"The Tiger in the Smoke was first published in 1952. It is generally regarded as being one of her best works, and there is certainly a case for regarding it as an important landmark in the development of the modern crime novel. It is unusual in that there is no central crime to be solved: we know who the principal villain is, although there is a mystery as to why he is planning a bizarre programme of impersonation. While it has an intense period feel – reading it today one gets a very strong sense of England in the post-war years – the central plotline, which is that of a dangerous psychopath carrying out a series of ruthless killings while he eludes capture, has a rather modern feel to it. One gets the sense that, suitably updated, it would serve very credibly the requirements of a contemporary thriller or even a piece of Scandinavian noir."

margeryallinghamcrime.com

Penguin is republishing each of Simenon’s Maigret detective novels at a rate of one a month, and with over 20 now available, it’s possible to get a sense of how Gruyaert’s imagery is working across the new series. Paired with fairly sparse design for the author’s name and individual book titles, Gruyaert’s photographs take centre stage on the covers.

Gruyaert is especially known for his experimental use of colour and his striking use of light and shadow. His photograph’s often contain an air of dramatic mystery, making them a natural companion for a series of detective novels.

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2015/october/magnum-photographer-harry-gruyaert-opens-his-archive-for-penguins-maigret-series/