I’ve posted several times on this blog about J. V. Turner, aka David Hume, the most recent being some biographical notes provided by Judith Gavin, whose grandfather was Turner’s brother Alfred.

   Based on the information she provided, Steve Holland did some researching and has come up with a lot more, including Turner’s correct year of birth, 1905, not 1900, and that “he was, in fact, the third son and youngest of six children.”

   I’m quoting here from Steve H.’s Bear Alley blog, where besides all of the biographical data he’s uncovered, he adds a complete bibliography and a few covers that I’ve not seen before.

   Turner, under both his own name as and David Hume, was a thriller writer, more interested in guns and gangsters than sedate manor house detective stories. Steve also suggests that:

    “Hume’s Mick Cardby novels might be the first to feature a hardboiled British private detective. Not the first British hardboiled stories: Hugh Clevely, John G. Brandon, John Hunter and Edgar Wallace had already featured gangs and gangsters in London; nor the first British private detective of which there had been countless examples; he wasn’t the first fist-swinging crime solver, either, but Mick may have been the first bonafide British private eye fighting gangs and gunmen in the UK.”

   I don’t know if that’s grounds enough for you to give either Turner or Hume a try, but it is for me. I’ll soon be dipping into the small stack of their books that I’ve been accumulating for a short while now. But go read Steve’s piece. It’s worth the trip!