Sat 14 Oct 2017
A Mystery Review by William F. Deeck: JOHN NEWTON CHANCE – Aunt Miranda’s Murder.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Reviews[2] Comments
William F. Deeck
JOHN NEWTON CHANCE – Aunt Miranda’s Murder. Macdonald, UK, hardcover, 1951. Dodd Mead, US, hardcover, 1951.
Aunt Miranda is Miranda Jeans, author of 49 novels of what appear to be romantic suspense. It is unclear whether Jeans, considering that she has been married three times, is the name under which her books appear. Some of her titles are High Honeysuckle, The Weak Avenger and The Wraith of Retribution.
At age 84, Aunt Miranda feels that she is near death. Having been bothered by a ne’er-do-well nephew for some years and having no wish that her heirs should be bothered by him after her death, she threatens to kill him. The next day, the nephew’s body is found under the couch in the music room, shot to death with a pistol presented to her some years ago by an admirer.
Covering up for Aunt Miranda becomes the order of the day, although no one seems sure that this aged lady did indeed murder her nephew.
A splendid cast of characters makes for enjoyable reading and also tempts one to seek out other novels by John Newton Chance.
Bibliographic Notes: Under his own name, John Newton Chance (1911-1983) wrote over 120 mystery novels between 1935 and 1989, many of them not published until after his death. Very few of them ever had US editions. Chance also had a number of pen names, one of which was John Lymington, which he used primarily to write science fiction. It’s under that byline that you can find his Wikipedia entry.
October 15th, 2017 at 12:19 am
He wrote several aeries including one featuring John Newton Chance, and wrote entertaining thrillers that are light reading, but well done. Some of his later work were spy thrillers.
He’s not much known here save as Lymington, but popular in England and the Commonwealth.
October 15th, 2017 at 7:21 pm
Even as Lymington, he’s not known much here and never was. A lot of his SF came out from Macfadden and Manor in this country, hardly high echelon outlets.
One other bit of information to his credit, though, something I failed to mention earlier, is that between 1944 and 1955 he wrote 25 or so Sexton Blake novels, under the name John Drummond.