HERBERT ADAMS – Death of a Viewer.

Macdonald, UK, hc, 1958.

   Since it was published in the 1950s, Death of a Viewer hangs its toes over the precipice marking the end of the Golden Age period, but what the hay, the Roger Bennion series began in the 1930s so let’s agree this entry is grandfathered into my general area of discussion.

   Captain Oswald Henshaw tells his lovely young wife Sandra their financial resources are gone — but suggests if he sees her in comprising circumstances with Ewen Jones, Member of Parliament for an East London constituency, there could well be financial benefits. Ewen’s father is Lord Bethesda and his stepmother is worth half a million. Naturally they’d want to keep scandal — such as Hensaw bringing an action for alienation of affection against Ewen — from breathing nastily on the family name.

   Major Bennion becomes involved because Ewen lives in one of the houses built by Bennion Senior near the London docks. These homes are intended for disabled servicemen, old age pensioners, and the like and Bennion Senior wishes the better-off MP, who became a tenant due to a loophole, to move out so Lord Bethesda’s elderly gardener can retire and live there.

   Ewen refuses but asks Bennion to visit the family home of Welton Priory “in that charming part of the country where Sussex joins Hampshire.” Several Labour MPs are meeting there that weekend to secretly discuss plans to make the party more Socialist. Bennion’s presence will suggest the gathering is the usual sort of house party — and while he’s there perhaps he’ll persuade Ewen’s father to buy him, Ewen, a house or give him an allowance! The Henshaws will also be attending as Ewen’s guests, and thus the wheels of the plot begin to turn.

   Before too long there are interesting conversations overheard, furtive visits to bedrooms, and fiery political rhetoric that does not go down too well with the MPs. The viewer’s death occurs in a room full of people during a TV play about the Battle of Britain, and with very little to initially go on except a scrap of paper and a house full of suspects Bennion and Scotland Yard’s Superintendent Yeo and Inspector Allenby cooperate to solve the crime.

   My verdict: Ewen gets on his soapbox and in doing so reminds readers of the unrest in the air in the 1950s, including calls for the abolition of hereditary titles, Church and union reform, disgust at the possibilities of easier divorce, and legalisation of what is quaintly described as the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. These references will make the legendary Cheltenham colonels who so often write to the editor of The Times weep with joy, but alas they tend to swamp parts of the earlier part of the novel and do not add very much to the plot.

   However, once we get to the actual detecting the story runs along nicely. More than one house guest has what they might see as good reason to act against the deceased, so most of them are suspected at one time or another and the solution roars up after an unexpected twist which certainly caught me by surprise. I reget to say however that on the whole this novel is not one of the best I have read.

Etext: http://gutenberg.net.au

THE ROGER BENNION NOVELS. Taken from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. Quite surprisingly, although a few were reprinted in paperback in Canada, none of these were ever published in the US. As you will see, there is some overlap with Adams’ golfing mysteries, as indicated.

# Death Off the Fairway (n.) Collins 1936    (Golf)
# The Old Jew Mystery (n.) Collins 1936
# A Single Hair (n.) Collins 1937
# Black Death (n.) Collins 1938
# The Bluff! (n.) Collins 1938
# The Damned Spot (n.) Collins 1938
# The Nineteenth Hole Mystery (n.) Collins 1939    (Golf)

# The Case of the Stolen Bridegroom (n.) Collins 1940
# The Chief Witness (n.) Collins 1940
# Roger Bennion’s Double (n.) Collins 1941
# Stab in the Back (n.) Collins 1941
# The Araway Oath (n.) Collins 1942

# Signal for Invasion (n.) Collins 1942
# Victory Song (n.) Collins 1943
# Four Winds (n.) Collins 1944
# The Writing on the Wall (n.) Collins 1945

# Welcome Home! (n.) Macdonald 1946
# Diamonds Are Trumps (n.) Macdonald 1947
# Crime Wave at Little Cornford (n.) Macdonald 1948
# One to Play (n.) Macdonald 1949    (Golf)
# The Dean’s Daughters (n.) Macdonald 1950
# The Sleeping Draught (n.) Macdonald 1951
# Exit the Skeleton (n.) Macdonald 1952
# The Spectre in Brown (n.) Macdonald 1953
# Slippery Dick (n.) Macdonald 1954
# The Judas Kiss (n.) Macdonald 1955
# Death on the First Tee (n.) Macdonald 1957    (Golf)
# Death of a Viewer (n.) Macdonald 1958

   Here’s both a private eye and a private eye author you’re not too likely to have heard of before. Sam Carroll is the PI, and Robert Leigh is the author. Both of two books were published in England, one of them was published here in the US, and neither of them ever appeared in paperback. Once upon a time private eye novels were always published in paperback, and often paperback only. Not any more.

   Here, before going to the books themselves, is the author’s entry in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:
      
LEIGH, ROBERT (1933- )
      * The Cheap Dream (London: Macmillan, 1982, hc) [Sam Carroll; London] U.S. title (?): First and Last Murder. St. Martin’s, 1983.
      * _First and Last Murder (St. Martin’s, 1983, hc) See: The Cheap Dream (Macmillan (London) 1982).
      * The Girl with the Bright Head (London: Macmillan, 1982, hc) [Sam Carroll]

   We can make some additions and correction to that entry right away. The US novel entitled First and Last Murder is not The Cheap Dream, as conjectured, but the The Girl with the Bright Head, which happens to be Leigh’s second novel. The setting is London, the same as the first one.

THE CHEAP DREAM

      From the front inside DJ flap:

    “I reached for a cigarette and then heard the rhythmic pocking of the record player. As I looked down at it I saw that the record was still spinning. The machine hadn’t been damaged in all the violence. There was blood on it and one drop had stayed in a groove. It spun around with the record like a rose in a whirlpool.”

    Sam Carroll was good at finding out what really goes on behind the neon glitter of modern London. He aspires to the highest level of the ‘crusader’ private eye. His world is bounded by central London, and focussed on Soho. This is a London of the most depraved character, of sex in many forms, drugs, gambling, reckless and dissolute extravagance. It is peopled by pop stars, models, prostitutes, negroes, journalists, a fringe world of night-birds awash with money and frenetic for ‘happiness’ or release.

    A man of wealth, a publisher of shady magazines, wants Carroll to investigate the circumstances of the death of a girl called Valentine: a drug addict, she appeared to have died from an overdose. But an ‘open verdict’ had been returned so there seemed to be something worth investigating.

   As he wades through the expensive twilight of the city, Carroll runs into an assortment of other characters who don’t wish him well and soon finds himself on the floor in a Pimlico basement next to a small black corpse.

   An exciting and weird story is told with clarity and elegance in this unusual first novel.

      From the inside back DJ flap:

ROBERT LEIGH was born in 1933. His first job was as a junior reporter on the Kent Messenger and he subsequently worked in Paris (carrying sandwich boards for the Jean Cocteau cinema), in Soho and Victoria (selling ice cream, writing for literary magazines), in Holland (writing a column for a Dutch daily newspaper), in Spain (coaching a local village football team, writing articles for the New York Times) and is now back in London running an advertising consultancy.

He still plays a lot of sport from Sunday morning football to canoeing and badminton, and has plans for further Sam Carroll novels.

      Review excerpts (from the back cover of The Girl with the Bright Head):

“A fresh talent stirs.” The Guardian.

“Does more than pass muster.” The Observer.

“Undoubted talent.” Catholic Herald.

“Augurs well for subsequent thrillers.” Manchester Evening News.

THE GIRL WITH THE BRIGHT HEAD

      From the inside DJ flap:

   In his first novel, The Cheap Dream, Robert Leigh introduced the private investigator Sam Carroll. Carroll belongs to the ‘crusader’ school of private eyes and his first recorded adventure took place amid the candy-floss glitter and deepest vice that stains a spectrum of society not far below the surface of London, and Soho in particular.

   It is in the same setting – all too realistically described – that Carroll now sets out to rescue the ‘girl with the bright head.’

    “The thing you might have noticed about her was that her hair was parted in the middle and that one wing of it was red while the other was bright green.”

   She was trying (rather ineptly) to set up as a whore, but Carroll detected an innocence in her: he was also reminded of another girl who said that ‘she was going to sin until she died.’

   This bit of rescue work involves Carroll with Charlene’s complicated family, also with some pretty callous thugs, then a messy murder and then the police. In fact Carroll is in deep trouble.

   Violence and evil pervade these events, but Carroll is his own man. In the end, he fights his way through to survival, only to discover a weird twist at the end.

   Robert Leigh’s second novel is a ‘good read,’ but something more serious is at issue in its depiction of an aspect of London life and in Carroll’s own attitudes to these corrupt and wicked people.

FIRST AND LAST MURDER (aka THE GIRL WITH THE BRIGHT HEAD)

      The blurb on the DJ flaps is an abridged version of the one above, with the last paragraph replaced by:

   In the tradition of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, Robert Leigh writes with the vividness and precision of a worldly poet, demonstrating that he is a new detective novelist of extraordinary promise.

   [There is no indication of the book’s previous title. As I’m sure you’ll agree, the cover is hardly designed to catch a would-be buyer’s eye. The book was published back in the day when 90% of the hardcover mysteries produced were sold directly to libraries.]

   The latest batch of covers Bill Pronzini and I have uploaded to Bill Deeck’s Murder at 3 Cents a Day website are those for three of the smallest publishers of lending library mysteries.

   These three are: Alliance Press (one mystery, 1935); Alliance Book Corporation (four mysteries, 1941-1942); and Jonathan Swift Publishers (also four mysteries, 1941-1942).

   The books they published were intended almost solely for the lending library market, and copies with dust jackets are quite scarce today. Of the nine mysteries these three companies published between them, we’re pleased to be able to show you six of them. Of these, perhaps the most noteworthy is Hell on Friday by William Bogart, and unless you’re a long-time collector of the detective pulps, maybe not even he’s an author you’ll recognize. The rest are even less known, but in my opinion, at least, the covers still worth a peek.

      Best-selling spy novelist John Gardner passed away on 3 August 2007.

   Best-known as the most prolific of the writers contracted to continue the adventures of James Bond after the death of Ian Fleming, Gardner, a former Anglican clergyman and recovering alcoholic, would eventually write 16 Bond novels, more than Fleming wrote himself, between 1981 and 1996.

   Ironically, Gardner broke into spy fiction with a series about Boysie Oakes, a cowardly, selfish, and not particularly patriotic character who’s dragooned into spy work pretty much against his will. Oakes was created to be more or less the antithesis of Bond, yet the Oakes novels were an integral part of the resume that got Gardner the Bond gig.

   Though his Bond novels are probably his best-known and most popular work, his reputation as a top-flight cloak-and-dagger writer would be secure if he’d never written a single word about 007. Two series in particular stand as his best work in the sub-genre.

   His five novels featuring Herbie Kruger, a naturalized Brit of German birth who, after emigrating, has become the top agent of MI-6, are among the best series of British spy novels in the post-Le Carre era. Kruger debuted in The Nostradamus Traitor. The penultimate novel in the Kruger series, Maestro, was reportedly Gardner’s personal favorite of all his books.

   Kruger also makes a few cameo appearances in Gardner’s “Secret” trilogy, featuring the British Railtons and the American Farthings, two families, related by marriage, who defend freedom by choosing careers in their respective countries’ intelligence services. The trilogy effectively combined the multi-generational family saga, historical fiction, and espionage in an ambitious project that attempted, largely successfully, to show the history of espionage from just before World War I to the early 60s. The three books in the trilogy are The Secret Generations, The Secret Houses, and The Secret Families.

   Most identified with spy fiction, Gardner was a versatile writer who could easily slip into other mystery sub-genres. A pair of carefully researched novels set in the world of Sherlock Holmes, for example, were told from the point of view of Professor Moriarty, depicting the iconic villain less as the effete “criminal mastermind” Conan Doyle portrayed than as a Victorian version of Al Capone or Don Corleone. Originally planned as a trilogy, the third novel has never appeared.

   Two police procedurals, A Complete State of Death and The Corner Men, featured Scotland Yard detective Roger Torrey. The first, with the setting changed from London to New York, became the Charles Bronson film The Stone Killer.

   Between 1995 and 2001, Gardner abruptly stopped writing while he simultaneously fought cancer and the grief caused by his wife’s death. Winning his battle with the disease and coming to terms with the death of his spouse, he returned to writing with a vengeance, turning out a top-notch international thriller, Day of Absolution, and starting a new historical police procedural series about Suzie Mountford, a London Metropolitan policewoman fighting crime, and sexism,in the early years of World War II. The latest Mountford novel, No Human Enemy, will appear in bookstores later this month. Reportedly, the long-awaited third novel in the Moriarty trilogy is also being readied for publication.

   He’ll be missed.

      THE BOOKS. Adapted from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

GARDNER, JOHN (Edmund) (1926-2007 ) British editions only, unless US titles differ.

* The Liquidator (n.) Muller 1964 [Boysie Oakes]
* Understrike (n.) Muller 1965 [Boysie Oakes]
* Amber Nine (n.) Muller 1966 [Boysie Oakes]

* Madrigal (n.) Muller 1967 [Boysie Oakes]
* Hideaway. Corgi 1968. Story collection.
* A Complete State of Death (n.) Cape 1969 [Derek Torry]
* Founder Member (n.) Muller 1969 [Boysie Oakes]
* The Airline Pirates (n.) Hodder 1970 [Boysie Oakes]
* -The Censor (n.) NEL 1970
* Traitor’s Exit (n.) Muller 1970 [Boysie Oakes]
* Air Apparent (n.) Putnam 1971; See: The Airline Pirates (Hodder 1970).
* The Stone Killer (n.) Award 1973; See: A Complete State of Death (Cape 1969).
* The Assassination File (co) Corgi 1974
* The Corner Men (n.) Joseph 1974 [Derek Torry]
* The Return of Moriarty (n.) Weidenfeld 1974 [Prof. James Moriarty]
* A Killer for a Song (n.) Hodder 1975 [Boysie Oakes]
* The Revenge of Moriarty (n.) Weidenfeld 1975 [Prof. James Moriarty]

* To Run a Little Faster (n.) Joseph 1976
* The Werewolf Trace (n.) Hodder 1977
* The Dancing Dodo (n.) Hodder 1978
* The Nostradamus Traitor (n.) Hodder 1979 [Herbie Kruger]
* The Garden of Weapons (n.) Hodder 1980 [Herbie Kruger]
* Golgotha (n.) Allen 1980 [England; 1990]
* The Last Trump (n.) McGraw 1980; See: Golgotha (Allen 1980).
* License Renewed (n.) Cape 1981 [James Bond]
* For Special Services (n.) Cape 1982 [James Bond]
* The Quiet Dogs (n.) Hodder 1982 [Herbie Kruger]

* Flamingo (n.) Hodder 1983
* Icebreaker (n.) Cape 1983 [James Bond]
* Role of Honour (n.) Cape 1984 [James Bond]
* The Secret Generations (n.) Heinemann 1985 [Railton family; Farthing family]
* Nobody Lives Forever (n.) Cape 1986 [James Bond]
* No Deals, Mr. Bond (n.) Cape 1987 [James Bond]

* Scorpius (n.) Hodder 1988 [James Bond]
* The Secret Houses (n.) Bantam 1988 [Railton family; Farthing family; Herbie Kruger]
* License to Kill (n.) Coronet 1989 [James Bond]
* The Secret Families (n.) Bantam 1989 [Railton family; Farthing family; Herbie Kruger]
* Win, Lose or Die (n.) Hodder 1989 [James Bond]
* Brokenclaw (n.) Hodder 1990 [James Bond]
* The Man from Barbarossa (n.) Hodder 1991 [James Bond]
* Death Is Forever (n.) Hodder 1992 [James Bond]
* Maestro (n.) Bantam 1993 [Herbie Kruger]

* Never Send Flowers (n.) Hodder 1993 [James Bond]
* Seafire (n.) Hodder 1994 [James Bond]
* Confessor (n.) Bantam-UK 1995 [Herbie Kruger]
* Goldeneye (n.) Coronet 1995 [James Bond]
* Cold Fall (n.) Hodder 1996 [James Bond]
* Day of Absolution (n.) Scribner-US 2000

   Detective Sergeant Suzie Mountford novels —

   For more on John Gardner’s life, as he told it himself, go to

      http://www.john-gardner.com/past.html

   From this morning’s online www.booktrade.info:

      MAGDALEN NABB

Posted at 8:56AM Tuesday 21 Aug 2007:

   William Heinemann and Diogenes Verlag AG report that Magdalen Nabb sadly died suddenly at the weekend. Her funeral was held on Monday in Florence. […]

   Her novels which featured Florentine investigator Marshal Guarnaccia include Death of an Englishman, Property of Blood, and most recently, Some Bitter Taste and The Innocent.

   William Heinemann intend to publish her last novel, Vita Nuova, in 2008, with an Arrow paperback scheduled for 2009.

      BIOGRAPHY:     [Taken from her website]

   Magdalen Nabb was born in Church, a moorland village in Lancashire, England. She studied art and, later, pottery which she taught in an English art school whilst exhibiting her own work until 1975 when she moved to Florence in Italy. There, she continued to work on pottery in a majolica studio in Montelupo Fiorentino, a pottery town near Florence, and began writing. It was in Montelupo that she met the model for Marshal Guarnaccia. The town itself, with its tumbledown factories and its wonderful restaurant, are featured in The Marshal and the Murderer. She still lives and writes in Florence, near enough to the carabinieri station in the Pitti Palace to stroll there regularly and have a chat with the marshal who keeps her up to date on crime in the city. […]

   Having been a fan of Georges Simenon’s novels for as long as she can remember, she was astonished and overjoyed when Simenon wrote to congratulate her on her first novel. Their correspondence continued until his death and, until then, the first copy of each book went to him. His presence is very much missed but in difficult moments she can still get advice from him by browsing through his books and his letters.

      SIMENON’S PREFACE TO DEATH IN SPRINGTIME:

  “Dear friend and fellow author,

    “What a pleasure it is to wander with you through the streets of Florence, with their carabinieri, working people, trattorie, even their noisy tourists. It is all so alive: its sounds audible, its smells as perceptible as the light morning mist above the Arno’s swift current; and then up into the foothills, where the Sardinian shepherds, their traditions and the almost unchanged rhythm of their lifestyle, are just as skilfully portrayed. What wouldn’t one give to taste one of their ricotta cheeses!

    “You have managed to absorb it all and to depict it vividly, whether it is the various ranks of the carabinieri, and of course the ineffable Substitute Prosecutor, or the trattorie in the early morning hours. There is never a false note. You even capture that shimmer in the air which is so peculiar to this city and to the still untamed countryside close at hand.

    “This is a novel to be savoured, even more than its two predecessors. It is the first time I have seen the theme of kidnapping treated so simply and so plausibly. Although the cast of characters is large, they are so well etched in a few words that their comings and goings are easily followed.

    “Bravissimo! You have more than fulfilled your promise.”

         Georges Simenon
            Lausanne, April 1983

      THE BOOKS:     [Expanded from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

NABB, MAGDALEN (1947-2007) Series character: Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia (MG).

* Death of an Englishman (n.) Collins 1981; Scribner 1982. MG
* Death of a Dutchman (n.) Collins 1982; Scribner, 1983. MG
* Death in Springtime (n.) Collins 1983; Scribner, 1984. MG
* Death in Autumn (n.) Collins 1985; Scribner 1985. MG
* The Prosecutor [with Paolo Vagheggi] (n.) Collins 1986; St. Martin’s, 1988.
* The Marshal and the Murderer (n.) Collins 1987; Scribner 1988. MG

* The Marshal and the Madwoman (n.) Collins 1988; Scribner 1988. MG
* The Marshal’s Own Case (n.) Collins 1990; Scribner 1990. MG
* The Marshal Makes His Report (n.) Collins 1991; Harper 1992. MG
* The Marshal at the Villa Torrini (n.) Collins 1993; Harper 1994. MG
* The Monster of Florence (n.) Collins 1996; no US edition. MG

   The following novels are not included in CFIV, having been published after the book’s end date of the year 2000. The bibliographic data for these may be incomplete or in error.

   After Jamie Sturgeon sent me the floor plan of the college that’s the center of Midnight, by the multi-author Mark Strange, I mentioned to him that I love maps and floor plans in detective novels.

   In reply, he sent me this one — see below — a floor plan from The Cat and Fiddle Murders by E.B. Ronald which he recently obtained. He goes on to say, “It could be the most complicated one I have ever seen in a crime novel!”

   I second the motion. I haven’t even asked him what the story’s about. I think that you could probably write your own after seeing this. I hope you can see all of the details.

[UPDATE] 08-31-07. Jamie responds:

    “Thanks for putting the Ronald floor plan on your blog. It’s not easy to say what The Cat and Fiddle Murders is about. The book has no blurb either inside or on the dust wrapper, where all it says on the front panel is ‘A real cat and a real fiddle at the grotesque “Cat and Fiddle” and why two people are murdered’

    “Al has it that The Cat and Fiddle Murders is set in New York City when it actually takes place in London. Is it possible that the American version had the setting changed? It appears that the author’s book as Ronald Barker Clue for Murder has, according to one ABE bookseller, several floor plans!”

   Me again. After I posed the question to him about the setting, Al agrees that he was most likely in error and has made the correction in the latest online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV.

   As for Clue for Murder, as soon as I learned about this, I immediately ordered the one cheap copy of it to be found on ABE. More than likely, I’ll report back later.

   Although Al Hubin has cast a very wide net in putting together Crime Fiction IV, he still hasn’t caught everything. Once in a while I come across a book that seems crime-related enough that it ought to be included, and it isn’t, or not yet.

   The latest of these rare instances is the following author and title, which will appear shortly in Part 18 of the Addenda to the Revised edition of CFIV:

      PADDEN, IAN.
         Guerrilla Game. Bantam, pbo, June 1987.

      From the front cover:

    “In the California desert, one man wages a fierce war for more than survival … justice.”

         From the back cover:

      IT STARTED AS A WAR GAME …

on a mock battlefield in the California desert — until the “enemy” started firing live ammunition and a young trainee wound up dead,

      IT ENDED IN MURDER.

Captain Ronald Cochrane of U.S. Special Forces knew the attack wasn’t an accident. Alone, he was going back to the desert to prove that Carl Nathan was murdered in cold blood … even if he had to risk a court martial to do it. What Cochrane didn’t know was that he was already a man marked for death … the target of a powerful military underworld and a corrupt superior who was setting him up for the ultimate double-cross.

      NOW IT WAS A ONE MAN WAR.

For Cochrane, the game was over and the real war is about to begin. And he will need every commando trick in the book to survive …

                  GUERRILLA GAME.

   Ian Padden is also the author of a series of non-fiction “The Fighting Elite” books on the military. One of these is shown, The Fighting Elite: U.S. Airborne: From Boot Camp to the Battle Zones:

   A couple of weeks ago I posted all I knew about mystery writer Mark Strange, who doesn’t exist and never did. The one book “he” wrote was the collaborative effort of three women and one man, all friends and/or related to one another. I invite you to go back and read about the authors. This post, though, is about the novel itself, as British bookseller Jamie Sturgeon has found a copy, and he’s passed along to me what he’s learned about it.

   First, here’s the entry as it appears in the Addenda to the revised edition of Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

      STRANGE, MARK. Joint pseudonym of Adrian Leslie Stephen, Karin Costelloe Stephen, Marjorie Colville Strachey, & Rachel Costelloe Strachey, q.q.v. Under this pen name, the author of one novel in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV; see below:
         Midnight. Faber, hc, 1927. [Academia; England]

   Here from Jamie is more about the book:

      Steve,

   It looks like a fairly typical 1920s murder mystery, set in a women’s teacher training college. There’s a plan of the ground floor of the college opposite the title page. Here is the authors’ note after the title page:

      AUTHORS’ NOTE:

    “THIS story was the work of four people, M., A., R., and K. The method adopted was simple and can be recommended to those readers who feel sure that they could themselves write a detective story if it was not so much trouble. M., A. and K. discussed the plot and then wrote alternate chapters until the book was completed in outline. R. was then called upon and then inserted 10,000 additional words distributed evenly among the different parts. The authors defy the public to trace their separate hands or locate the padding.”

   Here’s a scan of the ground floor plan mentioned above:

   An obituary for Nicholas William Wollaston, writer, born June 23 1926, died April 23 2007, appeared in the online Guardian, May 9, 2007, from which the following paragraphs are excerpted:

   A complete online bibliography of Mr. Wollaston’s work can be found here.

   Not mentioned in the tribute taken from the Guardian was the only novel he wrote which is included in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

      WOLLASTON, NICHOLAS (1926-2007)
         * Eclipse (London: Macmillan, 1974, hc) Walker, 1974. Film: Celandine, 1977 (scw & dir: Simon Perry).

   The film is obscure enough that it’s not even included on IMDB.com, but a very short synopsis in the BFI database says “Story of the possession of one man – his mind, heart and soul – by his twin brother.”

   Of the book itself, one online bookseller says, “The author’s fourth novel, about identical twins, one of which is killed in a boating accident while sailing with the other.”

   While I collect Gothic romance paperbacks, I certainly have not read most of them. Yet, that is. So when I get an inquiry like the following, I’m seldom of very much help. It’s a long shot, I know, but I’m posting the question here, just in case someone stops by sometime and recognizes the book right away. You never know.

   Leave a comment or email me directly, and I’ll pass the word along to L.B.

PS. And as I said in my first reply to her, several of Wilkie Collins’s books were published in paperback as Gothics. This was early on in the craze for them, before a crew of authors had been established to write new ones and publishers were growing frantic trying to jump on the gravy wagon. Anything that could be published as a Gothic was, back in those days. All they had to do was to put a new cover on it, one with a girl in the foreground, running from a spooky manor house in the background.

   Here’s her question: