Tue 14 Jun 2011
Archived Review: ESTELLE THOMPSON – Hunter in the Dark.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Reviews[5] Comments
ESTELLE THOMPSON – Hunter in the Dark. Walker, hardcover, first US edition, 1979; paperback, 1984. Robert Hale, UK, hardcover, 1978.
Philip Blair is blind, and his ego is deeply wounded when a young girl picked up from the bus stop where they both had been waiting is later found murdered.
With the assistance of his former fiancee, he takes it upon himself to investigate a link to the death of another small girl a short time earlier; he has a theory that he feels the police are too slow in following up on.
There seems to be a special attraction that mystery readers have toward blind detectives, and Hunter in the Dark is no exception. The story is quiet, low-key, and gently sentimental, laced with a whopping dose of coincidence, but now that Blair’s life is back on the right track, might it not be that amateur private eye work is in his blood?
Rating: B.
[UPDATE] 06-14-11. I wish I could say that I remember this one, but I don’t — only the title is familiar. I believe I was right, though, to say that mystery readers are fond of blind detectives, since (speaking personally) if I had this beside me right now, I’d pick it up to read again without a moment’s hesitation.
There were, alas, no other tales in which Philip Blair appeared as the detective. Of Estelle Thompson’s output of 16 crime novels between 1961 and 2000 (two of them designated by Hubin as having only marginal crime content), there isn’t a recurring series character to be found. Most were never published in the US, making her work essentially unknown in this country.
[UPDATE #2] 06-15-11. Thanks to Jamie Sturgeon for providing the cover of the British edition of Hunter in the Dark — the one you see immediately here above and to the right.
[UPDATE #3] 06-16-11. More from Jamie:
Here’s a photo of Estelle Thompson, on the back of the UK edition of The Substitute (Hale 1991). The biog on the DW states:
“She has more than eight novels to her credit, translations of which have been published in Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Sweden and the USA. Her first novel A Twig is Bent was serialised in Woman and on BBC radio and film rights were sold. Her fourth novel The Edge of Nowhere was serialised in Women’s Realm.”
Of course she had written more than eight novels when The Substitute was published and The Edge of Nowhere was in fact her third novel. I found on the internet a more recent Hale book (Come Home to Danger) which states on the DW more briefly that:
June 15th, 2011 at 3:34 am
Don’t know this one, but be sure to read same author’s “The Lawyer and The Carpenter” if you can find it; it’s a terrific book.
June 15th, 2011 at 10:34 am
It was her second book, published in 1963, and luckily it came out in this country the next year. There were 10 copies on ABE when I went to look, and I ordered one in nice shape (fingers crossed) for less than $12.
I’m relying on your judgment, but knowing your taste in detective fiction, I don’t think I can go wrong.
June 20th, 2011 at 3:29 am
Having seen the review I thought I would read the book. I enjoyed it and I’ll now look out for more books by her to add to the three I already have.
June 21st, 2011 at 5:31 pm
Yes, she seems to be a mystery writer worth looking into. Since posting this review, I was glancing through her list of titles in Hubin, and I noticed that two of them are designated with a hyphen and presumably only marginally crime-related — and two fewer to add to a want list, at least for me.
I’ve just received my copy of THE LAWYER AND THE CARPENTER. (Not a title, by the way, that I would think attract many mystery readers’ attention. I’d have thought this a prime candidate for the US publisher, Ives Washburn, to have done something creative with.)
Just in case anyone’s wondering about it, here’s the blurb on the inside front dust jacket:
“The lawyer, Stephen Cameron, of impeccable reputation in his small Australian town, is popular enough to be weighing a bid to stand for Parliament. The carpenter, also successful and well-liked, is a good friend of the lawyer. Suddenly the pleasantly conventional nature of their lives is destroyed when the carpenter is accused of murder and the lawyer undertakes to defend him.
Convinced of his client’s innocence, Stephen Cameron quickly decides the only defense is to find the real murderer. But almost at once he is confronted with a terrible dilemma when he finds reason to suspect, to his complete bewilderment, that the guilty person may be his own wife.
“In this excellent novel of murder and suspense, Estelle Thompson graphically presents the mental torment which almost wrecks Stephen before he finally decides what he should do, and she shows very clearly the terrible effect murder can have on all concerned.”
A little stodgy, perhaps, but it sounds interesting.
Books promoted on the back cover are SHANNON TERROR by Theodora DuBois, and DEATH OF A SARDINE by Joan Fleming. Neither are authors I’ve read anything by before.
October 3rd, 2011 at 11:52 pm
I have a lot of her books that are all signed with the dust covers, I also have some personal photos that look like she had signed to her uncle. I found them in an op shop believe it or not….great reads though..thanks for the info on her as I found it hard to find anything about her at all.