Mon 25 Jan 2021
MARY CHALLIS – Crimes Past. Jeremy Locke #1. Raven House, paperback original, 1980.
Just by coincidence, if you believe in such things, I got a letter from Al Hubin yesterday, and he admits he doesn’t know who “Mary Challis” is, either. (But if there’s anyone else who’d be more sure of ferreting out the truth, I don’t know who it might be.)
According to the back cover, Mary Challis is the pseudonym of a writer with more than thirty mysteries to her credit. (*) She also lives in London, Ontario, if that helps. If this book is an example of her work, however, 1 think I’ll pass on the thirty others, thank you.
There are twelve chapters in this book, and I warn you, Chapter 11 is a complete waste of time. I’ve heard of padding before, but this is ridiculous. The culprit is known on page 162 [of 188 total]. One suspects, even eagerly awaits the surprise twist … but … there is none. There is absolutely nothing of importance that happens in the next twenty pages.
It hadn’t been a particularly gripping story even up to then. It seems that lawyer Jeremy Locke’s brother has returned to England after fourteen years of self-imposed exile. He fled the country when he did to avoid imprisonment on embezzlement charges. No one has ever found the money, and now one of Derek Locke’s old comrades is found murdered.
Jeremy, who is thirty years old and eight years a lawyer, acts like a gawky, teen-aged kid. With the police; with his guardian and senior partner; with his older brother, when he finally shows up; and with his new girl friend, Lisa Marlowe, who is also the secretary of a mystery writer named Stephen Jackson.
Mr. Jackson is mentioned once or twice more, but nothing ever comes of it. What a shame. His presence might have done something (anything!) to waken up this sleepy, placid little novel.
Rating: D
(*) It is now known that Mary Challis was one of several pen names of the author best known as Sara Woods, who before she was done, wrote forty-nine mysteries featuring an English barrister by the name of Antony Maitland. As for the books she wrote as Mary Challis, there were three additional case adventures for Jeremy Locke, all from Raven House, a not very successful line of mystery paperbacks from Harlequin in the 1980s.
January 25th, 2021 at 10:35 am
I did have a subscription to Raven House Books, so had all of these, as well as the ones she wrote as by Anne Burton (character Richard Trenton) and Margaret Leek (characters Anne & Stephen Marryat). There were 4 by Challis and 3 by each of the others.
No, I never read any of them. The only Raven House books I read and the only ones I still own are the two by former DAPA-EM member Richard Moore, DEATH IN THE PAST and DEATH OF A SOURCE.
January 25th, 2021 at 10:42 am
I take that back. Checking the list, I see that I did read the two William Campbell Gault books. Other more or less well known authors they published include Hillary Waugh, Dell Shannon, Henry Kane, Harold Q. Masur, Gary Paulsen, Sara Woods, K. Arne Bloom, Margaret Maron (ONE COFFEE WITH, her first book, which I did read too), Mark Sadler (Dennis Lynds), and Cornell Woolrich.
January 25th, 2021 at 11:54 am
You’re right. They published a strange mix of well known writers and complete unknowns. Why they did the Sara Woods books under four different names, I don’t know, but since there were so many of them in such a short amount of time (as Woods, Leek, Burton and Challis) I’ve always suspected they were “trunk books.” That is to say, books she’d written but had never been able to sell.
As I recall, since you mentioned it, you could sign up and get all of the Raven House books by subscription (you could do that for all of Harlequin’s lines of books), or from bookstores. But as I recall, the bookstore books were all second printings, and the numbering was different.
January 25th, 2021 at 6:48 pm
so, fun fact, I actually know partly why they published Sara Woods’ books under different pseudonyms: several of the Leek/Burton/Challis books are actually carbon copies of the Antony Maitland novels Woods published under her own name, just with other sleuths inserted and some character names changed. My theory is not that she couldn’t sell the Raven House books but that she badly needed the money from them, for whatever reason, so she turned out an absurd number of manuscripts in a short period of time.
January 25th, 2021 at 7:45 pm
Now that’s a possibility that I hadn’t even considered. Thanks, Kacper!
January 25th, 2021 at 7:59 pm
Woods was fairly popular, so she may have been doing a favor more than desperate for money.
I can’t say I was ever impressed by the Raven line. About the most interesting thing they did from my point of view was publish the last of Fox’s Johnny Marshall series.
Their insistence on clean books with minimal violence, no sex, and little or no swearing seemed to really constrain even good writers from doing their best work, which was true of even the Laser SF line though it at least gave some unknowns a chance and had the great Freas covers.
I had the impression most of the better known contributors were indeed selling them ‘trunk book’ or early drafts of books they later substantially changed.
Raven and Laser always felt second hand to me.
January 25th, 2021 at 8:53 pm
They also published one of the few mysteries by Alan Yates (Carter Brown) written in third person: Prompt for Murder by “Sinclair McKellar”
January 25th, 2021 at 9:05 pm
Now *that* is something I did not know. Thanks, Stephen! I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a copy of that one. Or if I did, I passed it up immediately, because whoever heard of Sinclair McKellar, before or since?