NAT EASTON – A Book for Banning. Bill Banning #7 (?), Boardman / British Bloodhound series, UK, hardcover, 1959. No US publication.

   Bill Banning is so successful as a writer of crime fiction that he can be taken for a doctor by the Bentley he drives. He also, on the side, owns and operates a private detective agency, complete with a small staff of amateur, but dedicated, operatives.

   In this, his fifth adventure, he’s hired by a worried aristocrat to find a book that’s mysteriously disappeared, claimed to contain forbidden official secrets. The man, as Banning quickly discovers, also has a nymphomaniac for a wife, and a pair of spoiled, but married, daughters.

   Banning is not the brightest detective in the world. His secretary-assistant, Josie, seems to have the sharpest mind in the firm. Banning is also — how should I put this? — woman hungry. Sex starved.

   This is all pretty much tolerable, but the last couple of chapters are mucked up something awful. The killer is fairly obvious, but the “book” is impossibly found in the wrong apartment, and the interview leading into the final summing up is badly set up.

   Or was I just asleep already?

Rating: C minus.

NOTE: There were in all eleven Bill Banning books. The Goodreads list of the books is here. Nat Easton is assumed to be a pen name, but who actually wrote the books does not seem to be known.