Fool the Toff by John Creasey (Hodder & Stoughton, 1954)

 

Was "Love's Matrimonial Agency" a racket shop?  Jane Abbott met her husband there and he vanished--her money with him.  The Toff went to see Miss Love and found a most remarkable woman.  Then there was Jeremiah Matt, an equally remarkable man.  In fact the Toff met many new acquaintances and one of them made a fool of him.  Others... died.

This blurb is taken from the half-title page, as the back cover is filled with an advertisement:

 

Every once in a while I stumble across one of these on a secondhand bookstall.

As for the Toff--as the title of this book says, he is indeed fooled!  In the end, all the mysteries contained therein are  solved by his "man", Jolly--which is not what you expect of a story with a crime-fighting gentleman hero!

Kay of Kingfishers by Constance M. White (Hutchinson, 1954)

I found this in the Green Shed, and bought it a) because the dust jacket was intact and b) because it looked like something I might have enjoyed when I was a child!

To begin with, Kay missed half a term by being ill.  Then, when she did return, it was to find that dear old Miss Benson--surely the nicest headmistress anyone could wish for--had been replaced by young and efficient Miss Oliver.  And Judy, her dearest friend, seemed to have forsaken Kay for a fresh interest--the new Head's Girl Guide Company.

Kay, rebellious and stubborn, turned to Stella Jason, and together they stumbled upon a discovery which involved not only Miss Oliver, but also an archaeological student, the local vicar, and a strange little girl called Bella.

 All right, get your mind out of the gutter.  (Yes, you.  You know who I'm talking about!)  The "discovery" Kay stumbles upon is neither a drug smuggling ring nor a swingers' party, and absolutely nothing naughty is going on between the headmistress, the vicar and the archaeological student.

Creature From the Black Lagoon by Vargo Statten (Dragon Publications, 1954)

Another great find from The Green Shed!

When I was growing up in the seventies and eighties, nearly every popular movie had its novelization.  Videos and DVDs gradually made the genre less popular--though movie novelizations still exist, mainly for those who want to see the characters and the worlds of their favourite films fleshed out.

This novelization of a classic sci-fi movie is a fairly early example of its kind (but not the earliest, as the first movie novelization appeared in 1912!)  Unusually, it's a hardback.  By the standards of 1954, Creature From the Black Lagoon was a glossy and expensive science fiction movie, and apparently the people commissioning this book wanted to keep things (comparatively) classy.  Interestingly enough, this movie was novelized a second time in 1977--this time in paperback as a part of a series of tie-ins to classic Universal horror films.

"Vargo Stratten" was a pseudonym of John Russell Fearn, a pulp writer whose career dated back to the early 1930s.