"The Case of the Smoking Chimney" by Erle Stanley Gardner (Horwitz, 1963)

Found at the Lifeline Bookfair. Where else?

Millions of readers throughout the world read the cases of wily lawyer-detective Perry Mason and follow his brilliant courtroom career on television.

Here is another fast-moving story of Erle Stanley Gardner's famous hero.

This blurb on the back cover literally says nothing but: Here is another Perry Mason adventure.  But what else do you need to say?

(Oh, and it ties it in nicely with the Perry Mason TV series by depicting our hero on the cover looking suspiciously like Raymond Burr!)

Seven books by Mazo de la Roche (Pan, 1962-1966)

File these under, "I don't like the books, but oh boy, do I like the covers!"  Someone must have loved the series back-in-the-day however, because I found these as a set on a charity bookstall.

Morning at Jalna (1963)

1863 -

South of the Canadian border from Jalna, the American Civil War rages.

Into the peaceful, budding Ontario settlement come intriguing visitors with the polished manners and soft accents of Old Carolina—

Are these elegant newcomers genuine fugitives from war, or, far more alarming to Philip and Adeline Whiteoak, are they agents of the slave-trading Confederate States?

Whiteoak Harvest (1962) 

RENNY and his wife ALAYNE—their marriage near disaster...

FINCH and SARAH return from their honeymoon to upset the household with Eden Whiteoak's love-child... 

WAKEFIELD, engaged to Pauline Lebraux, but tormented by religious doubts... 

A complete and captivating story in its own right, Whiteoak Harvest is one of the famous WHITEOAKS series—world sales total over twelve million books!

Wakefield's Course (1963) 

'You must tell her who she is—and that you can't marry her'

Two star-crossed lovers face an agonizing decision in this surging episode of one of fiction's best-loved families—  

The Whiteoaks of Jalna

Young Renny (1962)

'I thought I was dead to men till you came along' 

A strong and compelling story of the Whiteoaks of Jalna—of a bitter feud, and a shattered love—and of Renny in his fiery youth and first passion.

Finch's Fortune (1962)

YOUNG FINCH—AND $100,000

At twenty-one Finch Whiteoak, proud, sensitive, reckless, becomes the bewildered inheritor of his grandmother's fortune.   

In this enthralling episode from the Whiteoaks saga, the ever generous Finch takes his two Uncles to England, and against a lovely Devonshire background, falls in and out of love with the bewitching Sarah Court—suffering all the youthful agonies of disillusion and frustrated passion.

Mary Wakefield (1965)

EARLY DAYS AT JALNA

Second of the world-famous, world-loved "Whiteoaks" novels, MARY WAKEFIELD tells of the beautiful young governess who came to Jalna in the warm summer of 1893 and of the struggle that awaited her with the pillars of the Whiteoak family, still dominated by the matriarch Adeline... 

Soon Mary became the centre of a family dispute, and it was not until a flood of emotions both violent and tender had been released that life at Jalna could resume its fertile course.

Whiteoak Heritage (1966)

The New Master of Jalna

Captain Renny Whiteoak returns from World War I to find a challenging heritage:

His father and step-mother have died.

The old uncles, Ernest and Nicholas, have been running the estate with a blissful disregard of economics. 

Young Eden, now a student, is involved in a strange and damaging love affair.

To help put Jalna on its feet, Renny employs a brash and beautiful horse-woman, and soon finds that he too is in love... 

Old Adeline wants to see Renny happily married—but who can fill the role of mistress of Jalna?

Dark Duet by Peter Cheyney (Fontana, 1963)

 

KANE looked at her appreciatively.  "I don't know whether anybody's ever told you, but you've got the swellest pair of legs I've ever seen" he said.  Valetta looked at him sideways along her dark eyelashes.  He thought she was very beautiful; her mouth delicate, sensitive, almost tremulous.  He could look at her for hours on end.  It was that sort of mouth...

And.... here we have some more fiction about World War II--in this case from the pen of pulp writer Peter Cheyney.  Firstly published in 1942, this book contains three linked novellas about two spies/assassins working for the British Government.  Though they are definitely working on the side of good, they are not particularly moral characters, nor do they operate by a gentlemanly code.  The whole thing is altogether more gritty than the previous generation of spy thrillers, and seems to have been influenced by hard-boiled detective fiction (another genre in which Peter Cheyney specialised!)

The Astronauts Must Not Land / The Space-Time Juggler by John Brunner (Ace, 1963)

More from my collection of Ace Doubles:

It was a time of glory and it was a time of fear.  After two years, Starventure, the first spaceship to reach the stars beyond our solar system, was returning to Earth and all the world rejoiced.  But it was to be a shallow triumph, for on the day Starventure landed, a huge monster appeared in the sky above southern Chile, and the terror that gripped mankind was the worst in the annals of recorded history.

Scientists were convinced that only the crew of the spaceship could unravel the mystery of the apparition.  But, when the ship's latches were opened it was discovered that the astronauts had been transformed into six-limbed creatures with twisted and warped bodies--and they knew no more about their fate than the terror stricken people of Earth.

You'd think a story about returning astronauts (in a craft named "Starventure" no less!) would be full of Space Age optimism, but no.  Strangely, this is not the first book of this era I've read where aliens have done terrible and inexplicable things to human astronauts.   It seems that sixties was as much about "things man was never meant to know" as "boldly going where no man has gone before!"

 

Andalvar of the planet Argus, king of an interstellar empire, was dead and fear ruled in his absence.  The dread of a power struggle between the treacherous Andra, the "Black Witch", and the beautiful Princess Sharla showered panic upon the people and threatened to crumble the starry realm to dust.

But their powers were restricted to the present, and before either could sit on the throne, they would have to come to grips with the man from the future who held the destiny of the universe in his hand.

His name: Kelab the Conjurer--THE SPACE-TIME JUGGLER.

It's nice to see that the blurb-writer has used the correct "interstellar empire" rather than "galactic empire", or even worse, "intergalactic empire"!

The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie (Pan, 1958 and 1963)

Here we have two versions of the same book, from the same publisher, but printed five years apart.  They provide proof that while things always change they don't necessarily improve.   First, the version from 1958:

 

THE SECRET ADVERSARY tells how two young people advertise for adventure and are caught in a whirlpool of international intrigue which almost costs them their lives.  A gay and exciting thriller!

 A woman, held at gunpoint, hands over documents to the mysterious figure in the foreground.  The cover doesn't tell you who the woman is, or what the documents are, but it certainly lets you know that what you're about to read is a crime thriller.

Next, the version published in 1963:

Two Innocents in search of adventure.

An Elusive Young Woman holder of a vital secret

A Faceless Man with a Blueprint for Anarchy

The woman being held at gunpoint has been replaced by a picture of a dark and gloomy mansion.  While the art isn't bad, the contents of the book could be anything: a Gothic romance, a collection of ghost stories, and traditional murder-in-a-country-house whodunnit.

At least Pan's copy writers had learned to write snappier blurbs for their back covers--albeit ones with really strange ways of using capital letters!