A Tale of Two Murders by Elizabeth Ferrars (Fontana, 1961)

Bought in the same batch of books as Always Say Die.

It entertained Hilda Gazely to speculated about the strange woman who walked the river bank at sunset.  But murder and the facts which came to light afterwards made her ask herself desperately how she could have been so complacently blind to what had been happening around her.  Hilda was unusually impressed by Inspector Crankshaw and told him all she could--then she became uneasy.  She was sure that something she had seen, done or said was utterly wrong.

 The problem with writing about mysteries is you really can't say too much without giving away important plot points.  Suffice it to say that a thoroughly nasty character is murdered, and almost all the suspects have good reason to do away with him.

A Tale of Two Murders also introduces the delightfully cynical, "heard-it-all-before" Inspector Crankshaw:

    Not impatiently, but in a considering tone, as if , as if he were speaking mainly to himself, to clear his own mind, Crankshaw said, "A widower, faithful to the memory of his wife, not many friends, but such as he had, good ones--that's the picture, then."
    She raised her head quickly, grateful that he should have understood, and was shocked to see the irony in his small, sly eyes.

 Oh, and in the end, Crankshaw gets his man.

Vulcan's Hammer by Philip K. Dick / The Skynappers by John Brunner (Ace 1960)

The thing about the Lifeline Bookfairs is you never know what you're going to find.  So my heart skipped a beat and I think I gave a little "squee!" of happiness when I visited the bookfair one time and found rows of Ace Doubles spread out on the science fiction table:

CHOOSE - THE DEADLY TRUTH OR THE VITAL LIE!

Vulcan 3 was the supreme head of Unity, the perfect world government that had evolved out of chaos and war.  Vulcan 3 was rational, objective and unbiased ... as only a machine could be!

Theoretically there should have been nothing but peace under such a rule--and for a century or so there was.  Until the crackpots, the superstitious, the religious fanatics found themselves a new leader to follow.

Then the discontent began to explode again.  But this time there was a third side involved, a machine that could not accept any emotional viewpoints.  The people of the world began to realize that they had created a vicious paradox: they had to make peace between themselves or be stamped out by the ever-growing claws of VULCAN's HAMMER.

(Need I point out that you don't strike things with the claws of a hammer?)

 

PAWN OF THE STAR PLOTTERS

When Ivan Wright stepped out of his mountain cabin, rifle in hand, to investigate the sound of a strange helicopter, he stepped right into the middle of a galactic crisis.

For the crew of that odd aircraft were not men such as he'd ever seen before--and when he tried to oppose them, he found himself hurled uncontrollably into oblivion.

He awoke to find himself considered a kidnapped barbarian from a backward planet in a galaxy of advanced civilizations--yet one who somehow held in his own hands the ey to all their futures!

Everyone has heard of Philip K. Dick.  All his books are still in print (even the ones that haven't been made into movies).  So I'm going to write about John Brunner instead...

 In the late 60s and early 70s John Brunner started writing highly regarded, socially and environmentally aware science fiction (Stand on Zanzibar won a Hugo Award, and  The Sheep Look Up and The Jagged Orbit were both nominated for Nebulas).  However I must confess to a decided... affection for the space operas he wrote earlier.  (Many of them were published as Ace Doubles.)   Brunner didn't suddenly start writing well in the late sixties--he honed his skills producing potboilers from the early fifties onward.  So yay! for well-written escapism.  These books are excellent entertainment if you can get your hands on them.

Way-Farer by Dennis Schmidt (Ace, 1981)

I honestly can't remember where I found this one--my best guess is either at one of the Salvos Stores or at the Green Shed.

According to every reading it was a paradise planet--a warm and fecund world far more desirable than the teeming, polluted warrens of the planet-city Earth had become.  Yet when the last of the one-way transports had landed its cargo of Pilgrims, the men of Earth were to learn of a danger that no machine could detect, and against which no machine could defend them--the Mushin, mental entities that stimulate and amplify the dark streak of violence that lies near the core of every human being.

Seven generations would pass before a descendant of the scattered remnant of the original colonists would be ready to face the power of the Mushin.  But first he would have to learn to wield the weapon that is no weapon--and that only when there is no Will, there is a Way...

His name is Jerome.  This is his story.  He is the

WAY-FARER.

 I'm afraid I wasn't very taken with this book.  It wasn't bad--just not very good, either.

No, what fascinated me was the weirdness that is this cover.   Let's ignore for the moment the fact that the central figure appears to be floating somewhere in orbit, and take a closer look at it.  And... it becomes apparent that somebody has done a cut and paste job, because that head does not belong on that body.  Not only is it too small and perched on a neck too long and slender for a frame that size, but it also has an oddly feminine jawline to go with that cute page-boy haircut.

I can come to only one conclusion.  Clearly the cover illustration was originally intended for another book entirely--one about a mad scientist performing experimental head transplants!

Always Say Die by Elizabeth Ferrars (Fontana, 1962)

Another gem from Lifeline:

Violet Gamlen had been missing for a year.  Speculation and rumour ran wild, but one person thought he knew her whereabouts-

'Don't you see, that man's started gardening again.  He couldn't bury a body amongst all that weed without the signs of digging betraying him, but when it's been all freshly dug...'

 I kept trying to work out what was wrong with this cover, until I realised that the artist had problems with both perspective and proportion.   The cat leaping out at our frightened heroine is seemingly enormous, and meanwhile the lady herself appears to have a very large right arm and a very small left one.

Not that it matters, because the mystery of what happened to Violet Gamlen and who was responsible for it was enthralling and kept me guessing until the end.  Elizabeth Ferrars is one of those writers who is now less well known than she should be given the length of her career and the number of books she wrote.  However, unlike some of her better known contemporaries (Ngaio Marsh, for example) most of her books are standalone novels.   The lack of a continuing detective hero probably made her "brand" less memorable than it could have been.

The House of the Seven Flies by Victor Canning (Hodder and Stoughton, 1958)

Another book from the Lifeline Bookfair:

 

A sunken launch.  It couldn't be much more than a couple of fathoms near the island ... one could dive without any elaborate outfit ... a steel deed-box, small enough to lift.  It sounded too easy ... Perhaps it was.

 (Page 111)

World War II and its aftermath inspired a whole generation of thrillers.  This one sees a gaggle of rival crooks searching the Netherlands for lost Nazi loot.  The good guys (such as the are) eventually wind up with it, but not without a lot of plot twists and turns along the way.

Nine Dragons: An Encounter With the Far East by Sally Backhouse (Hamish Hamilton, 1967)

I love vintage travel books, because they enable me to travel in time as well as space.  I found this one in a Salvos store:

Sally Backhouse went out to the Far East with few prejudices and fewer illusions, prepared for almost anything.  In this book she records her life in Hong Kong and her travels in Japan, Korea and China.  Intending tourists will find a fascinatingly personal commentary on such sights as the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden City, Hiroshima, the temples of Kyoto; but the book is not a guide in the ordinary sense.  Everyday life in the Orient proved quite as extraordinary as its architectural and historical wonders, and the enchantment , shocks and surprises experience by the author are conveyed in a series of vividly observed and sometimes hilarious encounters.

Her curiosity about the people among whom she lived and the differences made by varying cultural attitudes is as lively as is her enjoyment.  How does the Communist school system work?  What is the Far Eastern attitude to women?  How do they feel about us--the "big noses" of the West?  These are some of the questions asked and answered in a shrewd and sympathetic look at a part of the world which is still shrouded by false glamour or sheer ignorance, but it is undeniably vital to understand.

(There will be a lot more of these coming up--I found an bagful at the Green Shed the other day!)

The Storm Lord by Tanith Lee (DAW 1976)

A few years ago, someone donated their entire fantasy and science fiction collection to the YMCA charity stall in Kingston.  Sadly the charity stall is gone now--the land sold off to developers--but while it remained I bought a few bags of books, including this:

Here we see a short, shaggy barbarian clutching an immaculately coiffed and made up (slave?) girl.  Between her blue eyeshadow and the generally murky brown colour scheme of the cover, it's easy to see that this was published in the 1970s.

THE STORM LORD is a big novel of an unknown planet and of the conflict of empires and peoples on that world.  It is the story of a priestess raped and slain, of a baby born of a king and hidden among strangers, and of how that child, grown to manhood, sought his true heritage.

It is a novel of alien gods and lost goddesses, of warriors and wanderers, and of vengeance long delayed.

It is an epic in every sense of the word.

The "priestess" in the back cover blurb isn't the only person in the book who is raped and/or slain--the victims pile up, chapter by chapter.  I don't think I've encountered this much rapine and slaughter in a fantasy novel since I read Game of Thrones several years ago.

The dragons had brought only women to their feast, planning to use them, when the festivities were at their height, in the orgiastic manner of the ancient feasts of Rarnammon.  And these women had struck simultaneously, with daggers, with knives from the table, with heavy stone drinking cups.  Thick blood ran on the flags and smeared the walls.

(Page 277)

 So the question I find myself asking, is: Which world would be worse to live in--Tanith Lee's Vis or George R.R. Martin's Westeros?