What Happened to the Corbetts by Nevil Shute (Pan, 1970)

 

When war came to Southampton, no one expected it to be like this - least of all the Corbetts.  Their home a ruin without gas, electricity or water, no milk for the baby, typhoid and cholera a daily threat, and bombs from the sky a nightly terror.

In a desperate attempt to save their children, Joan and Peter begin a heart-stirring journey that exchanges the dangers on land for the darkness and waste of the sea...

Written in 1938, this moving and dramatic novel of simple heroism shows a master storyteller and modern prophet at his irresistible best.

This is an oddity--a "future war" story about the Second World War... published a year before the actual war began.  So it's interesting to read this in hindsight and compare it with real life events--which were both better and worse than depicted here.  Better, because British civilians were better prepared for the Blitz and subsequent upheavals when the bombing eventually began.  Worse, because the author clearly didn't imagine how ruthless the Nazis would be and how quickly they'd steamroller over Europe.  (It's quite clear from the text that Europe is not under enemy occupation when the attack on Britain begins.)

One last really strange thing to note--though it's quite clear who the author sees as "the enemy" in this book, they are never named! 

The Case of the Hesitant Hostess by Erle Stanley Gardner (Pan, 1959)

 

Frame-up!

She looked cool and innocent on the witness stand--a formidable challenge for Perry Mason.

She held the jury spellbound--for she had all the trumps to convict an innocent man.

And when Perry sprang his bomb-shell, the hoped-for explosion never came...

That was 5 p.m. Friday, leaving Mason three nights, two days, to break the case against his client...  Tense, action-packed hours, with the chips mounting steadily against him.

Hostess as in "nightclub hostess", that is.

This is actually a good Perry Mason mystery.  Perry defends a man framed for an armed robbery, and finds himself in the middle of a case involving illegal gambling, impersonation, drug smuggling--and murder.  Murder goes without saying of course!  Also needless to say, Perry gets his man off all the charges and the real criminals behind bars.

Double Doom by Josephine Bell (Ballantine, 1957)

From the Lifeline Bookfair:

 

In the quiet English village of Farthing-On-Hone, two brothers suddenly die, one of an accident in the garden hothouse, the other--two days later and even more unexpectedly--while convalescing in a hospital.

What makes this coincidence of deaths peculiar, not to say downright macabre, is the notice which appears in the local paper announcing the demise of both brothers at the same time--while one is still, in fact, very much alive...

A disquieting little novel, with some VERY unpleasant characters and quite politically incorrect by modern standards.  What's not to love?

Never A Dull Moment by Peter Cheyney (Fontana, 1955)

 

In NEVER A DULL MOMENT, our tough, wise-cracking hero, Lemmy Caution of the F.B.I., finds himself in England caught up in a tangled web of intrigue and international espionage.  As usual, Lemmy finds it hard to keep his mind on business when two such lovelies such as Tamara and Julia are on the scene--or maybe they are his business!  Here indeed is vintage Cheyney of the kind that prompted one reviewer to write: "Heavens, what a craftsman!  How adroitly he keeps a story in and briskly shakes together all the right ingredients--sex, violence, mystery."

Now this is an odd one: an English author whose main character (and narrator) is a hard-boiled, tough-talking American FBI agent.  The result is... well, it reads like bastardised Damon Runyon:

"An' I reckon that the dame is gonna talk without a lot of pressin'.  I reckon she was plenty scared when Nikolls took her outa the cottage an' she thought she was goin' to get herself nicely creased out an' chucked in the river.  An' she has plenty of time since then to think over what's gonna be good for her."

 (Page 93) 

Still, there's nothing like stealing from the best!

Neutron Star by Larry Niven (Sphere, 1972)

 

Larry Niven is one of the brightest new talents in s.f. and the title story of this collection won him the 1966 Hugo Award.  The seven other stories are thronged with superbly original characters and whole races of creatures such as grog, thrint and bandersnatchi, inhabiting worlds like LookItThat, Down, Jinx--indeed an entire galaxy of planets with their own histories, ecologies and epochs.

A collection of short stories written in Larry Niven's award-winning prime.  What a pity they're contained in a book with an ugly cover that conveys nothing.   Would it have been too much to ask for the cover artist to have depicted some of those "grog, thrint and bandersnatchi" instead of this naked muscleman floating in space? 

The Case of the Cautious Coquette by Erle Stanley Gardner (Pan, 1958)

 

Perry Mason Suspected!

LAWYER-DETECTIVE Perry Mason begins a search for a hit-and-run motorist.  A police advertisement brings an anonymous letter, and the letter brings him to a blue-eyed blonde.

Mason is delighted--and finds a damaged black sedan that fits the case perfectly.

Next thing on his hands is another damaged car and two equally convincing candidates for the role of guilty party!

Then a corpse crops up--and the man the police start building their case against is Mason!

I've been trying and trying to work out who the man on the cover reminds me of, and my best guess is Richard Attenborough as he appeared in Brighton Rock.  If anyone has any better guesses, please let me know.

As for the book itself--I get the impression that Erle Stanley Gardner had reached the stage where he no longer cared--at least about his Perry Mason stories.  After a nice start, the plot isn't terribly coherent, and when Perry solves the mystery it comes out of left field.   It's almost as if the author suddenly realised he needed to finish the book, so he closed his eyes and stuck a pin into a list of his characters in order to decide which one was the murderer...

At Some Forgotten Door by Doris Miles Disney (MacFadden-Bartell, 1967)

Bought at the closing down sale of one of my favourite bookshops:

 

STARK TERROR NAILED HER TO THE SPOT

They stood facing each other, her enormous eyes reflecting the fear for her life--the greatest fear she had ever known.

Neither of them moved or spoke, testing the unique bond between them, the bond of murderer and intended victim.

He broke the deadly silence. "If you'd listened to reason..."

She saw his hands clench and unclench.  She could almost feel them at her throat.  She saw him stiffen with the resolve to get it over with.

Hetty hurled the lamp into his face.

... And I don't blame the heroine for being scared of the house - look, there's a giant head growing out of it!

Seriously.  This was sold as crime fiction, but it's much closer to being a gothic romance.  There's a sinister house - check - an orphaned heroine - check - and vague intimations of something being wrong before anything actually happens.  There's a charming young man whom the heroine insists on marrying even though everyone warns her against him.  And it's not until the very last chapter of the book that the heroine goes exploring and discovers a secret room filled with dead bodies.

Lastly, At Some Forgotten Door is set in the 1880s.  This came as quite a shock to me when I opened the book, because there is nothing on the cover to indicate that it is a historical novel!