The Lion of Sparta by John Burke (Pan, 1961)

Another find in the dusty recesses of the Green Shed:

BARBARIC
SPLENDOUR

ELEMENTAL
SAVAGERY

SUPERB
HEROISM

The countless hordes of Asia surged onwards towards Greece--an irresistible wave spreading  fire, pillage and rapine.  Xerxes, King of Persia, had sworn to annihilate the Greek States.

But at Thermopylae waited Leonidas, King of Sparta--blocking the narrow pass with his immortal Three Hundred.

These were no ordinary men.  For Spartans there was no retreat, no surrender.  Their highest hope a glorious death.

This is the story of those men--and their women--and of the days which led them to Thermopylae, that desperate, glorious battle which changed the course of history.

"As filmed by 20th Century Fox starring Richard Egan"... another long-forgotten CinemaScope epic, starring an actor I've never heard of.  And yet, strangely enough, Ralph Richardson appears in a supporting role!

Three Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie (Fontana, 1962)

One more from the Lifeline Bookfair!

 

Sir Charles Cartwright, the distinguished actor, had invited the local vicar and his wife to a house-warming party  at his new country cottage.  The Reverend Stephen Babbington unaccustomed as he was to strong liquor, nervously sipped his cocktail with a slightly wry expression on his face.  The other guests continued to chatter.  Suddenly Mr Babbington's hand clutched at his throat, and, in a moment, he collapsed--dead.

This was only the first act in the drama--a three-act tragedy, with a mysterious death in every act.  It is Hercule Poirot, the indomitable Belgian detective, who moves behind the scenes of this play and who finally rings down the curtain.

 The man on the cover of this book is either dead drunk--or just dead!  Since the author is Agatha Christie, I'm guessing the latter.

(See also my post on the 1964 Pan edition of the same title.)

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?