Return to the Stars by Edmond Hamilton (Lancer, 1969)

Found at a charity book fair.  Someone had evidently been keen on traditional space opera, because I managed to find a number of vintage paperbacks like this one.

KINGDOM OF THE STARS

John Gordon, twentieth century Earthman, is torn from his own time to a far distant future--a time when the entire galaxy is inhabited.  But men do not rule the future; our race is only one among thousands, and many of those thousands are sworn enemies of humanity!  Gordon, man of the past, is forced to form alliances with the men of the future in a desperate battle to save the human race from final annihilation...

The cover is all 1960s, but the stories inside date from 1947!

A Cure for Serpents by Alberto Denti di Pirajno (Pan, 1957)

 

 Breath taking in its frank and joyous account of extraordinary adventures, this book is the fruit of many years spent in the former North African colonies of Italy. The Duke's medical skills and genius for friendship made in welcome in gorgeous palace and humble tent. He tells of:

• His patients in closely guarded harems
• The veiled Tuaregs and their 'courts of love'
• The Negress who charmed poisonous scorpions
• The Arab with a serpent in his stomach
• The strange life and death of a pet lioness 

The author, whose dukedom was created in 1642 by Philip IV, King of Spain and Sicily, joined the Italian Colonial Administration after five years' service in Africa as a doctor, and in 1941 became Governor of Tripoli.

In the Teeth of the Evidence by Dorothy L. Sayers (New English Library, 1960)

I found this rather battered specimen in the (where else?) Green Shed:

All that was left of the garage was a heap of charred and smouldering beams.  In the driving seat of the burnt-out car were the remains of a body. 

An accident, said the police. 

An accident said the widow.  She had been warning her husband about the dangers of the car for months. 

Murder, said Lord Peter Wimsey . . . and proceeded to track down the killers.

In spite of the book's shabbiness, this cover really demonstrates how perspective and a limited palette can be used to create a dramatic image!

The Saint and Scotland Yard by Leslie Charteris (Pan, 1951)

THE SAINT VERSUS SCOTLAND YARD (originally entitled The Holy Terror), tells how Simon Templar relieves crooks of their ill-gotten gains and, while thus helping Chief Inspector Teal of Scotland Yard, at the same time receives a fair proportion for himself and his girl assistant Patricia Holm.  Part I tells how he settles accounts with a professional blackmailer and murderer called the Scorpion and is thereby enabled to pay his income-tax.  In Part II he foils a giant currency swindle, but incidentally leaves a dead man and other casualties to be explained by the exasperated Teal.  In Part III he confronts two diamond-smuggling gangsters after a murder in a train ; Inspector Teal butts in and is fooled, while the Saint takes one of the gangsters on a wild car-ride ; Teal is finally checkmated on the great liner Berengaria and is left to open a strangely filled trunk labelled with his name.

The copy on the back cover of this book is so exhaustive it reads more like a synopsis than a blurb!  The Saint vs Scotland Yard is comprised of three loosely-connected novellas, in which Simon Templar foils the villains and the law, and escapes with the loot.  And his "girl assistant"?  Actually it's made clear that she is his live-in lover, an arrangement that is common today, but must have raised a few eyebrows back when this was written.

No wonder "The Saint" series became so popular.  The character must have been so much fun for respectable and law-abiding citizens to identify with!

The Valley of the Ghosts by Edgar Wallace (Pan, 1959)

Another Lifeline Bookfair find:

Something brooding...

something evil....

'There's something evil about it, he said.  'Queer word for me to use, MacLeod, eh?  They touch your elbow as you walk—ghosts!  That's how I've named it the Valley of the Ghosts.  Go and stay a day or so in Beverley Green and smell it for yourself—something brooding...'

DR ANDREW MACLEOD, pathologist and detective extraordinare, was never one to refuse a challange...

The Privateer by Josephine Tey (Pan, 1967)

Thanks to the Green Shed, where I found this one:

The thrilling, swashbuckling story of Henry Morgan...

A freed bondsman, he captured his first Spanish ship with eleven men.

He became the scourge of Spain from the West Indies to Panama. 

He found romance but the sea always called him back to new, ever more daring adventures. 

Set against the stirring background of 300 years ago when dashing privateers risked their lives for treasure and conquest, this exciting book by a famous historical novelist is compellingly readable... vividly alive.

Ahhhrrr!  Buckle me swash, and set me mainsails!  It's a "based on a true story" historical novel, which means most of the people are real, and some of the events, but it's all highly romanticised.  The author, by the way, is better known for her mysteries than for her historical romances!  And a warning—some of the attitudes in this book are not politically correct by modern standards, and may even cause offence.

(The cover looks a bit strange in this scan because a previous owner had covered the book in plastic, and I couldn't remove it without damaging the cover.)

Computer War and Code Duello by Mack Reynolds (Ace Double, 1973)

Ooh, look, it's an Ace Double!

THE ODDS WERE RIGHT FOR VICTORY

The problem with computer warfare is that the computer is always logical while the human enemy is not—or doesn't have to be.

And that's what the Betastani enemy were doing—nothing that the Alphaland computers said they would.  Those treacherous foemen were avoiding logic and using such unheard-of devices as surprise and sabotage, treason and trickery.  They even had Alphaland's Department of Information believing Betastani propaganda without even realising it.

Of course he still thought he was being loyal to Alphaland, because he thought one and one must logically add up to two.  And that kind of thinking could make him the biggest traitor of all.

Section G, the top secret security unit of United planets, had a special problem on their hands with the situation on Firenze.  And for that special problem , they gathered together the most unusual squad in Section G's unusual history.  It included:

A research scientist who could bend steel bars like rubber band—

A middle-aged lady with total total recall— 

An interplanetary cowboy whose bullwhip was deadlier than a ray gun— 

A brazen young lady acrobat who looked like an eight year-old kid— 

A mild young man who never lost a bet in his life— 

And the best pickpocket that ever lived. 

But Firenze with its CODE DUELLO  was to prove a match for the lot of them!

A late entry in the Ace Doubles series by an author with a sense of fun and a knowledge of history.  (Sometimes too much knowledge of history, as he stops to explain the historical parallels with what his characters are doing.)  However, for the most part these short novels are romps, blending the spy genre with space opera.  If you're looking for some light reading and a little bit of relief from the real world, you could do far worse than a book by Mack Reynolds.