Invanders of Space by Murray Leinster (Tandem, 1968)

Another book found rummaging around the dusty shelves of The Green Shed:

 

Things were quiet that night in the space port.  Then the 'Theban' arrived without warning, bringing with it a surly crew, led by a blustering captain, Larson...

The 'Theban' was old, propelled by a totally obsolescent interplanetary drive.  The only way Larson could get it off the ground was to kidnap the young engineer, Horn, who he hoped could at least manage to keep the ship in flight until it reached its final rendezvous.

Their destination was the spaceship 'Danae'--a ship loaded with millions in space credit notes.  If Horn wanted to save the 'Danae' from the onslaughts of the space invaders, he had his work cut out for him...

"Space Invaders".  I'd had hopes that this was based on the video game, but it was in fact about space pirates. It's a workmanlike story by an author who began his career back in the 1910s.

Unfortunately, the cover doesn't convey the idea of "space pirates" at all.   The astronauts in this picture could be doing anything out there: exploring, making necessary repairs to their ship, sightseeing.  I get the impression the artist came up with this generic painting after hearing the word "space" in his commission, and not bothering learn anything more!

The Ringer by Edgar Wallace (Pan, 1957)

More Edgar Wallace.  This one was found in The Green Shed:

 

THE RINGER, considered by many Wallace 'fans' to be the best of his thrillers, tells of a killer known by this name, whose exploits had terrified London--such a master of disguise that the police had never been able to circulate a description of him.  Mixed up with the Ringer was a tricky lawyer of Deptford, Maurice Meister.  Now young Detective-Inspector Alan Wembury is taking over the Deptford police division, and is hoping to marry Mary Lenley, who has recently become Meister's secretary.  News comes that The Ringer, who had been traced to Australia and was reported dead, is back in London.  Meister will be his next victim, for he left his sister in Meister's charge and her body was found in the Thames.  Soon a gaunt stranger is shadowing the frightened lawyer, who seeks police protection. Wembury is involved in an affair of extreme difficulty, complicated by the fact that Mary's brother, ruined by association with criminals, is jailed for robbery--and Meister knows more of this than he will admit.  Moreover, the unpopular, bearded Inspector Bliss, just returned from America, is working along his own lines to solve the problem.  Who is The Ringer?  It will be a clever reader who can spot him before the very end of the story.

With a summary that detailed, it's hardly necessary to read the book!  And given we're talking about Edgar Wallace here, probably just as entertaining.  Just skip to the last chapter to find out who actually was The Ringer.

(Edgar Wallace was a best seller in his day, but his books have dated woefully.  However they were reprinted often--well into the middle of last century.  Delightful paperbacks like this one turn up quite regularly on charity stalls and in junk shops, so expect to see a few of them featuring on my blog!)

The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle (John Murray, 1960)

If you take the trouble of searching the dusty shed part of The Green Shed you can find some amazing stuff:

 

On a high plateau in South America a group of explorer-scientists led by the famous Professor Challenger discovered a huge tropical marsh surviving from prehistoric times inhabited by giant reptiles and the grotesque half-ape forerunners of man.  In the face of fantastic dangers they capture one of the flying reptiles and bring it back to London, where it escapes and causes havoc.  The Lost World was the first of the full-length novels of this kind, and its breathtaking combination of science and fiction and real characters keeps it without a rival.

Everyone knows Arthur Conan Doyle as the creator of Sherlock Holmes.  Less well known are his ventures into writing science fiction and fantasy.  The Lost World (1912) is the first in a series of three novels featuring the bullish and eccentric Professor Challenger: the others being The Poison Belt (1913) an end-of-the-world story, and The Land of Mist (1926) a rather too-credulous look at the claims of spiritualism.

This first novel is literally a "lost world" story, with Professor Challenger and his band of intrepid explorers finding an isolated plateau  in South America inhabited by dinosaurs.  Evidently South America was to the average person of 1912 as outer space is today--a place where anything could happen, and strange things  could be found!

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 Bloody Wood by Michael Innes (Penguin, 1977)

 

The setting is a gross parody.  The house party in the country house with its lawns and terraces ... and the nightingale singing in the copse on the hill.

But the hostess is a dying woman and her guests have expectations; the town is lapping up to the village; you can hear the traffic on the arterial road in between the nightingales' songs.

... And those nightingales.  They provide Appleby with the thread which leads to the heart of perhaps the most unpleasant tangle of events in his whole career.

Spoiler alert: The butler did NOT do it.

And there is a butler.  This is one of those British whodunnits where everyone is frightfully upper-crust--even the detectives.  It is a rather late entry in the genre--The Bloody Wood was first published in 1966.  Nonetheless it has all the traditional ingredients, including a country house party where most of the guests have a motive for murder.

Incidentally, if I'm ever invited to one of these shindigs (not likely, I know!) I'm going to say, "Thanks, but no thanks!"  The death rate at these parties is higher than in most warzones.

Kudos, by the way, to the author, who manages to make a reference to Agatha Christie on page  135:

'I suppose it's nonsense,' he said.  'But--do you know? - I never hear of a tape-recorder without remembering some mystery story or another.  By one of those dashed clever women who concoct such things.  Frightfully good.  Only, of course, I don't remember how it was brought in ... Sorry.'

The Clue of the Forgotten Murder by Erle Stanley Gardner (WDL Books, 1960)

 

The story begins when a cop investigated a man and a woman suspected of a gas station stick-up.  The man turned out to be Frank B. Cathay, prominent banker on a binge.  The girl disappeared.

The story deepened when a private eye was shot on a downtown street, presumably by a gangster.

The story got hot when Charles Morden, a reporter from "The Blade" investigating the case, was murdered.

Immediately Dan Bleeker, publisher of "The Blade", called in Griff, the famous criminologist.  Then the story really boiled!

One of Gardner's more confusing stories.  By the end of the book I was not only unsure who the criminal was, but I was also confused about the nature of his crime!   The detective--I mean criminologist--investigating this tangled mess of a case didn't follow up clues so much as as "play human checkers" with the suspects as pieces.

I'm also confused about the dame on the cover of this edition.  I'm pretty sure she didn't actually appear in the book.

A Tangled Web by Nicholas Blake (Fontana, 1958)

Another book from my Lifeline Bookfair crime spree:

 

"... Daisy was conscious of his eyes upon her... something flashed between them, like magnesium, and in that instant he was printed on her memory for ever--the thin, swarthy face, the mouth arrested in a half-smile, the eyes brown, alert, ready to dance, with a sort of wildness asleep behind their steady gaze.  A poacher's face she said to herself ... she might as well have said an angel's ... or a fallen angel's--she was never to care which..."

Daisy and Hugo's love is a tangled web of joy and tragedy, vice and innocence, betrayal and loyalty.  This is a story which cannot be put down.

Who is the tough cookie on the cover of the book?  She certainly isn't Daisy, for Daisy is a true innocent (albeit one with bad taste in boyfriends!)

A Tangled Web is an updated and  fictionalised retelling of the story of John Williams, who was hanged for murder in 1913,  and of his mistress Florence Seymour.