The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart (Hodder, 1964)

Found in a Salvos Store this weekend:

 

Now this is awkward!  The blurbs on the back of this book tell us what the Daily Express said about this book, and gives us a paragraph in praise of the author, but it has nothing at all actually about the book:

The Ivy Tree

"has the ideal thriller blend of plot, suspense, character drawing and good writing... it opens with the impact of a rifle report on a calm summer's day and drives to its climax of action with compelling urgency."

 Daily Express

Mary Stewart, 

author of 'The Moonspinners', has found success with every word.  Her books have been translated into Danish, Dutch, French, German, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish and enjoy enormous success in America where they appear regularly on the bestseller lists.

This kind of thing is not uncommon with Hodder paperbacks!


(From memory, The Ivy Tree contains a heroine (in peril), a case of mistaken identity, an isolated house and a family with a secret.   In other words, fairly standard ingredients, but mixed by a master of the genre!)

Double or Quits by Erle Stanley Gardner (Corgi, 1964)

Another book from the Lifeline Bookfair.  This one is a bit battered, but it's still readable:

 

QUIETLY

 it began : with a hunt for a missing secretary and some stolen jewels.

COMPLICATING

the issue : blackmail and murder

FASCINATING
it became : with a rich divorcee and a lonely widow

CLIMAX

was when Donald Lam took a long drink from a bottle of poisoned Scotch.

There's something wrong with the the corpse depicted on the cover.  Oh, he's ghastly enough (who expects a dead body to be decorative?) but his head looks flattened out and distorted somehow, as if it had been run over by the car whose wheel we see in the top of the illustration.  He wasn't, by the way.  The victim in this murder mystery died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Dud cover illustrations aside, there's a little bonus in the back of the book--Corgi was running a crossword competition and offering cash prizes to the winners:

£5--that was quite a lot of money in 1964!

The Sands of Mars by Arthur C. Clarke (Pan, 1964)

I found this little paperback at a school fete.  It's in beautiful condition: spine tight and pages uncreased (though a little yellowed).

 

THE HOSTILE SANDS OF MARS

It is the twenty-first century.  On Mars a dedicated group of pioneers--among them some of Earth's finest brains--struggle to change the face of a planet...

The Mars of this novel has no fabulous cities or exotic princesses; it is the planet which modern science has revealed to us, and the book's authenticity provides a far greater excitement than would fantasy.

Against this background, Arthur C. Clarke has woven a thrilling story about a group of very real people, to show that, amidst the wonder of future science, human nature will stay very much the same.

 It is the twenty-first century--and alas, we still don't have our Mars colony. 

However, Mars is the flavour of the month at the moment, so what better time to look at what we thought we knew about the planet more than half a century ago?   The Sands of Mars was Arthur C. Clarke's first full length novel, originally published in 1951, so it's an oddly quaint little future.  Reporters bash out their copy on typewriters, communication is by fax, and women still work in stenographers' pools.  Also it's obvious that Clarke thought of exploration as something carried out by human explorers rather than automated probes.  It's clear that while he'd put a great deal of thought into the problems of living in zero gravity and planetary navigation, the thought of computers and their potentials never occurred to him!

"That's the trouble with all those old stories.  Nothing is deader than yesterday's science fiction."

(Page 48)

All in all, it reads a bit more like an episodic travelogue than a novel: the point of view character goes places, is shown around, and things happen--briefly.  (Including the discovery of animal life on Mars!)  It's a novice effort, but Arthur C. Clarke would soon be turning out better work.

Three Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie (Pan, 1964)

I found this at a high school book fair:

"Sir Charles Cartwright, the distinguished actor, was giving a party.  Around him, his guests stood talking and drinking.  The Reverend Stephen Babbington sipped at his cocktail and made a wry face.  The other guests continued to chatter.  Suddenly Mr Babbington clutched at his throat and swayed...

It was the beginning of the drama,

a three-act tragedy

with death in every act"

I bought this one literally for its cover, as I already have a copy of this book (along with all the other Christies.)  The still life on the cover depicts the essentials of the plot: one glass containing poison, and one blackmail note.