There’s a lot of comfort in a good old-fashioned detective novel written in the first half of the 20th century. I exclude anything by Agatha Christie – her’s bore me stiff.
Nicholas Blake is my recommendation and he is, under his real name, a lot better known that Aggers. Now don’t let’s digress but, if you will, may we change focus? I remember almost forty years ago being given a book published by Virago Press: a biography of Lady Ottoline Morrell. I wasn’t madly excited by this gift at the time and, sure enough, it seems to be missing from my shelves. I don’t have limitless space. Virago was the first I knew about but Persephone got in on the act as did Slightly Foxed and probably others.
They are literally literary robbers. The Folio Society has been at it since 1947 but their editions are too big for my library. The rules of the game are simple. Find an author out of print and, crucially, out of copyright and publish an attractive edition. No, these publishers aren’t bandits – they are robbing from the rich to give to the poor.
Anyway, there is a new entrant in the game of hunting forgotten authors. Nicholas Blake’s 1936, Thou Shell of Death, has been published by venerable bookseller Hatchards as part of The Hatchards Library. Their library is sparse – this is the second volume. But who is Nicholas Blake? None other than Poet Laureate, Cecil Day-Lewis, and this is a Christmas cracker. “A Christmas party in a lonely country house, a collection of entertaining guests and staff, one of whom must have committed the murder, and a romantic complication.” How blissy.