More from Dean Street Press

One of the joys of the revival of interest in Golden Age detective fiction is that quite an avalanche of long-vanished books are now readily available. As in any era, the quality varies. But the range of books that one can now obtain is striking - within the British Library series, for instance, there's a huge difference between the work of, say, Alan Melville, E.C.R. Lorac, Richard Hull, and Raymond Postgate. So readers can discover new writers, and then focus on those they enjoy most.

Various publishing models have been adopted. The British Library focuses on high quality mass market paperbacks, Harper Collins on hardbacks, and others mainly on ebooks and print on demand publications. Dean Street Press fall into the latter camp. They do a really good job, and I'm not just saying that because I've written a few intros for them. Their model makes it possible to reissue a large number of books by the same author. The complete works of Annie Haynes, say, would not be commercially viable if the focus were on mass market paperbacks, because their isn't enough interest in them for the books to be sold in large quantities in paperback format. But thanks to DSP, we can now try out Annie's work in ebook or as a print on demand paperback, and much else besides. One of the DSP authors whom I particularly enjoy is Peter Drax, and I'll be saying more about his books in the future.

At present, DSP are reissuing, in large batches, the Ludovic Travers novels of Christopher Bush. Bush was a writer who wrote so much that sometime quality suffered, but I really enjoyed The Case of the Monday Murders, first published in 1936. The mystery is good, even if I did guess the solution early on, but the satiric touches are even better. This book contains plenty of swipes at Bush's fellow practitioners, and as Curtis Evans says in his intro, the character of crime writer Ferdinand Pole, founder of the Murder League, is surely based on Anthony Berkeley. One chapter title is borrowed from Philip Macdonald: "Murder Gone Mad". There's also a hint of self-mockery in the killer's taunting letters, signed "Justice", which might make one recall the comparable correspondence in Bush's own The Perfect Murder Case.

The funniest moment in the book is when Bush mocks Dorothy L. Sayers and E.R. Punshon in the same breath, parodying Sayers' famous review lauding E.R. Punshon (in the guise of "Petrie Cubbe"), but attributing it to Pole. It does make you wonder how on earth Bush managed to earn election to the Detection Club the year after this book came out, especially since Berkeley was famously thin-skinned. It would be good to think that those who are guyed took it in good part. Or perhaps they just didn't read it! (Though given how many of them were prolific reviewers, that would be surprising). Whatever the truth, the great thing is that readers today have the chance to enjoy this one, and I suspect that it is one of Bush's best. 

The Annie Haynes Mystery

"Continuation novels", where a writer adopts another writer's character - such as Sophie Hannah's The Monogram Murders -have long interested me. But even more fascinating, though less common,are books which are begun by one author and completed by another, and it was this fascination that led me to finish the late Bill Knox's The Lazarus Widow. Recently, a Golden Age example of this type of novel has come my way, thanks to the valiant efforts of Dean Street Press,who have reprinted the complete crime fiction of Annie Haynes, who until recently was a very obscure writer indeed..

She was in very poor health when she started writing her last book, The Crystal Beads Murder, and she died with it still unfinished. Another author took over - but here is the really interesting thing: we don't know who it was. The original introduction, by Ada Heather-Bigg (with whom Haynes lived for many years) simply describes her as one of Haynes' friends, and adds that she "also a writer of this type of popular fiction...it says much for her skill that she has independently arrived at Miss Haynes' own solution of the mystery, which was known only to myself."

In an interesting new intro to the book, Curtis Evans speculates about who completed the book, listing prominent women crime writers of the time as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson), A.Fielding, Molly Thynne and Margaret Cole. I feel sure that Christie, Sayers, and Cole can be ruled out, and I don't know anything about Thynne, and little about Fielding. Curt suggests Anthony Gilbert is the likeliest candidate, though I think that if that were so, she would be likely to have discussed the book, and Haynes,in her memoir, and she didn't. It's also perhaps doubtful that they moved in the same social circles. One name that occurred to me is Jessie Rickard, who was a minor crime writer who became a somewhat peripheral member of the Detection Club, but I don't know enough to say whether there's any similarity between her writing and Haynes', or any other connection.

Curt says, and I agree, that the completion is professionally accomplished. It's quite hard to see the join. The main problem with the story is that it's a tired effort, no doubt because of Haynes' poor health. I couldn't interest myself in the fate of the dastardly Robert Saunderson; the detective puzzle is very much secondary in appeal to the authorship mystery. But Inspector Stoddart is quite an appealing cop,and I look forward to reading some of his earlier cases. Dean Street Press have also reprinted Haynes' non-series mysteries,and I hope to review The Bungalow Mystery in due course..

Dean Street Press

Last year, I was contacted by Rupert Heath, who is a well-known literary agent. His clients include such bright stars in the firmament as A.K. Benedict, a guest blogger here a while back. Rupert explained that he was setting up Dean Street Press - a new publishing company that aimed to revive a host of worthy books from the past, including some recent titles -and we have kept in touch since then. Now, I'm glad to say, Rupert's plans have come to fruition..

I'm especially pleased that DSP is making available once again the books of Tim Heald. They will be in ebook format, and this is good news for those of us who enjoyed Tim's novels about Simon Bognor when they first appeared, as well as for those yet to encounter them. It's easy to forget now, but the books were such a success that they reached the TV screens, with David Horovitch in the title role. In all, 21 episodes were screened.

By a happy coincidence, I was with Tim and his wife just over a week ago, at the CWA conference in Lincoln. The last time we met was at the most bizarre book event either he or I have ever attended - the unforgettable Kidwelly Festival - the photo was taken as we recovered over a drink, back at the hotel. Tim has not enjoyed the best of health in recent times, but I'm sure that the return of Bognor will give him a real boost. And DSP will at a later date be reissuing his Tudor Cornwall novels, and also his cricket books.

In the meantime, DSP have already brought out Stella Bingham's book Charters and Caldicott. These were the wonderful characters created for Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. Oddly, they didn't appear in the source novel for the film, Ethel Lina White's The Wheel Spins. The Bingham book dates back thirty years, to the time of the TV spin-off series featuring the two men.

Going further back in time, DSP have also published ebook versions of two crime novels which were put out originally under the name of George Sanders, although I understand that the ghost writers were Craig Rice and Leigh Brackett respectively.The titles are Crime on My Hands and Stranger at Home,and I'm looking forward to reading them.

The good news doesn't end there. I'm delighted to see that DSP are planning to issue several Golden Age mysteries, and although the majority of these are likely to be in ebook only format, there will also be print editions of two early novels by Ianthe Jerrold; these titles will also include intros by Curtis Evans. Jerrold, a founder member of the Detection Club, only published books sporadically throughout her long career, occasionally under the pen-name Geraldine Bridgeman, and she faded from view long, long ago. .

And there's more to come from DSP at a later date. There will be a number of books by E.R. Punshon, featuring Bobby Owen, and it will be splendid to see more of his work readily available again (Ramble House in the US have done sterling work in producing paperback editions of a few Punshon titles, but he was much more prolific than Jerrold.) Two other authors to be featured by DSP, Annie Haynes and Harriet Rutland, are even less well known than Jerrold - they weren't even particularly renowned in their day. I know little about Haynes, but Rutland was a writer who impressed Dorothy L. Sayers..

All this is a reminder that new publishing methods are unlocking a host of long-neglected crime novels. Yes, we are overwhelmed with choice, and no, we can't read every book. But it's wonderful to have the opportunity to pick out titles we like the look of - a luxury denied to previous generations where the books in question were out of print. I'll be blogging about some of the other publishing newcomers before long, but in the meantime, I am delighted by Rupert's initiative.