Search results for ""author christopher st john sprigg""

Give up your foolish plan. If not you die.” When elderly Queen Hanna of Iconia discovers the anonymous letter in her dress pocket, she knows someone in her household is spying on her. The queen is secretly planning a ceremony of atonement that she hopes will secure the royal succession. Journalist Charles Venables is asked to help identify the spy before her next public appearance. But when Queen Hanna is strangled with a museum relic known as the ‘Curse of the Herzgovins’, Venables knows an all too human hand is involved. But how was the murderer able to enter the queen’s heavily guarded chamber? And why was the body found wearing the royal ceremonial robes rather than the clothes she had retired in? Many Golden Age books have a plot involving an imaginary European kingdom, inspired by ‘Ruritania’, the setting for the 1894 bestseller The Prisoner of Zenda. Ruritania became the basis for hundreds of imitations (Lutha, Graustark, and Riechentenburg to name but a few) as well as parodies — the Marx Brothers’ film, Duck Soup, features Groucho as the dictator of mythical Freedonia. The Ruritanian setting was so broadly known that the author refutes it directly in Death of a Queen. When Venables complains ‘This place sounds dreadfully like Ruritania’, his colleague replies ‘There’s nothing Ruritanian about Queen Hanna.’ Author Christopher St John Sprigg was a polymath who read widely across history, politics, and culture, and he put this knowledge to good use in Death of a Queen, devising Iconian history, heritage and architecture with an enthusiasm and realism that add to the book’s appeal.

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“Good God, you don’t think it was an accident?” Wealthy industrialist Anthony Mullins is found dead in a garage fire with the door locked. The locals assume it was an accident or perhaps suicide. But when the autopsy reveals a bullet wound to Mullins’ head and no revolver is found, a murder investigation ensues. Was the killer his disgraced nephew Holliday, rumoured to be overly close to his wife? Or Patricia Mullins herself, whose inheritance relied on her husband’s death from natural causes? Or friend James Constant, who’s research society is the beneficiary of Mullins’ unusual will? It soon becomes apparent that everyone, including the victim, has something to hide. Good-natured Police Constable Sadler and Inspector Trenton, are alternatively assisted and hampered by the efforts of the local residents to find the killer. At first, everyone appears to have a perfect alibi, but the more Sadler and Trenton probe, the murkier the picture becomes. Fortunately, journalist Charles Venables is on hand to help make sense of the conflicting and confusing evidence. This classic detective novel from the 1930s is now back in print.

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“How many times have I told you that we must appear to run this hotel as commercial proposition?” Newly arrived in London, journalist Charles Venables has been invited by his friend Viola to stay – at least temporarily – at a residential hotel in Kensington. But there is something amiss at the genteel Garden Hotel. The prices are far too low. The residents are jittery and upset. On arriving, Charles overhears a threatening discussion between the proprietors Mr & Mrs Budge that suggests they are blackmailing some tenants. When the bedridden Mrs Budge disappears into thin air, it is clear that more than one inhabitant of the hotel has something to hide. Is it Egyptian medical student Eppiloki who believes Charles is working undercover? The elderly Miss Geranium who receives messages from the prophet Ezekial, the fanatical Reverend Septimus Blood, or the cat-loving Miss Mumby? Soon, a set of gruesome discoveries point to murder, and Charles must work with Detective Inspector Bray of Scotland Yard to prevent the killer from acting again. Crime combines an intricate plot with an appealing sense of humour and ironic tone: “Viola had two passions in her life, her art and her bridge. Charles had hoped to be a third but he was beginning to abandon hope. He felt that while he might make her a satisfactory partner in life, he would certainly let her down at bridge.” Long out of print, we are delighted to reissue Crime in Kensington with a new introduction.

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“Three hundred years ago, Lord Carpenter, I’d have had your head on a spike on Tower Hill..” It is 1938 and newspaper chief Lord Carpenter is about to publish a front-page story that will guarantee war with Russia. But before the paper can go to print, he is found stabbed in his office, and circumstances suggest the killer is one of his staff. Everyone from the editor-in-chief to the staff librarian had the opportunity. But was the motivation for the murder political or personal? Crime reporter Charles Venables finds himself both suspect and sleuth as he tries to disentangle the clues and determine which of his colleagues is the guilty party. Red herrings abound, but it soon becomes apparent that more than one person had a reason to want Carpenter dead…. Fatality in Fleet Street displays the author’s trademark wit and a plot with plenty of twists and ingenuity to please the reader. Equally interesting are the political overtones and the militaristic pretensions of the deceased newspaper baron. The novel is set in 1938 – five years later than its real publication date – and presents a Russia whose economy is growing, which makes the country ‘a real menace to the established order of things’ in Carpenter’s worldview. Although the imperious newspaper baron meets his demise early on, his outsized personality and ambition are the bedrock that propels the story. Sprigg makes his satire clear; there is more than a passing resemblance between the fictional Lord Carpenter and the real world Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, owner of the Evening Standard and Daily Express. Sprigg started his career as a cub reporter and the book’s setting of a busy newspaper is well realised. Fatality also takes a sardonic view of socialist activity in Britain. When Venables goes to investigate a local chapter of the Communist Party, the situation is alternately threatening and farcical, with members parading their revolutionary credentials and loudly denouncing the ‘bourgeois’. Sprigg later became an active member of the Communist Party and published Marxist literary criticism, but his gently mocking tone in Fatality suggests this conversion was some way off in 1933.

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