Friday’s Forgotten Book: Footsteps Behind Me by Anthony Gilbert (1953)

By https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=31018054941′, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69792289 Edward Lane - once almost awarded the Military Cross, for his valour during the first world war - has fallen so low in the aftermath of the second one, that he now blackmails people and both consumes and peddles drugs. When the novel opens, Ted is thinking of blackmailing four …

Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Mouse who wouldn’t play Ball by Anthony Gilbert (1943)

"One of them did it, of course," he told himself, "but we shall never know which, so what the hell?" A tense figure waits near a staircase, in anticipation. Suddenly there is a cry of fire and panicked figures come running out of the dark, converging near the staircase. A candle is lighted but before …

Friday’s Forgotten Book: Treason in My Breast by Anthony Gilbert (1938)

Have you ever noticed in murder cases how often it's some trivial detail that tips the scale? Some flower-seller or some old woman running out to the post or a dog getting run over at a moment when you couldn't allow for any of those things happening... Janet Scott, wife of a young solicitor, Gerald …

Friday’s Forgotten Book: Passenger to Nowhere by Anthony Gilbert (1965)

"...there are old women living in big houses in all the country districts in France. Sometimes one remembers - they could die and who would know? They have no friends because they desire none - they have met life alone, they meet death alone." Sarah Hollis, nursing a broken heart after her fiancé breaks off …

S4S- Favourite Characters from Series

Six for Sunday is a weekly meme hosted @ A Little but a Lot. For the past few weeks I have been musing about participating in it and finally decided to jump in this Sunday which asks us to list six favourite characters from a series. So here they are, in chronological order of my …

Forgotten Books: Three Arthur Crook Novels by Anthony Gilbert

"Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow worldLike a colossus, and we petty menWalk under his huge legs, and peep aboutTo find ourselves dishonorable graves...."One thing that I have always found problematic is the grading of writers. He/she is an A list author, we are told, the other is a B-lister. Who, I wonder, makes …