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The Club of Queer Trades |
Basil Grant ex-High Court Judge ('Poor fellow went mad...') and enthusiastic anti-detective (instinct over intellect) investigates a number of intriguing and baffling situations. In doing so he delights in discovering a hatful of brand-new professions (Professional Detainer, Organiser of Repartee and the Adventure & Romance Agency, for example) all bound together by membership of the eponymous Club of Queer Trades. This is a light-hearted and amusing meander through the Edwardian alleys of more famous detectives.
(Clive Yelf - bwl 21 November 2003) |
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The Man Who Was Thursday |
But the real question is who (or what) is the monstrous 'Sunday' who toys with those around him? The plan to penetrate the secretive Inner Circle of the Anarchist Council seems doomed and suspicion grows in the group that all is not well. Confusion, misunderstanding and desperation begin to cloud the cool logic of the detective and the plot then veers to the fantastic. Anarchists wear top-hats, policemen are poets and readers are firmly gripped!
(Clive Yelf - bwl 37 December 2006) |
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The Napoleon of Notting Hill |
Well-written and engaging, Chesterton's anti-Wellsian future has kings selected by lottery ruling over a country devoid of vigour. When one of the last eccentrics finds himself on the throne he whimsically creates colourful city-states out of the districts of London. Their enforced mock-medievalism and pageantry are all very well, but one idealist takes the rhetoric to heart and sets out against the odds to create a modern Athens in the back streets of Notting Hill.
(Clive Yelf - bwl 39 April 2007) |
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