Nightmare. Lynn Brock

      

       NIGHTMARE

      ‘THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB is a clearing house for the best detective and mystery stories chosen for you by a select committee of experts. Only the most ingenious crime stories will be published under the THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB imprint. A special distinguishing stamp appears on the wrapper and title page of every THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB book—the Man with the Gun. Always look for the Man with the Gun when buying a Crime book.’

       Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1929

      Now the Man with the Gun is back in this series of COLLINS CRIME CLUB reprints, and with him the chance to experience the classic books that influenced the Golden Age of crime fiction.

      

       Copyright

      COLLINS CRIME CLUB

      an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1932

      Introduction © Rob Reef 2017

      Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

      Francis Durbridge asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008137779

      Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: 9780008137786

      Version: 2017-09-27

       Dedication

      TO MY WIFE

       All the characters and incidents of this novel are entirely fictitious.

      Table of Contents

       Cover

       Nightmare

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Epigraph

       Introduction

       Chapter I

       Chapter II

       Chapter III

      

       Chapter IV

      

       Chapter V

      

       Chapter VI

      

       Chapter VII

      

       Chapter VIII

      

       Chapter IX

      

       Chapter X

      

       Chapter XI

      

       Chapter XII

      

       Chapter XIII

      

       Chapter XIV

      

       The Detective Story Club

      

       About the Publisher

       INTRODUCTION

      Lynn Brock’s Nightmare is not a regular Golden Age offering. Its bleak atmosphere bears comparison with noir fiction and the disturbing, almost absurd, hopelessness of its main characters reminds one of protagonists in plays by Samuel Beckett. From a purely formal point of view, Nightmare is most comparable to the fiction structure of inverted detective stories like Francis Iles’ Malice Aforethought or Freeman Wills Crofts’ The 12:30 from Croydon. In all these books, published in the early 1930s, one can follow the genesis of a murder shown from the perspective of the perpetrator. They all paint a gloomy picture of the human condition, but while Iles and Crofts develop sophisticated studies in psychology in their tales, Brock seems to motivate his Nightmare from an even darker and deeper source.

      To those who know Brock’s more traditional Colonel Gore detective novels, this ambitious book will come as a surprise.