David Brawn

Dark Days and Much Darker Days: A Detective Story Club Christmas Annual

David Brawn

A ‘shilling shocker’ from the late 19th century, a macabre novel of murder and its consequences, originally published as a Christmas Annual for adults and now reissued complete with a hilarious parody by satirist Andrew Lang released the same Christmas.In the eyes of the law, murder is murder. When Dr North discovers that his beloved Philippa – surely the most beautiful murderess who ever crossed the pages of fiction – has killed her abusive husband, he must decide whether to turn her in or take the law into his own hands. There are dark days ahead as he wrestles with his conscience: can a crime ever be justified? And is Philippa the villain or the victim?Combining the thrills of the Penny Dreadful with the melodrama of the Sensation Novel, Hugh Conway wrote some of the most successful Christmas crime stories ever published. Dark Days followed his enthralling Called Back as a Christmas Annual, published just before his untimely death ended a writing career of only four years, robbing the world of one of the most popular detective writers since Wilkie Collins.THIS DETECTIVE STORY CLUB CLASSIC is introduced by David Brawn, and includes Much Darker Days by Scottish writer, critic and satirist Andrew Lang, a hilarious retelling of the story which sold almost as well as the original.

Below the Clock

David Brawn

A classic Golden Age detective novel set at the heart of Westminster, when the murder of the Chancellor of the Exchequer threatens to topple the whole House of Cards…Many highly dramatic and historic scenes have been enacted below the clock of Big Ben, but none more sensational than on that April afternoon when, before the eyes of a chamber crowded to capacity for the Budget Speech, the Chancellor fell headlong to the floor with a resounding crash. For the first time a murder had been committed in the House of Commons itself – and Amos Petrie faced the toughest case of his career.In Below the Clock, John Victor Turner – a journalist who as David Hume had become known as ‘the new Edgar Wallace’ for creating Britain’s first hardboiled detective series – returned to classic Golden Age writing with an ingenious whodunit set at the heart of the establishment, a novel that did the unthinkable by turning Parliament into a crime scene and all its Members into murder suspects.This Detective Club classic is introduced by David Brawn, who looks at the distinguished crime-writing career of J. V. Turner and his alter egos Nicholas Brady and David Hume, who achieved remarkable success with nearly 50 books in only 14 years.