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Nicholas Blake

The Nicholas Blake Treasury (Volume 4): End of Chapter; The Widow's Cruise; The Worm of Death Hardcover – January 1, 1992

by Nicholas Blake (Author)

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Three mysteries featuring the literate and amusing detective Nigel Strangeways, who ambles through his cases with the abstract air of an Oxford don and the piercing deduction of a Sherlock Holmes. Contents: End of Chapter The Widow’s Cruise The Worm of Death

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ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0006P042I
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mystery Guild; Book Club (BCE/BOMC) edition (January 1, 1992)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 0 pages
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.27 pounds

Best Sellers Rank: #2,146,617 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.7 5 ratings

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Nicholas Blake

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Nicholas Blake was the pseudonym of Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, who was born in County Laois, Ireland, in 1904 and raised in London after his mother’s death in 1906. He was educated at Sherborne School and Wadham College, Oxford, from which he graduated in 1927. Blake initially worked as a teacher to supplement his income from his poetry writing and he published his first Nigel Strangeways novel, A Question of Proof, in 1935. Blake went on to write a further nineteen crime novels, all but four of which featured Nigel Strangeways, as well as numerous poetry collections and translations.

During the Second World War he worked as a publications editor in the Ministry of Information, which he used as the basis for the Ministry of Morale in Minute for Murder, and after the war he joined the publishers Chatto & Windus as an editor and director. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1968 and died in 1972 at the home of his friend, the writer Kingsley Amis.

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reading man

McSpaunday Should Have Been More Prolific

Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2017

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In my opinion, this volume of the NB Treasury provides three excellent examples of Nigel Strangeways at work. This can't be said of any of the other volumes, all of which contain at least one second-rate yarn (e.g., THERE'S TROUBLE BREWING, THE SMILER WITH THE KNIFE, A PENKNIFE IN MY HEART [impossible to read with pleasure if you've seen Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN or read Patricia Highsmith's novel on which the film is based].)

I have a question I'd like to pose to fans of Nicholas Blake, the nom de plume of C. Day-Lewis, once the poet laureate, the father of Daniel Day-Lewis (which is likely more important for a lot of people than Day-Lewis' poetry and Nicolas Blake).

Why is he the only 'tec writer to emerge from the collective identity of McSpaunday, the multiple-personality 1930s leftist poet.

W.H. Auden was an inveterate reader of detective stories; in fact he once listed a good supply of mysteries as a requirement for his desert island. He also wrote a splendid, if somewhat misleading, essay called "The Guilty Vicarage", which mixed his Christian beliefs with the guilt generated by such fiction. But why didn't he write one or two of them? Golo Mann said he was the most intelligent man he'd ever met: surely a mystery plot wouldn't have been a great challenge to him?

And Stephen Spender, a writer who never found his métier--neither a good poet, critic, or even autobiographer. Surely he could have written something to equal Day-Lewis?

MacNiece (sp?) I'm not so sure about. He wasn't prolific, so maybe he didn't have the tenacity to create a suitably elaborate plot?

Isherwood should have tried mystery writing; he had a flair for the straight novel that would have helped him to create an unreal detective.

Maybe it was a question of $$$$$$? I haven't read Day-Lewis's biography so I don't know what he thought of the Nicholas Blake books. Were they a good way to swell his bank balance rather than a real interest? It's hard to believe that someone who could write MINUTE FOR MURDER didn't put more than his financial interests into that first-class book ....

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Michael Wischmeyer

Four Volumes - Twelve Nigel Strangeways Mysteries

Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2005

The Nicholas Blake Treasury, includes twelve of the sixteen Nigel Strangeways mysteries. Only The Dreadful Hollow (1953), The Whisper in the Gloom (1954), The Sad Variety (1964), and The Morning After Death (1966) are missing.

The first two volumes (burgundy and green covers, respectively) were published by Nelson Doubleday, Inc and the third and fourth editions (orange and blue covers) by the Mystery Guild.

Volume 1: Thou Shell of Death (1936), The Beast Must Die (1938), and The Corpse in the Snowman (1941)

Volume 2: A Question of Proof (1935), There's Trouble Brewing (1937), and The Smiler with the Knife (1939)

Volume 3: Murder with Malice (1940), Minute for Murder (1947), and Head of a Traveler (1949)

Volume 4: End of Chapter (1957), The Widow's Cruise (1959), and The Worm of Death (1961).

End of Chapter (1957): Nigel Strangeways is investigating who might have altered a proof copy of General Thoresby's memoirs, resulting in a libel case against the prestigious publishing firm, Wenham and Geraldine. Matters worsen when the flamboyant romance novelist, Millicent Miles, is murdered one evening in the publisher's office.

The Widow's Cruise (1959): The poet Nigel Strangeways and the well-respected sculptress Claire Massinger are vacationing on a Greek cruise ship. As so often is the case, Strangeways becomes entangled in affairs that lead to murder. Seemingly every passenger has some secret, and much of the fun is sorting out which secrets are red herrings and which are indeed relevant to the mystery itself.

The Worm of Death (1961): Now living with the sculptress Clare Massinger in the small community of Greenwich along the Thames River, Strangeways is asked to investigate the disappearance of a neighbor, the prestigious doctor, Piers Loudron. Not long afterwards Dr. Loudron's body surfaces on the Thames and the case is declared a homicide.

The poet Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-72) gained fame under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake for his stories involving Nigel Strangeways, a fictional poet with a penchant for solving murder mysteries. These well-constructed mysteries are noted as much for their witty dialogue, character development, and psychological complexity as for the puzzle itself. One reviewer observed: Blake will always be a writer for the connoisseur of detective fiction. Cecil Day-Lewis was professor of poetry at Oxford in 1951-56, and a lecturer in the 1960s at several universities. He was Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. The actor Daniel Day-Lewis is his son.

Unable to find these book club editions? Try looking for the Nigel Strangeways mysteries reissued as Perennial Library paperbacks by Harper and Row Publishers in the late 1970s.

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The Nicholas Blake Treasury (Volume 4): End of Chapter; The Widow's Cruise; The Worm of Death Hardcover – January 1, 1992

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