Pam Norfolk’s review of this new reprint of Helen Nielsen’s novels was published today in the Lancashire Post and syndicated to 20 newspapers in the UK. Here’s an extract from the review:
“American writer Helen Nielsen – a scriptwriter for episodes of the television dramas Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Perry Mason – was a popular author in the late 1940s and the mid-1970s. Many of Nielsen’s stories appear in the anthologies Best Detective Stories, Alfred Hitchcock’s Hangman’s Dozen, Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen, and Best Legal Stories, and several were adapted for television. Gold Coast Nocturne, her second novel, was made into the 1954 film, Murder by Proxy, starring Dane Clark and Belinda Lee.
Although these and other books by Nielsen – who died in 2002 at the age of 83 – sold well and were critically successful, much of the author’s work is long out of print.
Fortunately, Stark House Press have started a revival of her work, and this new publication of a two-in-one volume features Borrow the Night and The Fifth Caller, a couple of complex and ingenious murder mysteries that first came out in the late 1950s.
In his introduction to the double-novel collection, writer Nicholas Litchfield, who is editor of the popular literary magazine Lowestoft Chronicle, describes Nielsen’s pair of unconventional whodunnits as ‘two exemplary mystery novels that are sure to leave you on edge and breathless and in search of more of her thrilling, intricate, and astutely written tales.’
Litchfield, a keen supporter of Borrow the Night, believes the strength of the novel lies in ‘the exceptionally well-sketched principal characters and the skilful way Nielsen drops hints and revelations and introduces unexpected plot twists to cast doubt on just about everybody.’
The Fifth Caller is an original mystery for the period because of its toughness, pace and invention, and for the measured way Nielsen presents realistic, complex characters in a fast-paced drama.
A superior pair of unique tales which richly deserve a revival…”
Read the full, in-depth book review at these places:
Blackpool Gazette; Burnley Express; Chorley Guardian; The Clitheroe Advertiser and Times; Fleetwood Weekly News; Garstang Courier; Lancashire Post; Lancaster Guardian; Leigh Observer; Leyland Guardian; Longridge & Ribble Valley News and Advertiser; Lytham St. Annes Express; Pendle Today (Nelson Leader; Colne Times; Barnoldswick and Early Times); The St. Helens Reporter; The Visitor (Morcambe); Wigan Today (Wigan Post; Wigan Observer).
