Lancashire Post

A Certain Man's Daughter by Timothy J. Lockhart

Litchfield reviews “A Certain Man’s Daughter” by Timothy J. Lockhart for The Virginian-Pilot

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In 2017, Stark House published an impressive debut novel by Timothy J. Lockhart titled SMITH. It was a hard-boiled noir that featured an interesting female lead character with plenty of grit and toughness. Lockhart’s subsequent novel, PIRATES, published the following year, was a modern-day high-seas action-adventure yarn set in the Caribbean. This thrilling, blood-and-guts page-turner benefits from a distinctive, memorable lead character – a tough but sensitive loner named Hal Morgan, who is a former Navy SEAL. His latest, A CERTAIN MAN’S DAUGHTER, published recently by Stark House, is another excellent hard-boiled tale that warrants reading. Completely different from his previous work, it is brisk-paced, exhilarating, and just as rewarding as the earlier novels.

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The Lover / The Mistress / The Passionate by Carter Brown (Introduction by Nicholas Litchfield)

Carter Brown’s Tales of the Passionate, Mistress, Lover

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The phenomenally successful mystery series by Carter Brown, the pseudonym of British-born Australian pulp writer Alan Geoffrey Yates, spawned close to 300 titles and allegedly sold more than 100 million copies. Considering the popularity of these swift-paced, tongue-in-cheek stories featuring wise-cracking detective Al Wheeler, I suppose it’s not surprising that my bookshelf contains almost two dozen of these novels. And, fortunately, my collection is growing, owing to Stark House Press continuing to reissue the early Al Wheeler adventures.

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Woman of Cairo and Dear, Deadly Beloved by John Flagg (Introduction by Nicholas Litchfield)

John Flagg’s Colorful Tales of Freelance Agent Hart Muldoon

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Back in November 2016, I read an excellent pair of novels by John Flagg, pseudonym of American crime writer John Gearon (1911-1993). Death and the Naked Lady (a thrilling tale of stolen jewels, murder, and espionage aboard a luxury ocean liner) and The Lady and the Cheetah (a deadly case of blackmail and sabotage among European nobility at an Italian palace) featured an interesting introduction by bestselling author James Reasoner. The volume also contained a very good short story concerning murder in high society (“Faces Turned Against Him”). You can read my verdict on the collection in the Lancashire Post or one of its 25 syndicated UK newspapers. You’ll find at this weblink archived online access to my review as it originally appeared in the Lancashire Post, featuring the Nicholas Litchfield byline: https://web.archive.org/web/20170105140113/https://www.lep.co.uk/lifestyle/books/book-review-death-and-the-naked-lady-and-the-lady-and-the-cheetah-by-john-flagg-1-8316256/.

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Lancashire Post Reviews Helen Nielsen’s Borrow the Night and The Fifth Caller

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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.”

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Madball by Fredric Brown

Litchfield Reviews Fredric Brown’s Madball for the Lancashire Post

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Nicholas Litchfield in the Lancashire Post: Fredric Brown, who died in 1972 at age 65, was an accomplished American mystery and science fiction author of more than 30 books and 300 short stories and vignettes. His debut novel, The Fabulous Clipjoint, won the Edgar Award, and a number of his stories were adapted for the screen, including Martians, Go Home, Madman’s Holiday (filmed as Crack-Up), and The Screaming Mimi, which was the basis of a 1958 movie by Columbia Pictures and also an enormously successful Italian film titled The Bird With The Crystal Plumage.

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The Hoods Take Over by Ovid Demaris

Litchfield Reviews Ovid Demaris’s The Hoods Take Over for the Lancashire Post

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Nicholas Litchfield in the Lancashire Post: Reprinted from the late 1950s comes a tautly plotted, gritty tale of gang wars, racketeering, police corruption, and the dangers faced by a murder witness who risks his life to give testimony against powerful mobsters. Late American author Ovid E. Desmarais, better known as Ovid Demaris, was a journalist and bestselling author of thirty books. Praised for his investigative reporting on organized crime, political and business corruption, gambling and the underworld, several of his nonfiction books enjoyed a combined 64 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and have been translated and published in twenty-two countries.

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No Law Against Angels, Doll for a Big House, and Chlorine Makes a Killing by Carter Brown

Litchfield Reviews No Law Against Angels, Doll for a Big House, and Chorine Makes a Killing by Carter Brown

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Lancashire Post book review by Nicholas Litchfield: This triple dose of Carter Brown mysteries from 1957 finds homicide detective Al Wheeler investigating the deaths of two call girls, tracing a missing girl, and taking a job as a private investigator to clear a lawyer of a murder rap.No Law Against Angels, Doll for a Big House, and Chorine Makes a Killing are three light and lively entries in British-born Australian pulp writer Alan Geoffrey Yates’ phenomenally successful mystery series which spawned 300 books.

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The Made Up Man by Joseph Scapellato

Litchfield Reviews The Made-Up Man by Joseph Scapellato

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Lancashire Post book review by Nicholas Litchfield: Absurdist humour and existential noir intermingle in Joseph Scapellato’s playful and intelligent debut novel about a soul-searching archaeology school drop-out who finds himself at the centre of a strange and risky performance art project in the Czech Republic. Born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago, Scapellato, who now lives in Pennsylvania, is an assistant professor of English in the Creative Writing Program at Bucknell University. His previous work, the critically acclaimed story collection Big Lonesome, received high praise from Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and the Lancashire Post, with the New York Times proclaiming: ‘Scapellato’s inventive, hallucinatory prose dazzles.’

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