Читать книгу Dark Days and Much Darker Days: A Detective Story Club Christmas Annual - David Brawn, Frank Richardson - Страница 8

HUGH CONWAY has that first essential of the popular novelist—strong narrative power. His story is the first consideration always. Not that he does not possess other attributes to success: graphic description, which carries with it—not necessarily, but certainly in the case of Hugh Conway—atmosphere. He can, too, draw a most convincing character, as the present book will show. We look to Dark Days for a story that will hold our mature minds just as the fireside tales of our grandfathers held us as children—and we get it!

Dark Days is a novel of a love that won through the intricacies and horrors of a most uncanny crime. It is told in the first person by Doctor North, the central figure in the plot, a fact which largely explains the poignancy of the book. The autobiographical form always gives the reader a direct contact with the situations in which the main character finds himself. He therefore goes through his experiences and finds himself swayed by the very emotions that move his ‘hero’.

Philippa is surely the most beautiful murderess that ever crossed the pages of fiction. Her crime is horrifying, but is it not justified? Was the world not better rid of a man of Sir Mervyn Ferrand’s type—an idler, an ‘adventurer’, in the degraded sense of the word? Perhaps … but murder is murder in the eyes of the law. Doctor North was convinced of the moral innocence of his beloved as will the reader be, no doubt, but he has to go through dark days indeed before the whole of the mystery is cleared up.

The novel is arresting on not a few points, but most intriguing of all is the fact that the criminal of the novel is the victim of the crime!

THE EDITOR

FROM THE ORIGINAL DETECTIVE STORY CLUB EDITION

May 1930