Barry Forshaw on Steve Mosby and James Hadley Chase...
Edgy Brit Steve Mosby (author of the splendid Dark Room) and his once-notorious predecessor James Hadley Chase specialise in fiction that takes no prisoners, and is guaranteed to take readers into very dangerous territory – in which the protagonist’s ill-advised behaviour usually has violent results. Chase’s blistering No Orchids for Miss Blandish is his key novel, not least because its sexuality and violence so upset George Orwell!
This is a newly revised edition of the famous crime novel NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH. For the first time this edition combines the original text from 1939 with the revisions made by the author in 1961. The novel is now widely regarded as one of the top thrillers of the last century. When it was originally published it pushed the social boundaries of the time through its relentless exploration of crime and sexual exploitation. Unlike most crime novels of that era, the characters are rich, deeply realized portraits of those who lived on the fringes of society during the Great Depression -- namely the gangsters, their women, and the men who hunted them. The novel broke sales records when published and has gone onto to sell over four million copies worldwide. Historically important, such literary greats as George Orwell and Graham Greene instantly recognized its merits. In a lengthy essay that securely placed NO ORCHIDS in an honored position in crime fiction, George Orwell wrote that, "In a book like NO ORCHIDS one is not, as in the old-style crime story, simply escaping from dull reality into an imaginary world of action. One's escape is essentially into cruelty and sexual perversion...a brilliant piece of writing, with hardly a wasted word or a jarring note anywhere." Set in the heartland of America during hard times, the story reveals itself along the back roads, roadside diners and street corners of a jaded, threadbare society - a truly unnerving novel updated for a new generation of readers ready to discover the world of James Hadley Chase.
