Sunday, September 4, 2016

The Masters & Green Crime Fiction of Douglas Clark (1919-1993)

Between 1969 and 1990, Douglas Clark (1919-1993), an English military veteran and pharmaceutical company executive, published 27 books chronicling the criminal investigations of Superintendent George Masters and Inspector Bill Green.  In the UK most of the Clark mysteries were published in hardback by Victor Gollancz, while in the US most of the books were published in paperback in the 1980s, as part of Harper & Row's Perennial series of vintage mysteries.

It was unusual to see a contemporary series published under the Harper Perennial imprint, though the Clark books are, in fact, very much classic style plot-oriented mysteries, written in the form of police procedurals.  It used to be easy to pick up these titles in used bookstores back in the 1990s.  The series having been out-of-print now for over a quarter-century, copies are becoming harder to find, at least in good condition.  (But perhaps the series may be reprinted, I'm hoping to see this happen.)  Featured below are twelve of Harper's Clark paperbacks.

I plan to discuss some of the Clark mysteries this month.  A number of the titles he wrote already have been reviewed, I noticed, by the indefatigable Bev Hankins over at her blog, My Readers' Block.  First to come up here, The Longest Pleasure!






8 comments:

  1. Curtis, thanks so much for the mention. As you might guess, I really enjoy this series. I've been fairly lucky in finding these at used book stores over the years--18 of the 27. But I've only got four of those left to read.....

    Glad to see you featuring them.

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    1. Yes, they used to show up a llot at the used bookstores, I miss those old Harper Perennials.

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  2. Do I sense a hint that these will be reprinted soon?

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  3. I read a lot of these in the 80's, but have read none since I started blogging. I look forward to your posts on Douglas Clark's novels.

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  4. New to me! I'll need to keep my eye out!

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  5. I'm currently reading this series in order and have been able to find copies of almost everything (some reasonably priced & others more costly) except for 2 titles. "The Libertines" is out there but extremely expensive, and "Sweet Poison" is just nowhere to be found at least in private hands. I have done a bit of research on that title, and some university libraries have copies of it.

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