Book description
When Dave Fenner is hired to solve the Blandish kidnapping, he knows
the odds on finding the girl are against him - the cops are still
looking for her three months after the ransom was paid. And the
kidnappers, Riley and his gang, have disappeared into thin air.
But what none of them knows is that Riley himself has been wiped out by
a rival gang - and the heiress is now in the hands of Ma Grisson and her
son Slim, a vicious killer who can't stay away from women, especially
his beautiful new captive. By the time Fenner begins to close in on
them, some terrible things have happened to Miss Blandish . . . Born
René Brabazon Raymond in London, the son of a British colonel in the
Indian Army, James Hadley Chase was educated at King's School in
Rochester, Kent, and left home at the age of 18. He initially worked in
book sales until, inspired by the rise of gangster culture during the
Depression and by reading James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice
, he wrote his first novel, No Orchids for Miss Blandish. Despite the
American setting of many of his novels, Chase (like Peter Cheyney,
another hugely successful British noir writer) never lived there,
writing with the aid of maps and a slang dictionary. He had phenomenal
success with the novel, which continued unabated throughout his entire
career, spanning 45 years and nearly 90 novels. His work was published
in dozens of languages and over thirty titles were adapted for film. He
served in the RAF during World War II, where he also edited the RAF
Journal. In 1956 he moved to France with his wife and son; they later
moved to Switzerland, where Chase lived until his death in 1985.
