Book description
Terry Regan, who'd dropped into the Delaneys' cabin up at Blue Jay Lake
to sell them a TV set, took in the situation at a glance. Gilda was
young and stunningly attractive. Jack Delany was a vicious,
hard-drinking cripple, imprisoned in a wheelchair.
Regan should have left them . . . but he didn't. 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.
