Sexton Blake Bibliography: 1987
ANTHOLOGY · 1987 · Galley Press · £9.95
Other content: None
Note: Four reprints of SEXTON BLAKE LIBRARY adventures from the 1920s (all with the covers reproduced in black and white) plus a reprint of the first ever Sexton Blake story. Cover by Eric Parker.
Illustrator: Arthur Jones
Notes: This is reprinted from THE SEXTON BLAKE LIBRARY issue 269 (1923).
Unrated
Illustrator: Arthur Jones
Notes: This is reprinted from THE SEXTON BLAKE LIBRARY issue 12 (1925).
Unrated
Illustrator: Arthur Jones
Notes: This is reprinted from THE SEXTON BLAKE LIBRARY issue 104 (1927).
Unrated
Illustrator: Arthur Jones
Notes: This is reprinted from THE SEXTON BLAKE LIBRARY issue 174 (1929).
Unrated
Illustrator: Unknown
Notes: Millionaire Frank Ellaby is referred to Sexton Blake by detective Jules Gervaise of Paris. Fourteen years previously, Ellaby had been prospecting in Australia in partnership with a man called Calder Dulk. While there, he met his long-lost sister who was on her death-bed. She had been the guardian of a young girl called Rose and, before passing away, entrusted Ellaby with that responsibility. The following day, Dulk and his wife abandoned Ellaby, taking with them all his gold, the child, and the documents relating to her past. It took Ellaby one and a half decades before he struck gold again. Now he wants Blake to find out what happened to the girl. Soon after his interview with the detective, Ellaby is seriously injured in a traffic accident and falls into the hands of Madame Dulk who starves him until he agrees to sign a cheque for £20,000. Jules Gervais arrives from Paris and, with Blake, traces Ellaby to an old mill. But Ellaby has already escaped and is convinced that the two detectives have betrayed him. Meanwhile, Rose, having had various unsavory guardians until she was finally adopted by a clergyman named Briarton, is being wooed by young Ernest Truelove. Truelove falls into company with Leon Polti, head of a criminal gang known as The Red Lights of London which counts Calder Dulk among its members. Truelove is duped into cashing Ellaby's cheque and is promptly arrested, as are Blake and Gervaise. All are freed after due explanations. The Red Lights gang begins to self-destruct as mutual suspicion takes a grip. This leads to Calder Dulk being thrown from a train. His wife kidnaps Rose (who somehow fails to recognise her captor!) and seeks to bribe the Duke of Fenton whose son will lose his title should it emerge that Rose is the rightful heir. As the Duke leaves her presence, he learns that his son has just died and he later commits suicide. Madam Dulk is betrayed by her servant and the papers proving Rose's aristocratic connections are burned. Leon Polti, fighting with one of his own men, is driven over a cliff edge. With the case ended, Rose and Truelove are married and Blake and Gervaise go into partnership.
Trivia: This is a reprint of the first ever Sexton Blake story, which appeared in THE HALFPENNY MARVEL issue 6 (1893). See that issue for further notes.
Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆
VINTAGE DETECTIVE STORIES · 1987 · Galley Press · £9.95
Illustrator: Unknown
Other content: The Tea-Leaf by Edgar Jepson & Robert Eustace; The Face in the Dark by L. T. Meade & Robert Eustace; The Wrong House by E. W. Hornung; The Cyprian Bees by Anthony Wynne; Prince Charlie's Dirk by Eden Phillpotts; The Mysterious Death in Percy Street by Baroness Orczy; A Happy Solution by Raymond Allen; Sir Gilbert Murrell's Picture by Victor Whitechurch; The Ace of Trouble by Hedley Barker; The Hanover Court Murder by Sir Basil Thomson; The English Filter by Bechhofer Roberts; The Mystery of Marie Roget by Edgar Allan Poe; The Blue Sequin by Austin Freeman; The Clever Cockatoo by E. C. Bently; The Absent Minded Coterie by Robert Barr; The Secret of the Singular Cipher by F. A. M. Webster; Coincidence by J. Storer Clouston; The Ebony Box by Mrs. Henry Wood; The Adventure of the Fallen Angels by Percival Wilde; The Ghost of Massingham Mansions by Ernest Bramah; The Long Barrow by H. C. Bailey.
Notes: Canon Wimberley, the cousin and heir to Lord Wayne, is found in his library, dead from a snake bite. On examining the body, Blake is puzzled to find that the puncture wounds are too far apart. He discovers that Wimberley had received a small box of bird bones through the post, obviously sent in connection with his interest in taxidermy and ornithology. The bones are on the victim's workbench and, when Blake examines them, he sees that one of them has been booby-trapped with a rattlesnake's tooth, the venom sac intact. On a silk cord around Wimberley's neck, he finds a small key, which fits an antique silver casket. Inside, there are papers marked "Only to be opened after my death." They are an account of how, forty years ago in Mexico, Wimberley had joined a society of political agitators known as the Black Diamond and had been selected to murder a tyrannical government official. He would forfeit his own life if he failed to do so. Refusing, he'd fled the country. Blake traces the seller of the rattlesnake and, from him, the buyer, a Mexican named Manuel Yturbe, who had been the president of the society. This man is located and accused. He confesses and commits suicide.
Trivia: This is a reprint of THE EPISODE OF THE BLACK DIAMOND from PENNY PICTORIAL issue 515 (April, 1909). In the anthology it is mistakenly stated to have been originally published in 1920, which is probably an inaccurate reference to its inclusion as an extra in THE GOLDEN CASKET; OR, THE SECRET OF THE SAHARA (THE SEXTON BLAKE LIBRARY 1st series, issue 164, 1921). Apparently, it also appeared in a 1930 anthology edited by Dorothy L. Sayers, though I have no further information about that.
Rating: ★★☆☆☆