PublishedQuercus, October 2017 |
ISBN9781786484895 |
FormatHardcover, 384 pages |
Dimensions20cm × 14.1cm × 3cm |
'Joyous . . . fascinating' - Cathy Rentzenbrink
'I love it! A real gem' - Joanne Harris
'Will have the inevitable effect of sending readers in search of these intriguing lost names' - Barry Forshaw
Absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder. It makes people think you're dead.
So begins Christopher Fowler's foray into the back catalogues and backstories of 99 authors who, once hugely popular, have all but disappeared from our shelves.
Whether male or female, domestic or international, flash-in-the-pan or prolific, mega-seller or prize-winner - no author, it seems, can ever be fully immune from the fate of being forgotten. And Fowler, as well as remembering their careers, lifts the lid on their lives, and why they often stopped writing or disappeared from the public eye.
These 99 journeys are punctuated by 12 short essays about faded once-favourites: including the now-vanished novels Walt Disney brought to the screen, the contemporary rivals of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie who did not stand the test of time, and the women who introduced us to psychological suspense many decades before it conquered the world.
This is a book about books and their authors. It is for book lovers, and is written by one who could not be a more enthusiastic, enlightening and entertaining guide.
Bill is one of the founders of Boffins and has been involved in selecting the books we stock since our beginning in 1989. His favourite reading is history, with psychology, current affairs, and business books coming close behind. His hobbies are reading, food, reading, drinking, reading, and sleeping.
Now this is a fascinating book indeed. Fowler looks at 99 authors who were once hugely popular, but have all but disappeared from our shelves. There’s Leslier Charteris, whose English stiff-upper lipped hero “The Saint” (Simon Templar) was the world’s greatest thief – but used his powers against despots and villains. Not that this stopped the police from forever trying to put him behind bars. As well as about 100 Saint books, the spinoffs included comic strips, and even Vincent Price playing the character on radio in the 1940s. And of course later, Roger Moore featured in the TV series. It was all huge – but who reads The Saint now? And what do Percy Howard Newby, Bernice Rubens, J.G. Farrell, Stanley Middleton have in common, apart from writing fiction? They were all winners of the Booker Prize – one of the most illustrious awards of all. But do you remember them? And on and on – it’s a wonderful exploration of now neglected writers who were once on everyone’s lips.
