Arthur Kirby - High Summer Homicide - Sexton Blake Library 503/1962 - Fleetway
Credited to "Arthur Kirby as told to Richard Williams". In fact, it was written by Stephen Frances (aka Hank Janson) with revisions by W Howard Baker and George Paul Mann.
Artwork credited to `Camps` (full name Angel Badia Camps)
High Summer Homicide reads like two stories welded together. I can`t help thinking that too many authors were involved in this, seemingly with no-one taking an overall view.
The first section begins in a mildly Chandleresque vein, slightly laughable as the story is set somewhere near Worthing.
Quite quickly this gives way to plain bad writing ("her long, silver-blonde hair jogged provocatively in a pony tail with every step that she took") as the fictitious storyteller, Blake`s journalist friend Arthur `Splash` Kirby leers lasciviously and longingly over an assortment of females. He seems surprised to find that women have legs, and this gives him great pleasure, though in my experience, it`s not that unusual for them to possess these appendages.
Unfortunately all this excitement doesn`t progress the story, which concerns a friend of Kirby`s who is missing, presumed murdered.
I was about to give up, but on page 26 Blake takes charge of the case and the style of writing changes, so much so that one character has a complete personality transplant.
The story that emerges from this point on is really not too bad - maybe not great, but good enough. There is a very well-written account of an undersea search for a body which gives a glimpse of the story this could have been.
Really, it would have taken very little time effort to have made a better job of this. It`s not the worst story I`ve ever read, it`s certainly not the best. It could very easily have been better.
