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Post by cathaven on Mar 15, 2013 4:16:25 GMT
Thanks. It's also stated to be the first in the introduction to the Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult edition. I've been reading up on the Sexton Blake connection. I don't suppose you know offhand which Sexton Blake it's a rewrite of? I have a W.Howard Baker paperback that is a rewrite of a rejected SBL & I know several Sexton Blake authors going way back used to recycle their Blake stories as hardcover originals, so it's not an unusual occurrence.
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Post by pulphack on Mar 15, 2013 8:01:30 GMT
Wilfrid MacNeilly's Come Dark Come Evil, which is a fourth series Sexton Blake Library title. Well worth tracking down. A lot of Press Ed stuff was recycled from the SBL - all the Richard Quintain spy titles are Blakes, for a start. There are no rejected Baker Blakes as such, though - after all, he was editor and published everything he wrote, often hacking one out to fill a gap in the early days of his tenure. The exception is Scandal Street, which was scheduled to appear as a Blake but didn't. Officially, it was pulled because of the violence in it - although it's no more or less so than any othe title of that period. It does, however,feature a press baron not unlike the Fleetway chief at the time - and it's not a flattering portrait - which is why I think it was pulled. And yes, right back to the twenties and thirties Blake hacks would change the heroes names and flog the book a second time to one of the hardback publishers who supplied the circulating libraries with crime titles. It was a different world back then - I can't imagine there being two seperate audiences for a crime novel now but back then the borowers from Boots etc would never have dreamed of buying a Blake from the newsagent, even though it was the same book. Perception is a funny old thing...
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Post by cathaven on Mar 15, 2013 14:49:25 GMT
Yes, 'Scandal Street' was the one I was referring to. I seem to remember reading that the word had come down from on high to tone them down a bit, which led Howard to do some judicious rewriting on some other author's Blake stories & pull his own from the schedule. The thing with the press baron would explain why he decided to rewrite it as a non-Blake story, rather than tone it down. Maybe he wanted to express his displeasure over the censorship issue, by taking a potshot at his boss via that book.
Geting back to the 'Peter Saxon' Guardians series, I haven't read them all yet, but your comment that the order doesn't really matter tends to suggest that all the groundwork that was laid regarding the suspect backgrounds of Gideon Cross & Anne Asby & the speculation over their real aggenda, never really went anywhere. It's a pity they aren't out of copyright (at least I assume so) as I'm sure a new writer could take the series in interesting directions. The basic concept was a good one, even if the quality of the books varied.
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