Sergeant Cork's Casebook

[dem bones]

Feb 21, 2009 17:00:18 GMT pulphack said:

Arrow are a bit of an odd one. I wouldn't swear to this, but like Hodder/Coronet they seem to have been a secondary thought by a hardback publisher. Unlike most of the paperback houses, which started primarily as such, they were subsidiaries, and most the money made and attention focused was via the hardback. A scan of any secondhand pile of paperbacks will probably reveal that they sold off p/b rights to all but the titles they thought would do really well. Which is why the Hodder yellowjackets were primarily Charteris and Wallace, who had sole well in h/b for them, and later John Creasey. Similarly, the preponderance of 60's and later Arrows in genre (they had a strong romance line I think, which probably came from having big library h/b orders and so a strong list - Denise Robbins, etc) are Wheatley or occult that is Wheatley connected (Rollo Ahmed! Classic!).

Except, of course, for Sergeant Cork! Which may have got a p/b from them as the h/b's were turned into a successful TV series. They're quite good actually, particularly if you cherished Peter Lovesey's Sergeant Cribb a decade later. They were h/b'ed again by a library publisher like White Lion or Severn House (not sure who) in ther seventies, as I remember getting one from the library when I was about ten.

Arthur Swinson - Sergeant Cork's Casebook (Arrow, 1965)

Cover photograph, of actor John Barrie as Sergeant Cork, by courtesy of ATV

The Case Of The Bristol Mail
The Case Of The Public Paragon
The Case Of The Soldier's Rifle

Blurb
The television series Sergeant Cork has an audience of mil­lions. Now his cases and adven­tures are adapted to narrative form by a writer who himself created some of the original scripts.

Here is 'Corky' at his brilliant best: shrewd, sagacious, uncon­ventional — a man ahead of his time, a liberal in an illiberal age —a man both loved and feared in the London lit by gaslight.

still got too many unfinished books on the go so the recent stuff will have to wait, but i was inordinately pleased to finally locate a copy of this. No surprise i've never seen so much as a two second clip from the series but it's said to have been very popular. One episode was allegedly shot in a London cemetery of saddo repute but that's probably as near as we're gonna get to horror or 'supernatural' content. There is also a Sergeant Cork's Second Casebook from the same year, i know, because somebody gave me the cover minus the rest of it.

[helrunar]

Had to look this up as it and the sequel were mentioned "of interest?" in a thread about Arrow's Witchcraft and Satanism paperbacks.

I think that was intended as a joke, but I'd never heard of the series or the books and "Corky" looks as if he would give good value for money.

I looked up the author.  Arthur Swinson had a military background--born 1915 and dropped dead in 1970 when he would have been around 55.  When you're in your late 50s, that feels "awfully young."

cheers, H.

[pulphack]

Of course, my original post was arse about face, as usual - TV tie-ins, not original novels,but I'm sure they were hardbacked for libraries as I remember them next to Gil North's Sergeant Cluff books on the crime shelves (which is probably why I ended up reading both).

I have the first book and it's excellent of its type - reads like an original and not a cobbled together tie-in. I was reminded of this by your post, and then - synchronicity - saw the first series cheap on dvd in a charity shop. Not had a chance to watch an episode yet, but looking forward to it. No supernatural stuff from the synopses on the cover, so I doubt there was anything like that in any of the five seasons or the second book!