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Trade paper ISBN-13: 978-1939140142 List Price: $16.99 U.S. Pages: 162 Published: 2013 |
Broken Boy (1959)
John Blackburn With a new introduction by Greg Gbur Book Depository
When a dead prostitute is found floating in the river, the local police assume it's just another routine murder. But when it turns out the woman may have been a notorious East German spy, General Charles Kirk and his assistants, Michael Howard and Penny Wise, are called in from the Foreign Intelligence Office to investigate. Kirk is baffled: the evidence of numerous impeccable witnesses proves the murder could not possibly have happened, and yet there's a dead body in the morgue to show that it did. The only clue is a wooden idol in the form of a hideous, misshapen boy, found in the dead woman's room. Soon Kirk realizes that this is no case of espionage: what he is up against is an evil centuries old and long thought vanished from the earth. And when Kirk and his colleagues get close to the truth, can they unravel the mystery before they become the next victims? John Blackburn (1923-1993) was the author of more than thirty popular thrillers in which he blended the genres of mystery, horror, and science fiction in unique and often brilliant ways. Although recognized as the best British horror writer of his time, his works have been sadly neglected since his death. This new edition of Broken Boy (1959), Blackburn's third novel, includes a new introduction by Greg Gbur. |
reviews
“Our only current writer who can induce such terror as the Grimm Brothers did.” - Times Literary Supplement
“A real chiller. . . . The book moves rapidly from beginning to end and Hitchcock ought to be advised. It would make a heck of a movie.” - Evening News
“He is certainly the best British novelist in his field and deserves the widest recognition.” - Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural
“A real chiller. . . . The book moves rapidly from beginning to end and Hitchcock ought to be advised. It would make a heck of a movie.” - Evening News
“He is certainly the best British novelist in his field and deserves the widest recognition.” - Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural
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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
John Blackburn was born in 1923 in the village of Corbridge, England, the second son of a clergyman. He started attending Haileybury College near London in 1937, but his education was interrupted by the onset of World War II; the shadow of the war, and that of Nazi Germany, would later play a role in many of his works. He served as a radio officer during the war in the Mercantile Marine from 1942 to 1945, and resumed his education afterwards at Durham University, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1949. Blackburn taught for several years after that, first in London and then in Berlin, and married Joan Mary Clift in 1950. Returning to London in 1952, he took over the management of Red Lion Books.
It was there that Blackburn began writing, and the immediate success in 1958 of his first novel, A Scent of New-Mown Hay, led him to take up a career as a writer full-time. He and his wife also maintained an antiquarian bookstore, a secondary career that would inform some of Blackburn’s later work. A prolific author, Blackburn would write nearly 30 novels between 1958 and 1985; most of these were horror and thrillers, but also included one historical novel set in Roman times, The Flame and the Wind (1967). He died in 1993.
It was there that Blackburn began writing, and the immediate success in 1958 of his first novel, A Scent of New-Mown Hay, led him to take up a career as a writer full-time. He and his wife also maintained an antiquarian bookstore, a secondary career that would inform some of Blackburn’s later work. A prolific author, Blackburn would write nearly 30 novels between 1958 and 1985; most of these were horror and thrillers, but also included one historical novel set in Roman times, The Flame and the Wind (1967). He died in 1993.