End of Chapter

Nigel Strangeways is investigating who might have altered a proof copy of General Thoresby's memoirs, resulting in a libel case against the prestigious publishing firm, Wenham and Geraldine. Matters worsen when the flamboyant romance novelist, Millicent Miles, is murdered one evening in the publisher's office. End of Chapter (1957) finds Strangeways once again drawn into a homicide case. Strangeways is at home in this traditional, English publishing firm as he is a successful poet, not unlike the author himself, Cecil Day-Lewis (writing as Nicholas Blake) who served as poet laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. The chapter titles are appropriately selected from editing terms like setup, first impression, run on, delete, lower case, transpose, etc. End of Chapter is a good example of a Nigel Strangeways mystery. The characters are well-educated and the dialogue is urbane. The solution involves untangling complex relationships and integrating clues from the past. The solution is not altogether surprising, but it is not obvious either. End of Chapter was reissued in 1977 in a Perennial Library paperback by Harper and Row Publishers. It can also be found in The Nicholas Blake Treasury, Volume 4, a hardcover book club edition published by the Mystery Guild.

This is mainly a plea to any lurking representative of a publishing house which might be able to reissue this mystery in English (it is still in print in German as "Ende des Kapitels"). Featuring Blake's appealing amateur sleuth Nigel Strangeways, this book begins with the murder of a bestselling author who is midway through writing her memoirs. Suspicion centers (although not exclusively) on the tightly wound employees of the victim's employer, the Wenham & Geraldine publishing house. Strangeways's difficult and poignant unmasking of the criminal flows from his understanding of human psychology and the literary mind. This is a memorable offering from the man whose day job (as Cecil Day-Lewis) was serving as the UK's Poet Laureate.