‘The Flesh of the Orchid’ is a continuation of that best seller, No Orchids for Miss Blandish (over 500,000 copies sold) which needs no introduction.

It is the story of Carol Blandish, daughter of Miss Blandish by the homicidal maniac, Slim Grisson. Committed to a sanitarium for the insane as a suspected homicidal lunatic, Carol inherits the vast fortune left her by her grandfather, John Blandish. She escapes and while endeavouring to prove her sanity falls victim of two professional murderers, the Sullivan brothers.

This is perhaps the most exciting novel to be written by Hadley Chase. Incident piles on incident and the story moves at a tremendous pace.

‘The Flesh of the Orchid’ is a continuation of that best seller, No Orchids for Miss Blandish (over 500,000 copies sold) which needs no introduction.

It is the story of Carol Blandish, daughter of Miss Blandish by the homicidal maniac, Slim Grisson. Committed to a sanitarium for the insane as a suspected homicidal lunatic, Carol inherits the vast fortune left her by her grandfather, John Blandish. She escapes and while endeavouring to prove her sanity falls victim of two professional murderers, the Sullivan brothers.

This is perhaps the most exciting novel to be written by Hadley Chase. Incident piles on incident and the story moves at a tremendous pace.

Set against the background of a rich, gangster-ridden city on the Pacific Coast, James Hadley Chase in this new thriller tells the story of a lone investigator’s hunt for his partner’s killer. From the opening sentence to the last the tension mounts, as the avenging private eye pursues his quarry through every barrier and trap set up by the hoodlums.

Written with that expert technique that gives to all James Hadley Chase’s novels their tremendous punch and drive, The Guilty Are Afraid is a worthy addition to his long list of non-stop, all-action thrillers that have to be read at a sitting.

When Helga Rolfe flies into Nassau to join her elderly millionaire husband, Herman, she finds plenty of bad news awaiting her. Crippled, suspicious Herman has long suspected she’s been playing around since their marriage, and is proposing to write some nasty-looking terms into his will.

Herman is right, of course — Helga’s weakness is for handsome, sexy men like Harry Jackson, whom she meets on the beach the day she arrives. But Harry is not quite what she thinks — and because of him she suddenly finds herself in a nightmare world of blackmail, voodoo and violence...

In the year that the Second World War broke out, James Hadley Chase (1906-85) published his crime novel, No Orchids For Miss Blandish (1939), which subsequently became one of the best-selling mysteries of all time.

“The Mirror in Room 22” is quite unlike anything else from James Hadley Chase’s pen — a ghost story that he wrote while serving as a pilot in the RAF.

Chris Burnett, successful, wealthy and married to the daughter of a multi-millionaire, receives severe brain injuries in a car accident. While convalescing, Burnett disappears for twenty-four hours, during which time a prostitute is brutally murdered and mutilated. Evidence found by a private inquiry agent points to Burnett. His wife, blackmailed by the inquiry agent, sets out to prove her husband’s innocence.

This swiftly moving story of murder and suspense culminates in an unexpected and dramatic climax that is the hallmark of a James Hadley Chase novel.

Ira Marsh, a provocative blond teenager, arrives at Paradise City, Florida’s crime-free, millionaires’ playground. Her arrival sparks off a cunningly devised plan to rob the Florida Safe Deposit bank, an impregnable fortress, acclaimed as the safest bank in the world. Ticky Edris, an anti-social, misshapen dwarf, directs the operation while Phil Algir, the handsome con-man aids and abets. The plan moves smoothly into action by the ruthless murders of a drug-taking call-girl, her pimp and the short-sighted teenage daughter of the Vice-President of the bank.

Here is an absorbing thriller, written with a hard, swift economy of style. The Way the Cookie Crumbles hooks the reader, and keeps him hooked to the end.

All are familiar with the well-known plot of the man who commits murder and then attempts to make the crime appear to be suicide.

In There’s Always a Price Tag, James Hadley Chase turns this old plot inside out and gives us a new and electrifying reverse of the coin: the man who attempts to make a suicide appear to be murder, in order to lay his hands on the victim’s insurance money.

Here is a thriller that will quicken your heart-beats. It is by far the most ingenious story that this “Master of the art of deception” has yet given us.

Among some of the finest art treasures, lent by the Hermitage Museum, Leningrad, for display at the Fine Arts Museum, Washington, is the Catherine the Great icon, the oldest known icon and worth millions of dollars.

An expert gang of art thieves succeed in stealing the icon, but the buyer insists the icon should be delivered to him in Zurich, Switzerland. With every exit closed by the order of the President of the United States, chances of smuggling the icon to Switzerland appear slim. The story of how the icon is stolen and how it reaches Switzerland is yet another of James Hadley Chase’s to-be-read-at-a-sitting thrillers.

Here is a story that zips along at a breakneck speed and again points to the reason why James Hadley Chase has gained such a world-wide reputation for explosive and non-stop action. To Floyd Jackson, private investigator and blackmailer, comes Cornelius Gorman with an odd proposition. Gorman looks after the interests of a number of big stars. Veda Rux, known in the profession as a stripper. The previous night, Gorman explains, she performed at a dinner given by millionaire Lindsay Brett, who has recently acquired a priceless dagger, reputed to be made by Cellini. The dagger is shown to the guests and then locked in the safe. Veda Rux is a somnambulist and takes the dagger from the safe in her sleep, only discovering what she has done when she has left the millionaire's house. Gorman wants Jackson to return the dagger to the safe before the theft is discovered. Jackson, however, is sure the story is a tissue of lies.

He was too smart for Gorman, when he fell in love with Veda his doom was sealed. From the moment he agrees to return the dagger, he is caught up in a relentless intrigue that makes him a cats paw for murder.

In the Crowded, smoky Neptune Tavern Al Barney tells of four ill-assorted people — Don Elliot, ex movie star; Joey Luck and his daughter, Cindy, small time ‘dips’ and Vin Pinna, a vicious gunman — in search of 8 Russian stamps worth a million Dollars.

When Vic Malloy, head of Universal Services — an organization undertaking any job that a client wants done — is hired to watch a millionaire’s wife suspected of kleptomania, it is just another routine assignment — until an operator working on the case is suddenly and brutally murdered. Then the millionaire’s wife vanishes; and the husband denies he has ever hired Malloy, and threatens to sue him if he goes to the police. Faced with this extraordinary situation, Malloy is determined to avenge the death of his operator and, playing a lone hand, sets out to find the killer.

From that moment, he and his two aides, Paula Bensinger and Jack Kerman are involved in a series of ruthless murders and macabre situations. Strange people flit across the scene; any of them could be the killer. There is the ex-prize fighter, Caesar Mills; the millionaire’s crippled daughter, Natalie; the nightclub owner, Bannister; the playboy, George Barclay; the photographer and blackmailer, Louis; the cowboy sharpshooter, Thayler; and the red-haired, green-eyed Gail Bolus, a girl with a past.

Мастер детективной интриги, король неожиданных сюжетных поворотов, потрясающий знаток человеческих душ, эксперт самых хитроумных полицейских уловок и даже… тонкий ценитель экзотической кухни. Пожалуй, набора этих достоинств с лихвой хватило бы на добрый десяток авторов детективных историй. Но самое поразительное заключается в том, что все эти качества характеризуют одного замечательного писателя. Первые же страницы знаменитого романа «…И вы будете редактором отдела» послужат пропуском в мир, полный невероятных приключений и страшных тайн, – мир книг Джеймса Хедли Чейза, в котором никому еще не было скучно.