The Deadly Joker - by Nicholas Blake (Paperback)

About the Book

First published in Great Britain 1963 by Collins.

Book Synopsis

When John Waterson and his young wife chose Netherplash Cantorum, Dorset, for their retirement years, they could not have predicted that this idyllic spot had one severe but unforeseeable drawback: among its inhabitants was a practical joker whose fertile mind ran to the most bizarre and grotesque designs. The Village was no place for a quite retirement, or for a gentle recuperation from the nervous breakdown that had afflicted Waterson's wife. In Netherplash, the peace is continually disrupted with extraordinary events tripping over each other which, in the end, lead to a hideous and painful murder.
With a cast of characters who are both bizarre and believable, this is an original tour-de-force of crime fiction placing Blake firmly in the genre.

Review Quotes

"It really shouldn't be missed...this is a book with an extremely original approach and an extremely original idea." --The Sunday Times

"Very difficult to put down." --Little Victims

"Recommended for those who like their crime original." --The Daily Express

About the Author

Nicholas Blake is the pseudonym of poet and author, Cecil Day-Lewis, used primarily for his mystery series.

Cecil Day-Lewis CBE (1904 - 22) was a British poet from Ireland and the Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. He is the father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis and documentary filmmaker and television chef Tamasin Day-Lewis.

Day-Lewis was born in Ballintubbert, County Laois, Ireland. He was the son of the Reverend Frank Cecil Day-Lewis and Kathleen Squires. After Day-Lewis's mother died in 1906, he was brought up in London by his father, with the help of an aunt, spending summer holidays with relatives in Wexford. Day-Lewis continued to regard himself as Anglo-Irish for the remainder of his life, though after the declaration of the Republic of Ireland in 1948 he chose British rather than Irish citizenship, on the grounds that 1940 had taught him where his deepest roots lay. He was educated at Sherborne School and at Wadham College, Oxford, from which he graduated in 1927.