Cobnor (1 results)

FIRST EDITION, pp. 317, 8vo, original red cloth, backstrip gilt-lettered, gentle fading around tail edge, dustjacket with compass pictorial diagram with needle in orange pointing away from the body on Cromer beach, with radiating questions beneath, nicks to folds and corners, chipped at ends of backstrip panel, faint toning and dustsoiling overall, very good. An intriguing work by the mysterious Cobnor, in which four fictional amateur detectives are set the task of discovering the murderer of the fifth participant in the experiment, the hypothetical victim of the crime. Charles Williams reviewed it, in perspicacious style, for The News Chronicle, 7 April, 1931: 'The Four Answers is concerned with four gentlemen playing a game of detection, and having it turn to a painful truth. It is all very good sleuthing, but the first part is pure art and therefore perfect; the second is applied art, and merely necessary. Besides, I hoped the Vicar was the murderer. Vicars so rarely murder since the Middle Ages, and yet when one thinks of the average congregation! Nothing much pointed to the Vicar, but (it is the only fault in the book) nothing at all pointed to the real criminal. And at least one dead finger always should.' Announced by the publisher as their first foray into detective fiction.