Arthur Cecil Gask (10 July 1869—25 June 1951), dentist and novelist, was born on 10 July 1869 at St Marylebone, London, fourth of five children of Charles Gask, merchant, and his wife Fanny, née Edis.He began writing crime fiction while waiting for his patients and in 1921 paid for the publication of his first novel, The Secret of the Sandhills, which was an immediate success.Over a period of forty years Gask wrote over thirty books as well as contributing ...

He began writing crime fiction while waiting for his patients and in 1921 paid for the publication of his first novel, The Secret of the Sandhills, which was an immediate success.H. G. Wells, an admirer of Gask's work, corresponded with Gask. Wells regarded The Vengeance of Larose (1939) as Gask's "best piece of story-telling...It kept me up till half-past one."Most of his novels described the activities of a detective, Gilbert Larose, in solving crimes. Gask's work was tra...

An attractive and aristocratic-looking girl of apparently quite ordinary origin has always had good reason to believe she was not the daughter of her mother's husband. Losing both her parents, she seeks her fortune in London, makes her way into the social world and marries into a titled family. Then, through no fault of her own, she becomes involved in the death of a scoundrel who was attempting to blackmail her. Thanks to the help of the one-time great detective, Gilbert Larose, she at fi...

One evening, just as dark was falling, in a many-windowed room of a long, low building standing within the shelter of a cliff high up on a lonely mountainside, were seated three men. The building was the only structure in that profound solitude, and was so high and so far removed that from the habitations in the village below it required a good pair of binoculars to pick up with any accuracy the beginning of the winding road which led up to it.The three men were talking earnestly an...

There is something about the number 3.The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two.Most religions also have 3 this and 3 that and, of course, in these more mode

There is something about the number 3.The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two.Most religions also have 3 this and 3 that and, of course, in these more mode

Arthur Gask's The Red Paste Murders is a taut interwar detective novel built around a sequence of deaths, false clues, and the ominous significance of "red paste"—imitation gemstones whose apparent triviality masks darker human motives. Written in the idiom of Golden Age crime fiction, the book combines brisk plotting, legal-medical detail, and a taste for sensational revelation. Its style is direct yet atmospheric, balancing puzzle mechanics with melodramatic menace and the moral clarity ...

The Secret of the Garden transforms a seemingly orderly domestic landscape into a site of buried motive, concealed history, and criminal revelation. Arthur Gask writes in the brisk, lucid manner of early twentieth-century detective fiction: practical clues, sharp dialogue, sudden reversals, and a steady movement from social respectability toward moral exposure. The novel belongs to the interwar tradition that links late Victorian sensation fiction with the emerging Golden Age mystery, usin...

Arthur Gask's Murder in the Night is a tightly plotted work of Golden Age detective fiction, built around the unsettling drama of crime committed under cover of darkness. Combining brisk narrative movement with careful clueing, the novel balances sensational incident with the rational satisfactions of investigation. Its style is direct, atmospheric, and suspenseful, reflecting the interwar taste for ingenious murder puzzles while retaining a distinctly popular, page-turning energy. Gask, a...

Arthur Gask's *The Secret of the Sandhills* is a classic mystery novel shaped by the conventions of interwar sensation fiction: an apparently isolated landscape, a concealed history, and a crime whose implications extend beyond the immediate victims. The sandhills function not merely as picturesque scenery but as a symbolic and practical space, concealing evidence, memories, and motives beneath their unstable surface. Gask combines atmospheric description with steadily unfolding detection,...

Pure laughter, whether our own or others, makes us all feel more comfortable with the world and situations we find ourselves in. Why something is funny is hard to say but we know that there are people who are funny and can say funny things. It’s an immediate advantage for them.In this volume your hosts including Mark Twain, Nikolai Gogol, J M Barrie, O Henry and many others range from the simply funny to the absurd to ….. well, other ways of funny.

The detective had been watching for four days before he realised suddenly that the house was inhabited.It was a sinister-looking house that stood alone upon a lonely shore in South Australia, and it lay by the margin of the waves in a little sandy cove between the dip of two high hills.It was a place where few men came, for it was cut off from the distant townships by long, barren wastes of rock-strewn land.There were no roads nor tracks within many miles of it, and...