Time for the second round of nominations for the Reprint of the Year award, a “competition” to decide which of the many, many classic crime books that were reprinted this year deserve your attention. I say “competition” because it’s not really a competition – it was technically John Dickson Carr who came first and second, not the person (me) who nominated them… and it was technically Brian Flynn who won a few years back…

Sorry, where was I? Oh, this year’s nominations. Last time I nominated Tour De Force, by Christianna Brand, a truly outstanding mystery that collectors of the British Library Crime Classics range will already have ready (and presumably already be waiting for the voting to open in order to vote for it) but for my second nomination, I thought I’d go for a book that you might well not have read.

In fact, I’m sort of nominating a whole series of reprints, the James Ronald books that Moonstone Press have been reprinting with the help of Chris Verner. JJ from The Invisible Event is a massive champion of the author but as he’s a bit busy at the mo, I thought I’d step and and make sure the range appeared in the awards.

I say JJ was a champion as he got me to read They Can’t Hang Me years ago – the original review is here. It’s the story of Lucius Marplay who has just escaped after twenty years of being in an asylum who has spent most of that time make threats against the four men who took control of his newspaper, The Echo, from him. As they start to die, it seems that his revenge is well under way…

This is definitely a book that deserves reading without knowing what sort of mystery it is. Ronald didn’t write too many traditional mysteries, but he had a great imagination and this is the book that will help you decide if you want to come along for the ride or not.

The reprint also includes some short stories – the intent for the series is to reprint all of Ronald’s crime fiction – but consider those a bonus (as I haven’t read those!). I’ve been meaning to get back to the series – there are eleven reprints so far, most of which are very affordable as ebooks. Moonstone have done a fantastic job bringing a long-lost author back into publication so let’s give them some recogniton.

So keep an eye on Cross Examining Crime for the voting for your favourite reprint – it’ll be up soon, and I’ll post a link to it here soon so you can help me, um, James Ronald and Christianna Brand, take home the trophy this year…