Below the Clock

A classic Golden Age detective novel set at the heart of Westminster, when the murder of the Chancellor of the Exchequer threatens to topple the whole House of Cards…

Many highly dramatic and historic scenes have been enacted below the clock of Big Ben, but none more sensational than on that April afternoon when, before the eyes of a chamber crowded to capacity for the Budget Speech, the Chancellor fell headlong to the floor with a resounding crash. For the first time a murder had been committed in the House of Commons itself – and Amos Petrie faced the toughest case of his career.

In Below the Clock, John Victor Turner – a journalist who as David Hume had become known as ‘the new Edgar Wallace’ for creating Britain’s first hardboiled detective series – returned to classic Golden Age writing with an ingenious whodunit set at the heart of the establishment, a novel that did the unthinkable by turning Parliament into a crime scene and all its Members into murder suspects.

This Detective Club classic is introduced by David Brawn, who looks at the distinguished crime-writing career of J. V. Turner and his alter egos Nicholas Brady and David Hume, who achieved remarkable success with nearly 50 books in only 14 years.

Reviews

‘A traditional detective story populated with men in high places who are not as honest as they should be… Well done, Detective Club, for unearthing this from obscurity and bringing it back for our enjoyment.’ Noah Stewart

‘One of the very few exponents of the art of the thud-and-blunder thriller who can stand comparison with the late Edgar Wallace, who can tell an ingenious, though still ingenuous story with the utmost economy of words, who has a racy, often horsey, humour, who knows the criminal classes backward and gaolward … I, for one, guarantee to read from cover to cover his next forty books.’ MORNING POST

‘He knows his underworld inside out.’ DOROTHY L. SAYERS in THE SUNDAY TIMES

About the author

John Victor Turner came from Manchester, went to Warwick School, and worked on a local newspaper there before moving to Fleet Street, where he worked for the Press Association, Daily Mail, Financial Times and as a crime reporter on the Daily Herald. He wrote seven detective novels under his own name, published between 1932 and 1936, but also wrote as ‘Nicholas Brady’ and more famously ‘David Hume’, creating the UK’s first ‘hardboiled’ detective series and as whom he was compared favourably to the great Edgar Wallace.