Maigret and the Toy Village; Rainbow's End; Raven After Dark

The Detective Book Club produced volumes of three crime novels from 1942 to 1999. Originally monthly, near the end they dwindled down to just a few per year. Many famous detective and crime novelists had their early works featured in DBC editions. Often, books were published in DBC editions before, or at the same time as they were published in mass market form. A little about our authors:

Georges Simenon: The Belgian writer is well known for creating the character Inspector Maigret, who appeared in 75 stories. Simenon also published over 110 stand-alone novels. As a sign of his importance in the literary world, Simenon has been the subject of books written by six other authors. This novel, also known by the title Felicie, is the 24th Maigret mystery.

Ellis Peters: Peters is a pen name used by Edith Pargeter when writing mystery and crime novels. Most of those were in two series, the Borther Cadfael Mysteries (21 books) and the George Felse mysteries (15 books). Pargeter used three other pen names, as well as publishing under her own name, in a variety of genres. Altogether, Pargeter published over 85 books. She died in 1995. Rainbow's End is the final George Felse novel.

Donald MacKenzie: Canadian Donald MacKenzie started out his working life as an international criminal on both sides of the Atlantic. He turned to writing about crime while incarcerated in an American prison. MacKenzie published over three dozen novels and a pair of autobiographies. Sixteen of those novels were in the John Raven series. This is the sixth Raven story. MacKenzie died in 1993.