Tuesday 29 October 2019

Norman Conquest Part I

Series characters have long been a staple of the crime/mystery/thriller genre. Today large publishers are very careful about keeping a well-selling character in print. Older series are typically brought back into print in a systematic way. The best example today is Penguin's new editions of Georges Simenon's Inspector Maigret series - all 75 novels, most in new translations. In the early days of paperbacks this was not the case.

An example is Berkeley Gray's Norman Conquest series - 51 novels between 1938 and 1969. The early Canadian paperback imprint from Wm. Collins and Sons Canada, White Circle Pocket Library, published 17 of the first 24 between 1942 and 1952, at which time the WC imprint ended. They had been published between 1938 and 1951 by the parent company in the UK. In addition to skipping seven of the books the ones that were published are not in sequence. The list below has the original publish date and the WC number.


1 Mr. Mortimer Gets the Jitters 1938 P
2 Vultures Limited 1938 46
3 Miss Dynamite 1939 85
6 Conquest Takes All 1940 B4
7 Meet the Don 1940 344
9 Convict 1066 1940 291
11 Six Feet of Dynamite 1942 60
12 Blonde for Danger 1943 227
13 The Gay Desperado 1944 244
14 Cavalier Conquest 1944 267
16 Mr. Ball of Fire 1946 360
17 Killer Conquest 1947 383
19 The Spot Marked X 1948 465
20 Duel Murder 1948 442
21 Daredevil Conquest 1950 486
22 Seven Dawns to Death 1950 512
23 Operation Conquest 1951 527

White Circle P - 1942

White Circle 46 -1942

White Circle 85 - 1943

White Circle B4 - 1942

White Circle 344 - 1947