No Orchids for Miss Blandish

ISBN: 9781906147815/ Cat No: TT6CD425 No Orchids for Miss Blandish was crime author James Hadley Chase's first novel, and an experiment in adapting American hard-boiled crime fiction by a British author, which worked so well that it launched the former salesman's writing career. American heiress Miss Blandish is kidnapped and held by an organized gang led by the sadist Slim Grisson. Private detective Dave Fenner is hired to rescue her, and does so, but not without resort to bribery, torture, and murder. Written in 1939, the book inspired an essay by George Orwell, Raffles and Miss Blandish (1944), drawing conclusions from its popularity about a mood in the post-War British public of combined boredom and desensitisation to horrific violence.