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Cobb, G Belton

Page history last edited by Jon 14 years, 5 months ago

Geoffrey Belton Cobb (1892-1971) was a sales director for Longman's publishers and a regular contributor to Punch and other magazines. He produced a long series of books featuring Inspector Cheviot Burmann, who at the end of his career gave way to Bryan Armitage. Cobb also wrote a series of six books between 1947 and 1950 featuring Superintendent Manning. He also wrote a non-fiction book about police killed in action, Murdered on Duty (1966).

Belton Cobb's earlier books are the better; as his output increased his style seemed increasingly pedestrian and dreary. -- Daniel P King

A letter from John Dickson Carr to the Unicorn Mystery Book Club News (Vol. 3, No. 4, 1950):

"I hope that I may be allowed to comment on the remarks of Mr. Belton Cobb, who is English and calls himself a writer of detective stories. (At least, he does in his books.) Murder, both unprinted and unprintable, rises in this old hack's soul when I read:

Authors are well advised to include the murderer prominently in the first chapter so that he will be chosen by as many of those readers (38%) as possible; then, when they have finished the book, they will go about telling their friends how clever they were, thus advertising the book.

If Mr. Cobb seriously meant this, it is the most nauseating statement since the days of Calvin Coolidge.

The author's job is not to advertise his book. His job is to write it. He must write it as well as he can; he must give the reader all the clues known to the detective; and he must try, if possible, to stun them with a thunderbolt surprise-ending. Admittedly, this is hard to do. Readers are very wary and sophisticated. But I venture to state, with some assurance, what a writer does not do

He does not toady to his readers. He is not Smiles's Self-Help. He does not smite his chest proudly with the recollection of what an ass he has made of himself in the very first chapter. On the contrary, he is there to befool, confuse, and bamboozle as many readers as he can. Even when he fails, he has run a noble course. His motto, in the best and most cordial sense of the term, should be: the public be damned.

If he has written a first-class detective novel, that public will discover it. Mr. Cobb's despised critics are not without their influence. Should all else fail, I am happy to give Mr. Cobb a few suggestions. Suitably disguised and saying he is working his way through knowledge, he could peddle the books from door to door. He could stand on his head in Trafalgar Square, juggling a dozen copies with both feet. These expedients, I must admit, would be less crafty. But they would be far more honest.