Ashby, RC -- Out Went the Taper (1934)

C

Not as good as He Arrived at Dusk, because, although it’s another ghost story (haunted house in Wales, with a splendidly nightmarish journey through underground passages festooned with cobwebs), it’s basically an adventure story, with gangsters.  Gangsters!  To her credit, Ashby avoids the clichés (gun battle, sinister men skulking around the bushes, a kidnapping, and derring-do on the part of the young people, with a bride to win for U.S. Rhodes Scholar Tal Winyatt)—but it’s still disappointing.  I’d much rather have a proper Carrian or Mitchellian detective romance than a tale in which we see half the chapters from the gangsters’ perspective.  Still, it’s good fun.

Nick Fuller.