BEWARE OF RAILWAY-JOURNEYS
Frank Heller (trans. Robert Emmons Lee)
When Allan Kragh impulsively follows a beautiful grey-eyed woman onto a train, he doesn’t expect to be sharing a compartment with a notorious master criminal – or to be arrested in his place. Still, he doesn’t bear a grudge, until he realises that his hotel in London is hosting not only the same fellow-travellers, but the Maharajah of Nasirabad and his fabled jewel collection…
First published in 1923, Beware of Railway-Journeys will take you from a Paris-bound railway car to a glittering London hotel, in the company of an unassuming hero with a knack for observation. This new edition features an introduction by the author of the Encyclopedia of Nordic Crime Fiction, Mitzi M. Brunsdale.
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RRP $4.99 (eBook), $16.99 (paperback), $26.99 (hardcover)
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Frank Heller was the pseudonym of Martin Gunnar Serner, the first internationally famous Swedish crime writer. The son of a clergyman, he graduated in English literature and was considered a promising academic, but his career in the Swedish education system came to an abrupt end after it was discovered he had been supporting himself as a successful bank swindler. In September 1912 in the course of an hour he successfully cashed two forged cheques at two different banks, but the third bank was more alert, and Heller fled Sweden to escape arrest. Desperate for cash after losing the rest of his swindled money in a casino in Monte Carlo, he tried his hand at writing novels with immediate success. As his career flourished he was eventually able to settle his debts and return to Sweden, although he always loved to travel and to research new settings for his books. In total he produced forty-three novels, short stories and travelogues before his death in 1947 in a bicycle accident.
“With a single exception, the work of Frank Heller is the best Swedish crime fiction written during the first half of the twentieth century and is still both readable and interesting.”
- John-Henri Holmberg, A Darker Shade of Sweden
“A detective story of the sort which positively will not allow the reader to put it down until the very end has been reached.”
- Daily News (London)
“A master of mystery…easily the finest mystery tale we have run across for some months…a brilliant yarn.”