Hell Hath No Fury by Sydney J. Bounds (writing as Rex Marlowe) Subject: Crime Publisher: Gryphon Publications (USA) Edition Our Price inc. p&p Status Gryphon Gangster Novel #3: first US edition trade paperback, 114pp, ISBN 0936071710, 1996 N/A out of stock

Presenting the very best in classic British gangster fiction from the glorious days of the 1950s pulp fiction crime writing. All books Gryphon Gangster Series are First American Editions. There are no signed editions in this series but each book, originally written under a pseudonym, is bylined with the author's real name and the pseudonym, with a stunning full-colour dustjacket. Fascinating introductions tell the behind-the-scenes story about each book. A great series of slam-bang, classic pulp fiction gangster novels.

In Hell Hath No Fury we meet a galvanic array of characters, most notably a truly unusual heroine, Irene Kline. She seems at first to be a conventional naive heroine, demure and trusting. But when she is drawn into a web of deceit and heinous criminal activities by her perfidious lover Hugo Dare, the change in her is as dramatic as it is convincing. As the title implies, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!

Bounds's private eye hero, Sam Spain (Sam Spade should sue!) is more conventional, fashioned from the classic mould of Chandler and Hammett: hard-drinking and two-fisted, but with an innate sense of decency and chivalry. Of only medium height, he is very much an idealised version of Bounds himself, and we sense the author's amusement and occasional tongue-in-cheek writing as he puts Spain (and by extension, himself) through various harrowing hoops, not least the terrifying ministrations of Wang Lee, the most sinister oriental since Fu Manchu.

(from the introduction by Philip Harbottle)

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