Cirrus@Austlit

The Deep Reaches of Space has undisguised autobiographical elements in having as its protagonist a seaman turned science-fiction writer who travels to the future and uses his nautical experience to save a party of humans stranded on an alien planet. Chandler also has as his central character George Whitely, the name he occasionally used as a pseudonym.

After an injection of lysergic acid, Whitely finds himself inhabiting the body of Peter Quinn, Second Officer of the interstellar liner Lode Maiden. His mind, however, is still that of his former self. When a magnetic storm throws the spaceship into the deep reaches of space Quinn's body somehow retains enough knowledge to help Whitely land the ship on an unnamed planed on the Galactic Rim...

'where new horrors and dangers wait..'

[Source: www.bertramchandler.com]

'It was a sweet little 'set-up', ruined by murder.

'Washington Mainwaring was a guest with a purpose, his intentions in the house-party being strictly criminal. Somebody murdered the butler, and in a cold sweat Mainwaring imagined the hangman's noose tightening about his own neck.

'Not that he was the only guest who interested Scotland Yard. How could he be when the party included such assorted characters as Morton Hudson, who had stood in the dock of the Old Bailey, and Mrs. Benton Rome, the embers of whose past still glowed inextinguishably? Even their hostess behaved oddly, though not to the extent that she did not know when to stop talking. And what part in the crime had Dr. Ramsden Hendrick who was twenty miles away when the murder was committed?

'"Arthur Gask knows all there is to know of how to write a good mystery story," says the Sunday Mercury, and this story, featuring once again his famous investigator, Gilbert Larose, proves the truth of that comment.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'ARTHUR GASK'S new crime melodrama, 'The Silent Dead,' tells the story of the rise of a slum child to comfort and happiness as the wife of a husband from whom she resolutely keeps two deeply buried secrets. They're not such dreadful secrets, but the heroine goes to great efforts to avoid their being revealed — even becoming involved with a blackmailer, 'an unwholesome sexual beast,' who is shot dead in a country house where she is staying. Investigating the murder is Mr. Gask's unorthodox Scotland Yard detective, Gilbert Larose, who, to protect the heroine's secrets, is persuaded to dispose of the body of an attacker he has slain in self-defence.'

Source:

'Latest Fiction', Advertiser, 3 February 1951, p.6.

'Those responsible for the brutal murders of six eminent atom bomb scientists had covered their tracks with consummate skill. Scotland Yard was baffled; Press and public were seriously alarmed.

'Called in by the authorities at the eleventh hour, Gilbert Larose, the famous investigator, struck back at the conspirators but, caught in a web of intrigue, vengeance and espionage, faced almost certain death in the vaults of an ancient castle.

A high-speed mystery thriller with a dramatic climax by the renowned author of thirty popular novels.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.