"How would you feel if your own flesh-and-blood suddenly developed into a fiend who wants to murder another person you're fond of?"
Flying Blind
has nothing to do with aviation.
The title is used metaphorically to describe a situation in which daily, even hourly, calamity threatens through a fog of mystery. The fog enfolds the characters in the story; blinding them to their position; blotting out the truth; making every move a danger; effacing, with terrifying completeness, the familiar facts of ordinary existence. Through this fog Tommy Rostetter, free-lance journalist, gropes his way. It leads him from a smart hat-shop in Mayfair to a sleepy Sussex village, and finally, after a night race with death, to a dark lonely waste of Wiltshire downland. And not until the very last moment are the factors in the series of murders sorted out. "Here is," as a critic has written of Alice Campbell's work, "detective writing
par excellence
."
was originally published in 1938. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.
"She could not be unexciting if she tried"
Times Literary Supplement