AustLit

'This is the story of a Master-Criminal and his associates in crime. How, for years they defied all the forces of law and order in the great Commonwealth of Australia, how they plotted in the obscurity of a lonely bungalow by the sea and how finally they were run to earth by minds more subtle even than their own. A tale of thrilling interest, it tells how one word spoken on a lonely road at night proved the undoing of the whole band and loosed the avalanche that engulfed them all.'

Source: Publisher's blurb

'The present story reminds one of the melodramas in which the audience are let into the secret from the outset, the interest depending on the perplexities of those who are concerned with the unravelling of the plot, and on the sensational incidents that attend it. We know almost from the first that James Dice, the south-eastern station owner, was guilty of the double murder on the lonely Coorong-road, and his motive is equally clear — the removal of a rival competitor for the Christmas Cup at Adelaide. Mr. Eli Barton, whose great horse, Abimeleck, was regarded as a 'cert,' though, as it happens, the outsider, Black Wolf, would probably have won even against the favorite in the betting. Though Dice bungled his crime, killing two and nearly killing a third where only one victim was intended, he would have escaped but for the cleverness of the New South Wales detective, Larose, who after many sensational adventures succeeds in tracking him down. Justice is done in the end, but not according to legal forms.'

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'New Novels', Advertiser, 15 November 1928, p.9.

A detective on holiday in South Australia stumbles on a cunningly planned murder.

'On the lonely stretch of road between Whyalla and Iron Knob a man was murdered and robbed of £1,850. Upon that fiction Mr. Arthur Gask has built up one of his best detective stories, under the title 'The Shadow of Larose.''

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'Lonely Road: Scene of Mysterious Murder', Advertiser, 12 May 1920, p.16.

'In the new story the setting is a lonely lsand off a stretch of the Essex coast; unnumbered narrow creeks up which the tides surge like carrion beasts ravening for their prey, and long wastes of marshland with their girdles of black mud—the fitting home and hiding place of crime. For many months a band of criminals had been harrying the English countryside, defying all efforts of the authorities to uncover them. Then Larose arrived in England and speedily got upon their trail. It is a thrilling story of mystery and adventure, featuring Gilbert Larose at his best.'

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'New Serial Story for "The Advertiser",' Advertiser and Register, 11 March 1931, p.9.

'[D]etectives with international reputations work with some of the most notorious criminals to unearth a gang of racketeers.'

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'Equal to Edgar Wallace's Best', Advertiser, 9 August 1932, p.4.

'People who disappear, either from choice or compulsion, usually leave behind some trace, some thread or other, which an astute detective can seize on and follow to a logical conclusion. No such convenient clue was to be found in the case of the disappearance of four villagers from the little hamlets on the Suffolk coast of England. When Gilbert Larose, the Australian detective, was put on the case, not only was the trail cold, but there was not a shred of evidence to show that there had ever been a trail at all. The men had simply vanished into thin air. But in his usually entertaining and unassuming manner, Larose scents a major mystery, and. with the unswerving assurance of the black tracker, is soon just a step or two behind the criminals.'

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'The Hidden Door', The Advertiser, 9 August 1934, p.156.

'The plot Is simple: A popular man, but a notorious gambler, was murdered in the billiard room of a baronet's county house, on the morning after the Goodwood races. The crime looked simple of solution, but soon the local police could not say whether it was an inside or outside crime. Then Larose arrived. He met what looked like a conspiracy of silence, but soon found that probably a dozen persons had good cause to commit the murder, and that any one of them might be guilty. Bit by bit he gathered his clues, and when his inquiries were growing dangerous he was shot, being severely wounded. Fate played a part with two conspirators, but Larose later continued his investigations, and the author reaches an unusual, unexpected, but legitimate denouement, one that will set the reader thinking about the clues that he has overlooked. They are all here, but few will pick the man who committed the murder.'

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'The Judgement of Larose', Sunday Mail, 17 June 1934, p.9.

'Six men are murdered in seven weeks and the most searching enquiry by Scotland Yard fails to disclose any connection between them or any reason anybody could have for killing them. The methods employed are perfectly ordinary, bullet, knife, or bludgeon, and the murders occurred in public places in daylight, yet the investigation is completely held up. It was not until Gilbert Larose, the Australian detective, after a painstaking search for verification of a flimsy guess, built up the first tangible clue that the hunt began. Mr. Gask tells a story of a relentless step by step hunt which brought four men to their deaths.'

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'Murder without Motive', Advertiser, 29 November 1935, p.18.

'THE secret invention of an almost invisible aeroplane is the cause of this exciting spy yarn, and a particularly suave and particularly ruthless agent of an unspecified European country keeps it moving. An old friend, Gilbert Larose, in the role of a secret service agent, however, proves equally as ruthless and even more cunning, so the honors are satisfying. Murder and kidnapping help the foreign agent to secure the prized formula for making the material for the plane, but his seemingly faultless disguises and alibis are easily penetrated by Larose. There are many moments of anxiety, but a villain must never succeed in his dastardly plots — in fiction.'

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'Bodleian'. 'Leaves from the Latest Books', The Mail, 21 August 1937, p.27.

'SELDOM has the reader been offered more suspects from which to make a selection, but three sisters are thrust forward as those most likely to have been connected with the shooting of the manager of their estate. Gask differs somewhat from the usual writer of thrillers in that the perpetrator is eventually found to be one of the chief suspects. Most others usually keep him or her pretty well concealed. Our old friend, Gilbert Larose, now married and in retirement, is called in to watch the interests of the sisters, and quickly guesses who killed the manager. However, so skilfully does he gain the reader's sympathy for the criminal that he is glad that justice, not the law, triumphs.'

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'Justifiable Crime', The Mail, 12 February 1938, p.28.

'Larose is puzzled by a criminal who takes death masks of recently buried celebrities, but after he has tracked down the despoiler of graves he stumbles on another mystery much greater and far more dangerous to himself. Of course, he takes the law into his own hands, and readers of Mr. Gask's earlier Larose novels know just what delightful situations arise when this master mind plays a lone hand right under the noses of the official police.'

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'Another Gilbert Larose Thriller', Advertiser, 27 January 1938, p.14.

'DICTATORS have many things in common, and General Bratz, ruler of Cyranta, was a typical despot. He had won power by ruthless might, and he maintained it by a reign of terror unparalleled in his country's turbulent history. An army of secret police, grim prisons, and horrid tortures kept his people in subjection, but these things brought no peace of mind to General Bratz, for he knew the Secret Services of half a dozen countries were seeking his most closely-guarded plans for conquering Europe. It is the exciting adventures of a British agent in the seething little kingdom of Cyrania that make such thrilling reading of "The Fall of a Dictator," the novel which Arthur Gask, the well-known Adelaide author, has just completed.'

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'New Serial by Arthur Gask', Advertiser, 17 December 1938, p.19.

'WHEN Arthur Gask was writing 'The Vengeance of Larose,' his new mystery story, England stood on the brink of war. The blow has fallen now, and it is singularly appropriate that Mr. Gask chose for his theme the attempt of a ruthless dictator to demoralise the English before the armies entered the field. He has delegated Gilbert Larose, the brilliant Australian detective, to avert the war of fiction. Larose's flair for tempering justice with expediency is well known, and when a grave peril threatens England he lets nothing stand between the means and the end.'

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'Larose Against the Dictators', Advertiser, 25 September 1939, p.7.

'But for the timely intervention of Inspector Stone, Gilbert Larose, who has brought an end to many a dangerous criminal, might himself have been arrested for murder. As it was, the weight of evidence was overwhelmingly against him, and he was compelled to bring into play all his wit and resource in an effort to establish his own innocence.

' His researches led him to a dark, lonely, jealously-guarded house deeply hidden in the Norfolk fens where he stumbled upon the triple mystery of a rich recluse, a criminal impersonation and a girl in dire distress. Regardless of danger and his own interests he decided to probe the affair to its depths.

'Another gripping story of the quality of The Vengeance of Larose, about which H, G. Wells said; "By far the best piece of story-telling Gask has done. It kept me up to half-past one last night."'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'An unknown assassin is at work in London: five persons have already met their deaths—treacherously, mysteriously. An anonymous letter defies Larose to unmask the cowardly criminal. Gladly does Larose accept the challenge and, by dint of brilliant deduction, the master detective finally runs his quarry to earth.

'Gilbert Larose is one of the best-known figures in modern mystery fiction—a character, as one critic put it, "clever enough to compel admiration and human enough to carry conviction."

'This new novel is in Arthur Gask's most inspired and thrilling vein, endorsing yet again the Sunday Mercury's tribute that he "knows all there is to know of how to write a good mystery story."'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'As a writer of thrillers Arthur Gask is preeminent. Foremost critics of the great national and provincial press have unanimously praised his many books: H. G. Wells confessed to reading him in the small hours. His Gilbert Larose is outstanding amongst memorable characters in mystery fiction as such novels as 'The Tragedy of the Silver Moon' and 'The House on the Fens' clearly demonstrate.

''The Beachy Head Murder' is true to form. It tells the absorbing story of a crime perpetrated and atoned for, and of the later sequel in which the all but perfect murder was committed. Larose, however, was not deceived. Gifted with a profound insight into human nature and possessed of astonishing powers of observation, he identified the murderer and, in the dramatic climax, dispensed his own brand of justice.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'A lovely young wife with a shameful secret was being heartlessly blackmailed. In desperation she appealed to Gilbert Larose, an audacious, resolute man who, many times before, had not hesitated to take the law in his own hands.

'Larose approached the blackmailer with grim and fearful threats, and the next night the man was found shot in the lonely glade of a dark wood. The blackmailer, however, had shared his knowledge. Again the young wife was in danger, and, to make matters worse, Larose was suspected of murder. But what happened to him and how Justice, if not the Law, was satisfied forms another long, thrilling and highly dramatic episode in the career of Gilbert Larose, "the most famous crime investigator in fiction".

'Rarely has even Arthur Gask written to better purpose, or better deserved the great reputation which his outstanding thrillers have secured for him.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In a lonely house upon an unfrequented part of the Norfolk coast a retired Cambridge professor is living by himself. Gradually he becomes aware that his house, which is built upon the site of an age-old ruined church, is being watched. In his perplexity he appeals to Gilbert Larose. The mystery and dreadful happenings of all that follows after form another exciting chapter in the life-story of the one-time great international detective.

'Here, Arthur Gask has again written one of those outstanding mystery stories which have secured for him his enviable reputation.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'A large sum of money was stolen from a London bank and hidden in an old mill in a lonely and unfrequented part of Essex. It is found by two men already deep in crime, and the dreadful murder of one of them follows.

'Gilbert Larose, the one-time great international detective, when discovery seems well-nigh impossible, nevertheless, picks up the trail—almost from what he hears in the whisperings of the wind—and it leads him to an important country gentleman living in an historic mansion in Norfolk.

'A story packed with thrills and surprises from cover to cover, featuring that most famous of all investigators Gilbert Larose at his brilliant best.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'It is a story told in the first person by a successful doctor who says about himself:– "Married to the daughter of a peer, Lord Carden of Ashdown Castle, and myself believed to be connected with another titled family, my practice is not unnaturally what would be called a fashionable one. I have a steadily increasing following among the best people in Society circles ... I am the youngest practitioner to have been admitted to the very exclusive Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians.'' His origin was actually a lowly one, both his father and his mother once having been humble employees of his beautiful young wife's parents. And his father was hanged for murder! He has assumed a false identity, and, far worse, he has committed murder: he has killed the man—"a vile man, one of the vilest"—who long before gave false witness against his innocent father. His life's history, and the way in which he has got the better of Gilbert Larose—"the star detective of the Yard, the man who by-passed all lack of clues and worked on his imagination!"—are told in this novel in Mr. Gask's usual popular style.'

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'Latest Fiction', Advertiser, 13 December 1947, p.10.

'Around the extensive grounds of an estate in a quiet part of Suffolk a tall barbed-wire fence had been erected, and round an old house deep within these grounds had been built a high wall.

'No one knew who lived there, for none was allowed to come near. It was a house of evil, and to guard the sinister secret it held, three murders had been done. But for murder and other fearful crimes against society comes a day of reckoning.

'How the secret was discovered and how vengeance came at last form another thrilling episode in the brilliant career of the famous international detective, Gilbert Larose.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Arthur Gask's new novel is more of a romance than a mystery story, with his familiar figure of Gilbert Larose appearing only briefly towards the end – and then only with some advice to a young woman who has shot a blackmailer. This young woman, Mr. Gask's heroine, a beautiful and stately Dora, who is brought up in France where her English mother is married to a French wine merchant. She becomes a nurse in a London hospital – with her heart set on the opportunity of making a good marriage. Opportunity comes closer when she gets the post of a nurse in a noted doctor's rooms, where she is brought in contact with some of the best of titles society people, many of whose names were so often mentioned in the social columns of the newspapers. But it doesn't knock on her door until she is nursing a wealthy old woman, whose nephew falls in love with Dora –and incidentally falls foul of his aunt by doing so. But a smart and not too ethical solicitor upsets the aunt's new will in which she has cut off the nephew who by now has married Dora, and Dora soon is Lady Stroud, moving amongst the best society people. But an unscrupulous doctor threatens blackmail and worse–for Dora was once unwittingly mixed up with a shade Institute of Perfect Health–and the distraught girl, in defence of her honor shoots him. Dora hides her crime–and everybody, including Larose, rallies to her aid in fooling Scotland Yard. In the end she finds that the titled judge who is to try an innocent man for the crime she has committed is her real father–and everything moves swiftly to understanding all round and a completely happy ending.'

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'Latest Fiction', Advertiser, 17 September 1949, p.6.

'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.'

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

'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.

'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.