Cecil Day-Lewis was England’s Poet Laureate from 1968-1972. He is probably better known to cinema fans as the father of award-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis.
While a student at Oxford, Day-Lewis became part of W. H. Auden’s literary circle and helped him edit Oxford Poetry 1927.
In 1935 Day-Lewis needed a new roof for his house and decided to supplement his income from his poetry and teaching by writing a detective novel.
Using the pseudonym Nicholas Blake he became one of the leading writers in the “Golden Age” of detective fiction.
Blake wrote 20 detective novels between 1935 and 1968, 16 of which feature “private enquiry agent” Nigel Strangeways. Strangeways, an Oxford graduate, is the nephew of an Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard, and puts his services at the disposal of Inspector Blount of the Yard, the British Secret Service, and his many friends.
In the first Strangeways novel, A Question of Proof, the detective is clearly modeled on his old acquaintance Auden, but Strangeways becomes a far less extravagant and more serious figure in later novels as he ages and sees the world less idealistically, especially in the post-World War II mysteries -- much like his contemporaries Albert Campion and Peter Wimsy.
These novels are full of literary references, from Shakespeare to Blake, Keats, and A.E. Housman.
Among Day-Lewis's best mysteries is The Beast Must Die (1938), the story of a father seeking revenge on the hit and run driver who killed his child. One of Day-Lewis's own sons was almost run over in circumstances similar to those in the story.
Critic and award-winning mystery writer H.R.F. Keating included The Beast Must Die on his list of the 100 best crime and mystery books ever published.
The Blake novels have been out of print for a long time, but our friends at The Rue Morgue Press have re-issued A Question of Proof and will be publishing other titles in the series. Visit their website
for a thoroughly detailed narrative on Nicholas Blake.
