Hooky gets the wooden spoon

Hooky Hefferman

by Laurence Meynell

'Len, this old man has got lots of lovely cash and I thought you would like to get hold of some of it. And I think we might be able to do it,' Virginia Chanderley tells her lover, Len Carron. Virginia, the radical younger daughter of wealthy Sir Leo Chanderley, dreams up an elaborate plot to steal (and then return for ransom) one of the prize paintings in Julius Bern's collection. But while Virginia and Len are putting their perfect plot into action, Private Investigator Hooky Hefferman has other ideas ...'You feel instantly at home from page 1 and it's a true world, too' The Times

191 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Born in 1899, in Wolverhampton, Laurence Walter Meynell was the son of Herbert Meynell, chairman of Meynell and Sons Ltd., and his wife Agnes. He was educated at St. Edmund's College in Ware, Hertfordshire, and served in the artillery in WWI. He worked for an estate agency, and as a teacher, before his first novel, Mockbeggar, won a competition run by the publishers Harrap in 1924, and he turned to writing as a career. Meynell also worked as an editor, beginning in the 1950s, for the Bodley Head, and for Time and Tide. He was married twice, to novelist Shirley Darbyshire, and to Joan Belfrage, and had one daughter. He died in 1989.

Meynell is primarily remembered for his crime fiction, much of it published under his own name, but he also published children's fiction under the pseudonyms A. Stephen Tring and Valerie Baxter. He also used the pseudonyms Robert Eton and Geoffrey Ludlow.

Reviews

[Al Knox · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a good time but not enough wooden spoon