Bait on the Hook

Dan Mallett #4

by Frank Parrish

Dan Mallett is topping the local babysitter at Medwell Old Hall when an intruder is murdered. Suspected of murder and blackmailed by the babysitter's young charge, Mallett has to find the killer.

Genres: Mystery

157 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

This is a pseudonym of Roger Erskine Longrigg

Roger Longrigg was a British author of unusual versatility who wrote both novels and non-fiction, along with plays and screenplays for television, under both his own name and eight other pseudonyms.

Born in Edinburgh into a military family, he was at first schooled in the Middle East, but returned to England as a youth and later read history at Magdalen College, Oxford. His early career took him into advertising, but after the publication of two comic novels took up writing full time in 1959.

He completed fifty five books, many under his own name, but also Scottish historical fiction as Laura Black; thrillers as Ivor Drummond (for which his chief character, Lady Jennifer Norrington was named by HRF Keating in The Times as ‘The true heir of James Bond’); black comedies as Domini Taylor; Frank Parish (which titles feature the adventures of Dan Mallett, a poacher who lives on the edges of legality) - and famously Rosalind Erskine – a name with which he hoaxed all for several years, and who appeared to write a disguised biography of what life was like in a girls boarding school where the classmates ran a brothel for boys from a nearby school. Erskine’s ‘The Passion Flower Hotel' became a bestseller and was later filmed.

Roger Longrigg’s work in television included ‘Mother Love’, a BBC mini-series starring Diana Rigg and David McCallum, and episodes of ‘Crown Court’ and ‘Dial M for Murder’.

He died in 2000, aged 70 and was survived by his wife, the novelist Jane Chichester, and three daughters.

Reviews

[S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Greg read this book first and he made it sound so charming I read it too. As such, I more or less knew what was going on and felt kind of bad that poor Dan Mallet didn't, butttttttttt

The ending on the last page made the whole book worth it.

Greg didn't spoil it for me, and I won't spoil it for you!

[MARGARET WOODWARD · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, think Lovejoy then add some, in a rural setting of course. Dan Mallett as a banker turned poacher cum handyman is always going to spell trouble. Now add a nine-year-old brat – female who transmogrifies into a male - with an imagination which is off the scale and a turn of phrase even more snappy and manipulative than his own and you have a harum-skarum adventure involving a three-day kidnapping, blackmail (by the child) a murder and a police chase. Oh, and the promise of a dog. That matters.
Secondly suspend your disbelief. A man who has ‘borrowed’ a stranger’s car in the 1970s is not going to worry about the police linking his fingerprints on the steering wheel in a matter of minutes in the police database. But that anachronism matters not a jot in the context of this joyous romp of a story. The period still rings true, as does our hero’s iniquitous knowledge of poaching skills. If you want to laugh aloud and don’t mind a touch of tenderness underneath the very small quantity of gore, this is the book for you. Love the descriptions of nature too. A glorious light read.

[Bára Mlynářová · Rating 4 out of 5]

Až mě překvapilo, jak to bylo čtivý. banger