Sleuthing in the Stacks

Mervyn Peake was a man of many talents. A brilliant draftsman, his illustrations are superbly atmospheric, with masterful use of crosshatching and shading. Peake had a keen eye for the grotesque and the fantastic, something he also brought to bear on his writing. He remains perhaps best known today for his Gormenghast fantasies, novels boasting a dense and acutely detailed imaginative power. The labyrinthine, insular world they depict, dominated by arcane bureaucracies and timeless and unquestioned ritual, is a far cry from the mythic fantasy realms of Tolkien and his ilk; closer in fact to the spirit of Kafka. Peake was also a painter, a poet and an occasional playwright - a profligate creative spirit as a whole. The two covers here represent two halves of his illustrative career, the simplification in style sadly the result of progressive illness.  Tragedy At Law is a 1942 novel by Cyril Hare, who never actually existed. It's the crimewriting nom de plume of Alfred Clark, who bro