Lot of 5 British mysteries by Nicholas Blake — all VG Harper Perennial first thus paperbacks — featuring Blake’s detective Nigel Strangeways. Harper issued four of the mysteries in 1977 and one in 1982. They are:

Thou Shell of Death (1936)

There’s Trouble Brewing (1937)

The Corpse in the Snowman (1943)

The Whisper in the Gloom (1954)

End of Chapter (1957)

Nicholas Blake was the pseudonym of Irish poet and England’s Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis (the father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis). His mysteries are highly literate and clever. His detective, Nigel Strangeways, is in the finest English tradition of adventurous. eccentric and brilliant amateur investigators.