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A TASTE FOR HONEY

by

Gerald Heard

Blue Dolphin Publishing reissue available Summer 2008

with a new Foreword by Dr. Stacy Gillis, Newcastle University

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A Taste for Honey is listed among the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstones, which is the Definitive Library of Mystery Fiction from 1748-1952.

 

 

Synopsis from the 1961 Penguin edition of A Taste for Honey       "Up until a few years before there had been quite a lot of bee-keeping in the Ashton Clearwater district. But latterly nobody, except the sinister and solitary Heregroves, had managed to make their bees thrive.     "This was tiresome for Sydney Silchester who had gone to the country to be on his own and undisturbed by friends and garrulous neighbours. For this slightly precious recluse had a weakness for honey. It was even more tiresome for him when Mrs. Heregrove was stung to death by her husband’s bees. And his situation suddenly began to be fraught with mysterious terror when he met his extraordinary neighbour Mr. Bowcross,* a scientific apiarist who had made discoveries about Heregrove's bees which pointed to murder on wings.     "A Taste for Honey is a strange, ingenious piece of mystery in an almost Bronte-like setting."   * Note - For U.K. editions, this character was named Mr. Bowcross. For U.S. editions, this same character was named Mr. Mycroft.

 

Endorsements for the 2008 Blue Dolphin edition of A Taste for Honey   Jon L. Breen Mr. Breen is a noted Mystery and Crime-Detective writer, scholar and critic     "More than 30 years before Nicholas Meyer's The Seven Percent Solution opened the floodgates of Sherlockian imitation, H. F. Heard's A Taste for Honey was the first significant book-length Sherlock Holmes pastiche, and it remains one of the very best. This new edition should be welcomed by all lovers of classic detective fiction." -February 2008   Dr. Stacy Gillis Foreword writer for the 2008 Blue Dolphin edition of A Taste for Honey. Dr. Gillis is Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Newcastle University     "With a seemingly omniscient detective, a reluctant sidekick and a disturbed rural idyll, A Taste for Honey is firmly embedded in the Golden Age detective genre. Yet it also seeks answers for wide-reaching questions about personal responsibility and ethics, questions which anticipate later developments in the genre. While definitely a paean to the Holmesian tradition, A Taste for Honey does not rely on simple answers—we may know whodunnit, but the question of why is altogether more disturbing." -May 2008   Dr. Christopher Pittard Dr. Pittard is a distinguished University of Exeter scholar of British Detective Fiction     "A Taste for Honey is intriguing and sinister, somewhere between G. K. Chesterton and John Wyndham; Heard has Chesterton's conviction that the most important mysteries are moral questions reaching beyond 'whodunnit', and he shares Wyndham's fascination with the disquieting, almost alien forces that threaten the quiet of pastoral England. But Heard's style is entirely his own. Few crime novels of the period take quite so much pleasure in language, except maybe for the lyrical evocation of the mean streets of the American private eye, but even then Heard is definitely of the English school; his prose is more rarefied than muscular." -May 2008 Eric Shirey Webmaster of the ONLY Amicus Productions website     "A Taste for Honey is many things. It's a great crime story. A brilliant murder mystery. An education on the wonders of bees. A study of morality. All of these things make up the properties of this little novel...If you love love smart and well-written murder mysteries, my advice is to read this novel immediately. First published in 1941, it can definitely be regarded as a classic." (read the entire review) -August 2008

 

The Deadly Bees - now available on DVD   A Taste for Honey was loosely adapted into 1967’s The Deadly Bees, the first in the killer-bees genre. The Deadly Bees will be issued for the first time on DVD in July 2008.   (Boris Karloff played Mr. Mycroft in the ABC TV adaptation of A Taste for Honey, which aired in 1955.)

 

Featured reviews of The Amazing Mycroft Mysteries (Vanguard's 1980 compilation of all three Mr. Mycroft novels)   Walter Clemons in Newsweek (1981)     "[Heard's] best bid for immortality...Cool thought, impeccable prose and icy, highly specialized justice are constants."   Otto Penzler (Proprietor, The Mysterious Bookshop)     "Even if these first-rate mysteries had no Sherlockian overtones, they would be memorable. But they do, and Heard is to be congratulated for pulling off a splendid tour-de-force."

 

 

A TASTE FOR HONEY will be available for purchase at the sites below: USA Amazon Barnes & Noble Blue Dolphin Powell's   CANADA Amazon Chapters-Indigo   U.K. Amazon   FRANCE Amazon   GERMANY Amazon   JAPAN Amazon

Reviews of A TASTE FOR HONEY   Boris Karloff "I thought I knew all the tricks of the horror trade but I never expected to have my hair stand on end when a bee flew in through an open window...A triumph of ingenuity and horrific simplicity."   Newsweek (1941) "One of the ten best mysteries of all time."   Christopher Morley "...the most original and enchanting crime story of the year."   Will Cuppy in The New York Herald Tribune "A veritable triumph of modern mystery...packing plenty of horror."   Rex Stout "It’s an astonishing performance."   New York Times Book Review "Slow-moving, whimsical, somewhat weightily allusive, this tale is definitely caviar to the general; in a sense, it may be called a bookman's book."   Cover copy from the 1964 Lancer edition "...one of the most fiendishly ingenious murder methods ever devised."   Vincent Starrett "Terrifying...perfectly done...The most original contribution in many years."

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