Scattershot; Saint Peter's Fair; Raven's Revenge by Pronzini, Bill; Peters, Ellis; MacKenzie, Donald - 1983

The Detective Book Club produced volumes of three crime novels from 1942 to 1999. Originally monthly, near the end they dwindled down to just a few per year. Many famous detective and crime novelists had their early works featured in DBC editions. Often, books were published in DBC editions before, or at the same time as they were published in mass market form. A little about our authors:

Bill Pronzini: Pronzini has written about 130 novels, novellas and collections, under a number of pen names, while also compiling 90 anthologies of short stories. His most famous character is the Nameless Detective. This is the eighth of 47 novels featuring the Nameless Detective.

Ellis Peters: Peters is a pen name used by Edith Pargeter when writing mystery and crime novels. Most of those were in two series, the Borther Cadfael Mysteries (21 books) and the George Felse mysteries (15 books). Pargeter used three other pen names, as well as publishing under her own name, in a variety of genres. Altogether, Pargeter published over 85 books. She died in 1995. This is the fourth Brother Cadfael Mystery.

Donald MacKenzie: Canadian Donald MacKenzie started out his working life as an international criminal on both sides of the Atlantic. He turned to writing about crime while incarcerated in an American prison. MacKenzie published over three dozen novels and a pair of autobiographies. Sixteen of those novels were in the John Raven series. MacKenzie died in 1993. This is the eighth Raven novel.