Victor Gunn: I picked up a book in the library the other day, mostly because of the title. The title was Murder on Bodmin Moor and the author was Victor Gunn. It reads quickly and is about the murder of an American walking in the fog on the moor. I picked it up mainly because we had stayed at a Bed & Breakfast on Bodmin while we spent a few days exploring the southern part of Cornwall. It’s fairly close to Jamaica Inn (see novel by Daphne DuMaurier or movie with Jane Seymour). I was curious about Victor Gunn because I read mysteries quite a bit and I had never run across him before. I thought I’d let the internet do my research for me. Revealing. Victor Gunn was the pseudonym for Edwy Searles Brooks. Between 1933 and 1969 he wrote 126 novels under his own name and four pen names: Rex Madison, Carlton Ross, Berkeley Gray and Victor Gunn. As Victor Gunn he wrote 43 novels, the final one in 1966. I figure that he averaged 3.5 novels a year during his writing career. This novel is a fast moving mystery that one can read in an evening or two. It’s quite average in comparison with the better writers of mysteries today, say Ian Rankin, Reginald Hill, Anne Perry, Laurie King, William Kent Kreuger or Steve Hamilton. Or even the older (now dead) English mystery writers, say for example, Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Nicholas Blake. One of the funny things I found by using Google is that Victor Gunn must be very popular in Germany. Many websites are devoted to him. He obviously has been translated into German. I may never read another book by Victor Gunn but it was fun learning about him.