Elmore (Ernest) The Siren Song

London, W. Collins Sons, 1930.

First edition, second impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 3/6.

A work of humorous fantasy by Ernest Elmore (1901–1957), published under his own name rather than the “John Bude” pseudonym under which he later became known as a detective novelist. Elmore did not turn to crime fiction until 1935, when The Lake District Murder and The Cornish Coast Murder launched a series of thirty novels as John Bude, mostly featuring Inspector William Meredith and reprinted in recent years by the British Library Crime Classics series; contemporary critic and Detection Club president Martin Edwards has judged Bude’s early work smooth and accomplished for a debut. This Siren Song belongs instead to the small group of comic fantasies Elmore wrote in his own name, alongside The Steel Grubs (1928) and The Lumpton Gobbelings (1954).

The dust-jacket was designed by Margaret Macadam (1902–1991), a Royal Academy Schools-trained illustrator active through the 1920s and 30s whose other credits include the first edition of Agatha Christie’s Giant’s Bread (as “Mary Westmacott,” 1930) for the same publisher.