Concerning Blackshirt
By Roderic Jeffries
Richard Verrell is looking forward to a quiet weekend in Kent.
It certainly starts out that way – that is until he wanders across his host’s fields for a spot of rough-shooting.
Coming across a little garden shed, he’s amazed to find an immense ‘blower four and a half’ Bentley inside.
Arriving back at the house, he convinces himself that something isn’t right and returns to the shed accompanied by his host.
To their horror, they find themselves under heavy gunfire before the Bentley roars to a hurried getaway.
Unhurt, they manage to scurry to safety to another nearby shed – where Verrell trips over the body of a dead man.
Would any man ask for a better incentive to rush headlong into an affair that does not in the least concern him? Certainly Blackshirt would not.
But then Blackshirt is … Blackshirt.
Chasing women, money, revolvers and dangerous secrets, Blackshirt sets out to get to the bottom of his gruesome discovery…
Roderic Jeffries was born in London in 1926 and was educated at Harrow View House Preparatory School and the Department of Navigation, University of Southampton. In 1943, he joined the New Zealand Shipping Company as an apprentice and sailed to Australia and New Zealand, but later transferred to the Union Castle Company in order to visit a different part of the world. He returned to England in 1949 where he was admitted to the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn and read for the Bar at the same time as he began to write. He was called to the Bar in 1953, and after one year’s pupilage, practiced law for a few terms during which time there to write full time. His first book, a sea story for juveniles, was published in 1950.
