Links to the books and stories covered in this section:
Chase books (all) Chase GEMs Chase short stories
Commentary:
James Hadley Chase is one of the best thriller writers of all time and was rightly called the “thriller maestro of the generation”. Chase was a British author and his real name was René Lodge Brabazon Raymond. In his early years, he often wrote under other pseudonyms, especially Raymond Marshall, but all those books are now published under the name of James Hadley Chase.
Although most of Chase’s novels were based in the U.S. and featured gangsters and American cops, it is interesting that he had no first-hand knowledge of the country or its people. He made only two brief visits to the U.S. and never lived there. All his novels were written with the aid of atlases, guides, directories and slang dictionaries. Reading his books which deal with crime and law enforcement in the US in such an authentic fashion, one would never guess that he was not an American!
Chase’s stories move at a rapid pace with exciting plots and characters, and his books are impossible to put down. Although his works are looked down upon by many highbrow literary critics, I would take them any time over ponderous books considered to have more “artistic merit” but which one has to struggle to get through. No one can ever say that they had to struggle to complete one of Chase’s amazing books!