Stella Gibbons detestation of pomposity and pretence. Truss has described Gibbons as "the Jane Austen of the 20th century", a parallel which the novelist Malcolm Bradbury thought apt; Flora Poste in "Cold Comfort Farm", with her "higher common sense", is "a Jane-ite heroine transformed into a clear-eyed modern woman". Bradbury also observed that many of Gibbons's novels end in Austen-like nuptials. Truss highlights the importance that Gibbons places on detachment as a necessary adjunct to effective writing: "Like many a good doctor, she seems to have considered sympathy a peculiar and redundant emotion, and a terrible waste of time." This matter-of-fact quality
The Valley of Ghosts (novel) The Valley of Ghosts (novel) The Valley of Ghosts is a crime novel by the British writer Edgar Wallace which was first published in 1922. The novel was originally serialised in "The Popular Magazine", Jul 20-Sep 7, 1922, in four installments, and the first UK book edition was by Odhams Ltd., in London, in 1922. Small, Maynard & Company published the first US book edition, in New York, in 1923. Murder comes to a quiet settlement of the English countryside, and with more than one ghost. Why was Stella Nelson with the victim in the middle of the night, shortly