C. H. B. Kitchin
Personal Information
Description
Clifford Henry Benn Kitchin was born in Harrogate, Yorkshire, in 1895. He was educated at Clifton College, Bristol, from where he won a classical scholarship to Exeter College, Oxford. From 1916-1918 he served in the British Army in France, and after the war turned to the law, joining Lincoln's Inn and being called to the bar in 1924. Later, like the hero of his crime novels, Malcolm Warren, he became a stockbroker, but a huge inherited fortune allowed him to leave his profession and to concentrate on his great love, writing. His first two novels, Streamers Waving and Mr Balcony, were published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at The Hogarth Press in 1924 and 1925, and he won wide popularity with his first detective novel, Death of My Aunt (1929). Over the years, more crime fiction appeared: Crime at Christmas (1934), Death of His Uncle (1939) and The Cornish Fox (1949), interspersed with more serious novels, the most famous of which is The Auction Sale (1949). The unique atmosphere of Kitchin's detective fiction owes a lot to his own eccentricity. Scholarly, humorous, given to sudden caprices, he was an expert botanist, poet, linguist, fine chess player and talented musician, with the unnerving habit of composing improvisations to illustrate his friends' characters. An avid collector of priceless objects, whether Georgian silver or Meissen teapots, he was also well known as a gambler on London greyhound tracks and in Riviera casinos. In the end, however, despite his daunting, rapier wit, his death in 1967 drew tributes to, above all, his sensitivity and generosity of spirit. >Biography from The Hogarth Press
Books
Death of my aunt
> Catherine Cartwright, an oldish millionairess married to a garage mechanic and saddled with lots of poor relatives, makes a fine victim. Naturally, there are quite a few suspects, even the sleuth being under suspicion. He is a young man who takes up crime detection as the only way to save his own neck, and who learned all he knows about sleuthing from mystery stories.
Crime at Christmas
> A Christmas party in Hampstead is rudely interrupted by violent death. Can the murderer be one of the relatives and intimate friends celebrating the festive season in the great house? The stockbroker sleuth Malcolm Warren investigates, in another brilliantly witty mystery from this hugely enjoyable master of crime.
Death of His Uncle
> Malcolm Warren, stockbroker and amateur detective, can never resist a mystery. So he soon succumbs when an old Oxford friend with a rather shady reputation begs him to investigate the disappearance of a cantankerous uncle from a suburban Gothic mansion. Their search starts a hilarious trail which, thanks to careful perusal of railway timetables, leads them from seedy seaside hotels and gloomy Cornish coves to the Arts and Crafts Shop of South Mersley Garden City, until it finally lures the unsuspecting sleuth to a damp and sinister destination ... >An absorbing and gleeful puzzle, Death of His Uncle displays all the wit, atmospheric detail, and knowing observation of human nature which have won Kitchin a devoted following among lovers of classic detective fiction.
The book of life
Manolo hopes to become the best musician in San Angel and win the heart of his friend Maria, but after his father insists he carry on the family tradition and become a bullfighter, Manolo learns he must move forward to create his own destiny.