Forgotten author: Joan Fleming

This week's contribution to Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books

I must have liked Joan Fleming's book ALAS, POOR FATHER (Collins Crime Club 1973) when I read it in 1981. I followed it up two weeks later with another:  YOU WON'T LET ME FINISH (also published in 1973).

A Wikipedia article says this about Joan Fleming:
Joan Fleming (1908-1980) was a British writer of crime and thriller novels. She was born in Lancashire  and educated at Lausanne University. She married Norman Bell Beattie Fleming in 1932. The Turkish detective Nuri Bey Izkirlak features in two of her books, When I Grow Rich and Nothing is the Number When You Die. Her novel The Deeds of Dr Deadcert  was made into a film RX Murder. She won the Gold Dagger award twice, for When I Grow Rich in 1962 and for Young Man I Think You're Dying in 1970.

Both of these books are long out of print, and finding cover images is impossible. Good quality second hand copies appear to fetch good prices.

ALAS POOR FATHER
Joan Fleming, at the top of the form she always varies, engaging all your sympathies for a youthful widower with two youngsters he finds hard to handle but none for the rich woman for whom he works who would like to keep him permanently attached to her side. He is thought guilty of her murder while on the other hand one of his boys disappears--right in the middle of an I.R.A. arsenal. Miss...More Fleming manages a story of considerable terminal excitement this time (who's going to blow up who first) and you'll find it very aisy to like.

Joan Fleming was quite a prolific author, 33 published novels 1949-1978, but even so there is no mention of her in my favourite reference Fantastic Fiction.