Golden Duck

There was a moment towards the end of our Bouchercon panel 'The Mystery of a Lifetime' when a benign looking gent stood up to ask a question and Jeff Marks, chairing the panel, muttered apprehensively "That's Douglas Greene, he knows everything!" And so indeed it was. As a history professor and eminent mystery buff Greene does indeed possess an awe-inspiring range of knowledge but he had not risen to reduce us to intellectual dust and ashes, merely to speak sympathetically of the difficulties of writing about clandestine relationships when Other Parties were still alive. Greene is the biographer of John Dickson Carr who enjoyed relationships with women other than his wife. Our talk turned naturally to Pip Youngman Carter... and then on to the difficulties and challenges of small press publishing. Doug Greene is a partner in family-run Crippen and Landru and should therefore be an example to us all. He published Margery Allingham's The Darings of the Red Rose as about their 4th title in 1995 and now has a list of over 90 books - a treasury of hard-to-find short stories and radio plays. Golden Duck's going to have to go a bit to match that ...