Cost Price
![]() 1949 dustjacket | |
Author | Dornford Yates |
---|---|
Series | Chandos books |
Genre | Novel |
Publisher | Ward Lock & Co[1] |
Publication date | 1949[1] |
Media type | |
Pages | 286[1] |
Preceded by | Red in the Morning |
Cost Price is a 1949 adventure novel by the English author Dornford Yates (Cecil William Mercer), the eighth and last in his 'Chandos' thriller series. It serves as a sequel to his 1932 novel Safe Custody. The book was published in the US under the title The Laughing Bacchante.[2]
Plot
With Austria threatened by the Anschluss, John and Olivia Ferrers ask Richard Chandos and Jonathan Mansel to help them recover the priceless jewel collection of the Borgia Pope Alexander VI that, at the end of Safe Custody, had been left in a walled-up chamber of Hohenems Castle in Carinthia. Punter, a minor villain who had been part of a previous attempt to steal them, tells the educated crook Friar the story of that venture, and Friar, along with his associates Sloper, Orris and Goat, decides to make a further attempt. After Mansel foils them, Friar attracts the attention of a German, Boler, who adds to Mansel's difficulties. Diana Revoke, an upper-class Englishwoman, appears on the scene. Having extracted the gems, and briefly taken refuge in Wagensburg Castle (the scene of the action in Blind Corner), Chandos joins a group of strolling players led by Jasper and Colette, to help smuggle them over the border into Italy and eventually to England where they are destined for a museum. Other characters from previous novels include the manservants Bell and Carson, Andrew Palin, and Jenny Chandos.
Background
The book was published soon after Mercer had completed the building of a new house in Southern Rhodesia to which he and his wife had retired. This was his replacement for "Cockade" in Southern France (described in The House That Berry Built) which was empty and still a worry to him.[3]
Critical reception
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/45/The_Laughing_Bacchante_dustjacket.jpg)
Mercer's biographer AJ Smithers, writing in 1982, expressed admiration for the way in which Mercer marshalled his characters. By continually bringing back old friends who give the impression of being one big family, his readers feel almost honorary family members themselves.[4]
References
- ^ a b c "British Library Item details". primocat.bl.uk. Retrieved 15 May 2020.
- ^ Macdonald, Kate (2015). Novelists Against Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 226. ISBN 978-1137457714.
- ^ Smithers 1982, pp. 206, 208, 120.
- ^ Smithers 1982, p. 208.
Bibliography
- Smithers, AJ (1982). Dornford Yates. London: Hodder and Stoughton. ISBN 0-340-27547-2.
- v
- t
- e
- The Brother of Daphne (1914)
- The Courts of Idleness (1920)
- Berry and Co. (1921)
- Jonah and Co. (1922)
- Adèle and Co. (1931)
- And Berry Came Too (1936)
- The House That Berry Built (1945)
- The Berry Scene (1947)
- As Berry and I Were Saying (1952)
- B-Berry and I Look Back (1958)
- Blind Corner (1927)
- Perishable Goods (1928)
- Blood Royal (1929)
- Fire Below (1930)
- She Fell Among Thieves (1935)
- An Eye for a Tooth (1943)
- Red in the Morning (1946)
- Cost Price (1949)
- Anthony Lyveden (1921)
- Valerie French (1923)
- And Five Were Foolish (1924)
- As Other Men Are (1925)
- The Stolen March (1926)
- Maiden Stakes (1928)
- Summer Fruit (1929, US)
- Safe Custody (1932)
- Storm Music (1934)
- She Painted Her Face (1937)
- This Publican (1938)
- Gale Warning (1939)
- Shoal Water (1940)
- Period Stuff (1942)
- Lower than Vermin (1950)
- Ne'er-Do-Well (1954)
- Wife Apparent (1956)
![]() | This article about a thriller novel of the 1940s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page. |
- v
- t
- e