R: RARA-AVIS: British Noir - some roots

From: Luca Conti ( luca.conti8@tin.it)
Date: 21 Jul 2002


Chase's novel *More Deadly Than the Male* (1946) was commissioned by Graham Greene for Eyre and Spootiswoode, the publishing house where Greene worked as an editor. The book was published under the pseudonym of Ambrose Grant, and it's more than a passing conjecture that Green collaborated extensively with Chase in writing it. Moreover, it is one of the very few Chase's books with a London location. IT is one of Chase's best, in my opinion. Chase and Greene were close friends for forty years, but they succeeded in keeping their friendship completely unknown to everybody. It had to do, I think, with Greene's (and maybe Chase's) involvement in British Secret Service. They shared many economic interests (even to the point of being robbed of a huge part of their bank savings by one financial advisor they had in common) and lived for a long time in the same Swiss village where they both died (Chase in 1985, Greene in 1991). A fascinating account of the Chase-Greene friendship can be found in W.J.West's *The Quest for Graham Greene* (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1997).

Luca

Luca Conti

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