‘Caribbean Crisis’

Caribbean Crisis

London:  Fleetway, 1962 (June 18th) digest;
as by “Desmond Reid”;
original price: 1/-;
64 pages (i.e. 62 + 2-page “mailbag”);
I.S.B.N.:  none (code: S.B.L.—501);
cover artist: “Camps”;
no other edition.

Michael Moorcock’s first professional standalone publication, written in collaboration with James Cawthorn, it was No. 501 in the Sexton Blake Library, “‘the longest running detective series in the world’; his adventures had started in 1889”. ‘Desmond Reid’ was a house pseudonym, used this one time only by either writer. Intended by them “to be the ultimate locked room mystery … [S.B.L. editors] Philip Cambers and Bill Baker had other ideas!” (see below).

More than sixty years after publication, Caribbean Crisis — “Restored, revised and expanded” — was collected with a brand-new prequel, Voodoo Island, in the aptly titled Caribbean Crisis & Voodoo Island, both having been updated/written in collaboration with longtime Sexton Blake scholar Mark Hodder.