The return of H. F. Heard's Mr. Mycroft.

Good news from the literary executor for
H. F. (aka Gerald) Heard: The Haycraft- Queen cornerstone work A Taste for Honey (1941; film The Deadly Bees, 1967) is being reissued this week, and the publisher plans to republish the other works in the Mr. Mycroft series (Reply Paid, 1942; The Notched Hairpin, 1949) with new forewords. As Jon L. Breen notes, A Taste for Honey is one of the earliest of the book-length Sherlock Holmes pastiches.

Happy birthday, H. F. Heard.

Henry Fitzgerald Heard, aka mystery author H. F. Heard, was born today in London in 1889. His A Taste for Honey (1941), featuring a murder by bees and a beekeeper-sleuth named Mr. Mycroft, appears on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list of essential mysteries and is scheduled to be reprinted by Blue Dolphin Publishing. Others in the Mr. Mycroft series include Reply Paid (1942) and The Notched Hairpin (1949), both slated for reprinting by Blue Dolphin.

Heard, a friend of Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood, also wrote supernatural works such as The Black Fox (under the name Gerald Heard, 1950).