Hawton, Hector
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1901-1975) UK author and humanist, at one time managing director of the Rationalist Press Association; he wrote mostly detective thrillers between about 1934 and 1957. The Col. Max Masterson sequence – Tower of Darkness (1950), Blue-Eyed Buddha (1951), Black Emperor (1952) and The Lost Valley (1953) – verges on sf, the final volume being a Lost-Race tale set in the Himalayas, where Soviet intervention via one-man helicopters (see Inventions) threatens world peace. Operation Superman (1951) is an old-fashioned yarn about a man whose Intelligence has been much heightened by shock-treatment experiments during World War Two in a Nazi concentration camp (see Holocaust Fiction). As John Sylvester, Hawton wrote two sf novels for adolescents, Master of the World (1949) and The Flying Saucer (1952). [JC/PN]
Hector Hawton
born Plymouth, Devon: 7 February 1901
died London: 14 December 1975
works
series
Col. Max Masterson
- Tower of Darkness (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1950) [Col. Max Masterson: hb/]
- Blue-Eyed Buddha (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1951) [Col. Max Masterson: hb/]
- Black Emperor (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1952) [Col. Max Masterson: hb/]
- The Lost Valley (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1953) [Col. Max Masterson: hb/Maben]
individual titles
- Master of the World (London: Ward, Lock, 1949) as by John Sylvester [hb/Day]
- Operation Superman (London: Ward, Lock, 1951) [hb/]
- The Flying Saucer (London: Ward, Lock, 1952) as by John Sylvester [hb/R J Jobson]
links
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