A Matter of Business

UK Publisher: Sampson Low, Marston and Co. Ltd. (London). First published 1940

"Thirty pieces of story telling for the conservative reader wherein bad man makes good, man outside the law helps unfortunates, lovely ladies are saved from horrendous terrors, fair damsels get their man, animals and things of nature keep people on the right path, goodness triumphs, romance seeks adventure and humble souls give all for those they respect. The period stretches over a wide span, from 18th century to the present, but the usual Farnol vein prevails - sentimental, moral, dramatic." Kirkus review

Summary (Jessica Amanda Salmonson):

A big but unfortunately rare collection of Elizabethan to modern short stories, including a Jasper Shrig story & other Elizabethan mysteries. These few are supernatural:

• "The Rook" (weird fate)

• "Flower o'Spring" (ghost)

• "A Tale of a Tale" (Viking heroic fantasy)

• "The Great Silence" (afterlife)

• "Justly Due" (weird fate)

• "The Owl" (omen)

• "A Tale of My Grandfather: A Veracious Narrative as Recounted by my Grandmother & Now Retold" (weird dream)

the others are:

• "To-morrow."

• "A Matter of Business"

• "Man of Destiny"

• "Fine Gold"

• "Footprints - A Jasper Shrig Story"

• "The Angel Unawares"

• "My Lady Calamity"

• "The Saving Grace"

• "The Puzzle"

• "The Hazard"

• "Only John"

• "The Quiet Exit"

• "A Dog's Chance"

• "The Black Cat"

• "Green Things a-Blowing"

• "The Account"

• "Bagged"

There's a long appendix of "Six New Indian Articles" which are story-essays of Jeffery in India, some with mystical content:

• "Husain Gulam"

• "Immolation"

• "Aladdin's Cave"

• "The Face of Shiva"

• "The Poor Ones"

• "Of Betal Nuts & Other Things"

Ranging in scene from Bombay to London's Strand, and in subject matter from the French Rrous collection of thirty short stories from the pen of Jeffery Farnol, undisputed master of the field of historical romance. Since the publication years ago of The Broad Highway, which was an immediate and outstanding success, Farnol has made the early swashbuckling, eighteenth-century English romance peculiarly and brilliantly his own. In this new book he shows that he can write as tellingly of evolution to the World War, these stories will provide a rich fare for any lover of a tale well told or a drama stirringly enacted. It is a well-balanced selection. Readers will meet familiar Farnol characters like the cockney detective, Jasper Shrig, highway robbers, good-hearted rogues, swaggering heroes, and wily villains - all bearing the unmistakable Farnol stamp - and will find many more who are new to Farnol's writing and who are superbly drawn. The stories are written in the graceful, fluent manner for which the author is famous, and exhibit that quality in his writing which, as a London reviewer has said, "in a musician is called touch."