Nicholas Blake was the detective-fiction pseudonym of Cecil Day-Lewis, the Anglo-Irish poet and novelist who served as Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death.
Nicholas Blake
Minute For Murder
The Crime Club/Collins, 1947.
Pseudonym of the poet Cecil Day-Lewis.
[He walked] through the July sunshine round the curve of the noble crescent at the far end of which stood the Lakes' house. The stucco was discoloured and peeling, the magnificent row of houses was gapped in two places where bombs had fallen; but its grandeur had not departed from the place.
Nigel Strangeways, temporary civil servant and amateur sleuth, has come to interrogate the Lakes about a mysterious poisoning at the wartime 'Ministry of Morale'. 'From the top of the house there was a magnificent view over Regent's Park'. Some days later he is invited there for supper; after a lengthy discussion the murderer is finally unmasked.