Listen free for 30 days
-
No Orchids for Miss Blandish
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Listen with a free trial
Buy Now for £14.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
All Shot Up
- A Grave Digger & Coffin Ed Novel
- By: Chester Himes
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A golden Cadillac big enough to cross the ocean has been seen sailing along the streets of Harlem. A hit-and-run victim's been hit so hard she got embedded in the wall of a convent. A shootout with three heistmen dressed as cops has left an important politician in a coma - and a lot of money missing. And Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson are the ones who have to piece it all together.
-
Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned
- By: Walter Mosley
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Living in an abandoned apartment building in South-Central L.A., Socrates is one step away from the streets. He bags groceries at the supermarket, collects bottles and cans to recycle for pennies, and feels himself slipping toward invisibility - that is, until he meets 11-year-old Darryl, whose already committed murder and is perilously close to slipping into a life filled with only violence and bloodshed. Socrates' determination to fight for and save Darryl lights his own pathway to self-forgiveness.
-
-
outstanding story telling, gets to the heart thing
- By ADEVINE Property Services on 26-01-22
-
The Long Ride: Learning about Life from an Outlaw Biker
- By: Francis Hicks
- Narrated by: Francis Hicks
- Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hapless Nate Hester yearns for the safety and affection of a group. He sets off on a hitchhiking trip to escape bad parenting and the Vietnam draft. Nate soon longs to be off the road. A drug dealer befriends him and introduces him to the Hells Angels. The Angels introduce him to the wonders of drug use and free sex, but the effects wane, and Nate leaps from mania to depression.
-
The British Lion
- By: Tony Schumacher
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the end of the war, the victorious Germans now occupy a defeated Great Britain. In London, decorated detective John Henry Rossett, now reporting to the Nazi victors, lies in a hospital bed recovering from gunshot wounds. Desperate to avoid blame over the events that led to the shooting, his boss, Ernst Kohler, covers up the incident. But when Koehler's wife and daughter are kidnapped by American spies, the terrified German turns to the only man he trusts to help him.
-
-
Alt history and questions of redemption
- By The Curator on 16-09-20
-
Dead Eye Hunt (A Post Apocalypse Adventure)
- The Dead Among Us, Book 1
- By: Peter Meredith
- Narrated by: John Pirhalla
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With zombie hordes swallowing the earth, mankind had no choice except to launch every nuke on the planet to stop them. Now, 150 years later, we live in over-crowded polluted cities, surrounded by vast radioactive wastelands. And no, we did not get all the zombies. They live among us, sometimes hiding in plain sight. Although the tattoos and piercings help them blend in, and the drugs help to contain their rage, they can never fully control their hunger. It’s endless.
-
Jimmy Dean's Last Dance
- By: AK Alliss
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller, Neil Hellegers, Bill Lord, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Los Angeles, 1962. Jimmy Dean, bit part actor befriends famed actress Marilyn Monroe. When Marilyn is found dead in her LA home, the ruling is suicide, but Jimmy thinks otherwise. As he starts digging, he comes up against those who wish to stop him from uncovering the truth. Realizing that he's in over his head, Jimmy calls former business partner, Mississippi truck driver Elvis Presley. As Jimmy and Elvis search deeper, they uncover a potential link between Marilyn's death and the highest office in the land.
-
-
Fun! Fun! Fun!
- By PATRICIA on 02-12-21
-
All Shot Up
- A Grave Digger & Coffin Ed Novel
- By: Chester Himes
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A golden Cadillac big enough to cross the ocean has been seen sailing along the streets of Harlem. A hit-and-run victim's been hit so hard she got embedded in the wall of a convent. A shootout with three heistmen dressed as cops has left an important politician in a coma - and a lot of money missing. And Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson are the ones who have to piece it all together.
-
Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned
- By: Walter Mosley
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Living in an abandoned apartment building in South-Central L.A., Socrates is one step away from the streets. He bags groceries at the supermarket, collects bottles and cans to recycle for pennies, and feels himself slipping toward invisibility - that is, until he meets 11-year-old Darryl, whose already committed murder and is perilously close to slipping into a life filled with only violence and bloodshed. Socrates' determination to fight for and save Darryl lights his own pathway to self-forgiveness.
-
-
outstanding story telling, gets to the heart thing
- By ADEVINE Property Services on 26-01-22
-
The Long Ride: Learning about Life from an Outlaw Biker
- By: Francis Hicks
- Narrated by: Francis Hicks
- Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hapless Nate Hester yearns for the safety and affection of a group. He sets off on a hitchhiking trip to escape bad parenting and the Vietnam draft. Nate soon longs to be off the road. A drug dealer befriends him and introduces him to the Hells Angels. The Angels introduce him to the wonders of drug use and free sex, but the effects wane, and Nate leaps from mania to depression.
-
The British Lion
- By: Tony Schumacher
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the end of the war, the victorious Germans now occupy a defeated Great Britain. In London, decorated detective John Henry Rossett, now reporting to the Nazi victors, lies in a hospital bed recovering from gunshot wounds. Desperate to avoid blame over the events that led to the shooting, his boss, Ernst Kohler, covers up the incident. But when Koehler's wife and daughter are kidnapped by American spies, the terrified German turns to the only man he trusts to help him.
-
-
Alt history and questions of redemption
- By The Curator on 16-09-20
-
Dead Eye Hunt (A Post Apocalypse Adventure)
- The Dead Among Us, Book 1
- By: Peter Meredith
- Narrated by: John Pirhalla
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With zombie hordes swallowing the earth, mankind had no choice except to launch every nuke on the planet to stop them. Now, 150 years later, we live in over-crowded polluted cities, surrounded by vast radioactive wastelands. And no, we did not get all the zombies. They live among us, sometimes hiding in plain sight. Although the tattoos and piercings help them blend in, and the drugs help to contain their rage, they can never fully control their hunger. It’s endless.
-
Jimmy Dean's Last Dance
- By: AK Alliss
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller, Neil Hellegers, Bill Lord, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Los Angeles, 1962. Jimmy Dean, bit part actor befriends famed actress Marilyn Monroe. When Marilyn is found dead in her LA home, the ruling is suicide, but Jimmy thinks otherwise. As he starts digging, he comes up against those who wish to stop him from uncovering the truth. Realizing that he's in over his head, Jimmy calls former business partner, Mississippi truck driver Elvis Presley. As Jimmy and Elvis search deeper, they uncover a potential link between Marilyn's death and the highest office in the land.
-
-
Fun! Fun! Fun!
- By PATRICIA on 02-12-21
-
The Innocents
- A Bruno Johnson Novel, The Early Years, Book 1
- By: David Putnam
- Narrated by: Daniel F Purcell
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bruno Johnson, a newly minted LA County Sheriff Violent Crimes detective, gets the worst assignment possible - infiltrate a sheriff's narcotics team that may be involved in murder for hire. Gain their trust and be brought into the scheme. If he succeeds, he will have to arrest and testify against his fellow deputies - if he lives that long. To make matters worse, before Bruno leaves home on the first day of this assignment, he answers the door to find an ex-girlfriend. Without explanation, she hands him a baby girl only weeks old. The child is his.
-
Sailor Steve Costigan
- The Complete Collection of Published Stories
- By: Robert E. Howard, Finn J.D. John
- Narrated by: Diamond Jack Dumont
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert E. Howard is best known today for his "sword-and-sorcery" stories. But in the early 1930s, he was a legend in boxing circles for his humorously over-the-top adventure stories starring the sailor Steve Costigan, champ of the sea girl - the toughest trading vessel on the seven seas. Steve Costigan is a mariner and amateur boxer, with a heart of gold and a head of solid wood.
-
My Brother's Destroyer
- By: Clayton Lindemuth
- Narrated by: Kain Foster
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ever since his brother electrocuted him as a boy, Baer Creighton feels an electric tingle when people lie to him. He lives in the woods, stills unrivaled moonshine, and limits human contact to regular buyers, his niece Mae, and her three kids. It’s a good life, sharing humor and philosophy with his sole companion Fred, a back-sassin' pit bull getting on in years, until Fred goes missing then arrives dumped in a ditch, a victim of a local dog-fighting ring. Armed with a Smith & Wesson, audacity, and a moonshiner's know-how, Baer hunts the dog thief.
-
-
Absolutely loved this authors work.
- By Mr. Mark Lewis on 22-07-20
-
Lost
- By: Gary Devon
- Narrated by: Travis Baldree
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Sherman Abbott fires a bullet into his brain in front of his younger sister, Mamie, his mother’s diligent care and faith in his recovery helps him heal into some semblance of his former self. But a year later, though Sherman can walk and talk, he can relate only to Mamie and the vicious dog known as the Chinaman that lives penned up next door.
-
Solomon's Vineyard
- By: Jonathan Latimer
- Narrated by: Kevin Kraft
- Length: 5 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Banned from publication in the U.S. due to its mature subject matter, Solomon's Vineyard is a tense, hard-boiled work starring Karl Craven, a non-nonsense guy who predates detectives like Lew Archer and Mike Hammer. Craven is out to rescue a wealthy heiress from a twisted cult.
-
Heartman
- J. T. Ellington, Book 1
- By: M. P. Wright
- Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bristol in the early 1960s: Joseph Tremaine Ellington is a Barbadian ex-policeman who, like many of his generation in the West Indies, has come to the UK to make a new life in the mother country. But the land of opportunity is not all it is cut out to be. It is not just the weather that is cold: so is the welcome. Facing hostility and prejudice at every turn, Ellington struggles to make ends meet.
-
-
wow just wow
- By Amazon Customer on 20-08-19
-
War Against the Mafia
- The Executioner, Book 1
- By: Don Pendleton
- Narrated by: Shawn Compton
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the jungles of Southeast Asia, American sniper Mack Bolan honed his skills. After 12 years, with 95 confirmed hits, he returns home to Massachusetts. But it's not to reunite with his family, it's to bury them - victims in a mass murder/suicide. Even though Bolan's own father pulled the trigger, he knows the old man was no killer. He was driven to madness by Mafia thugs who have turned his idyllic hometown into a new kind of war zone.
-
-
War Against the Mafia............
- By Dune on 30-09-20
-
The Last Stand
- By: Mickey Spillane, Max Allan Collins
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A tarnished former cop goes on a crusade to find a politician's killer and avoid the .45-caliber slug with his name on it. A pilot forced to make an emergency landing in the desert finds himself at the center of a struggle between FBI agents, unsavory fortune hunters, and members of the local Indian tribe to control a mysterious find that could mean wealth and power - or death.
-
A Body for McHugh
- By: Jay Flynn
- Narrated by: Theo Holland
- Length: 4 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
McHugh, the world's toughest spy, is on an assignment that spells triple trouble! Trouble #1 begins at the bar he owns to cover his espionage activities, called The Door. And it’s the door to death for the stranger he finds dying just outside with a shiv in his guts. McHugh doesn't like corpses on his doorstep, so he starts to back-track on the stranger, which leads him to a round, ripe, terrified girl, wearing narrow chino pants. There is puzzlement in her eyes, then recognition, then panic. Then the whole house falls in on McHugh!
-
New York Station
- By: Lawrence Dudley
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In August 1940 - 18 months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor - Anglo American MI6 agent Roy Hawkins is mysteriously rushed from Nazi-occupied Paris to New York. Enraged at being ordered away from what he believes is the real fight against Nazism and Fascism, he wants to get back to Paris as soon as possible, even though he knows it means almost certain death.
-
Morocco Jones and the Syndicate Hoods
- War Against the Mafia #1
- By: Jack Baynes
- Narrated by: Michael Mills
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the first audiobook in this classic series, a former CIA spy behind the German lines in WW2 and secret agent fighting the Russian KGB in Europe during the Cold War, returns to the states to find himself up against the dirtiest plot ever against the U.S. Russia's top secret agent has infiltrated the country, making an unholy deal with the Mafia, for an unlimited supply of heroin, the Mafia agrees to back all Reds' activities in the United States. The streets will be flooded with smack...and the back alleys with Russian agents working to bring down America.
-
-
Hoods
- By mangankillarney on 10-05-21
-
Looking for Henry Turner
- By: W.L. Liberman
- Narrated by: Patrick Condra
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eight years ago, Henry Turner vanished without a trace - now, it’s up to a private detective and his unlikely partner to solve the mystery of a son gone missing. When Mo Gold, a Jew with a conman for a father and a reckless gambler for a brother, teams up with black Holy Roller Arthur “Birdie” Birdwell, the two private investigators take on a disappearance case. As loose leads connect them to a notorious gangster via Mo’s indebted brother, the pair races to solve the mystery - and come to his rescue.
Summary
No Orchids for Miss Blandish was crime author James Hadley Chase’s first novel, and an experiment in adapting American hard-boiled crime fiction by a British author. Inspired by James Cain and The Postman Always Rings Twice, it worked so well that it launched the former salesman’s writing career. He went on to write over eighty novels sold worldwide with a huge American, Asian and European following.
Exciting, hard-hitting and gruesome by turn, Jeff Harding’s thrilling narration injects new energy to this fast-paced crime classic. Written in 1939, the book also inspired an essay on the mood of post-War Britain by George Orwell, Raffles and Miss Blandish (1944), noting the enthusiasm for violent, bloody fiction. No Orchids for Miss Blandish delivers on both counts. American heiress Miss Blandish is kidnapped by a gang of inept criminals trying their hand at big-time crime, whose plans are foiled when a rival mob, led by the sadist Slim Grisson, set their sights on the glamorous million-dollar hostage. Meanwhile, Private Detective Dave Fenner is hired to rescue her. Fenner is no stranger to the criminal underworld. If corruption and violence are necessary, Fenner will do what it takes to get the job done. Behind the scenes, Slim becomes obsessed with his hostage, lashing out at anyone who attempts to wrestle Miss Blandish from his charge. When Fenner makes his move, Slim won’t give her up without a fight.
More from the same
What listeners say about No Orchids for Miss Blandish
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 04-08-21
excellent to listen to
James Hadley Chase novels were a great hit when I was younger. irresistible story in audio.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Dave
- 26-03-12
Served With Too Much Ham
Chase's great noir-ish crime novel gets a mediocre treatment here.
Jeff Harding's narrative voice is fine (despite some strange pronunciations, like DYE-van, STALAG-tites and "rum" for "room"), but -- and I'm not sure if it was the Director or Harding's choice - the colloquialisms of 1939 crime writing communicate the hard-boiled period sufficiently without the character voice readings sounding variously like Edward G. Robinson, The Dead End Kids or Ma Kettle.
This corny presentation serves to do the one thing you never want in an audiobook - provide a distraction from a great genre story.
Can't recommend this one.
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- TAMBE
- 26-12-14
No place for Thugs in modern society
What made the experience of listening to No Orchids for Miss Blandish the most enjoyable?
The voice Of the reader just kept me hooked on.The story is wonderfully written in a way that non other Hadley Chase could do it. I wish the book never ended.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Slim was my favorite character. He is ruthlessly efficient, mean and consistent in his quest for evil. Just the perfect bad Guy you would love to see in a crime thriller.
Which character – as performed by Jeff Harding – was your favorite?
DOC.He has that demeanour about him, voicewise that lets you wondering What the Hell an educated man should be doing with a gang. His character is so real to reflect life situations Of the good Guy gone bad, and Jeff Harding does a good voice Job with Doc's character.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
I smiled.
Any additional comments?
Waiting to see the movie version soon
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Matt Mole
- 31-05-21
Exceptional noir gangster novel
When small time crooks try for the big time and meet the big sharks it’s all going to go wrong. An excellently paced and atmospheric novel with the perfect narrator.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Amazon Customer
- 03-03-21
A gripping story, perfectly read.
Similar in style to an Elmore Leonard novel, this is a crisply written noir story. The reader captures the right spirit of the work.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Gayathri
- 07-09-20
narration was really bad for this book
the narration was pretty bad. waste of a credit. i usually like James Hadley chase novels and the narration ruined it for me
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Franklin
- 25-04-18
Another great Hadley Chase Story!
I love this book! James Hadley Chase has never failed me! I definitely recommend this book!