Sergio Angelini: Salt River by James Sallis
Yvette Banek: Mairgret and the Wine Merchant
Joe Barone: Buffalo Bill's Dead Now by Margaret Coel
Bill Crider: Red Dragon by "Wade Curtis" (Jerry Pournelle)
William Deeck: The 7th Mourner by Dorothy Gardiner
Martin Edwards: The Man in the Net by "Patrick Quentin"
Ed Gorman: An Accidental Novelist by Richard S. Wheeler;
The Innocent Mrs. Duff by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Jerry House: The House of the Wolf by Basil Copper
Randy Johnson: Gunman's Chance by "Luke Short"
Nick Jones: Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith
George Kelley: The Big Book of Ghost Stories edited by Otto Penzler
Margot Kinberg: Baptism by Max Kinnings
Rob Kitchin: A Death in Vienna by Frank Tallis
B.V. Lawson: The Hanging Doll Murder (aka Face Value) by Roger Ormerod
Evan Lewis: Say Yes to Murder (among other titles) by "W. T. Ballard"
Steve Lewis: The Case of the Sleepwalker's Niece by Erle Stanley Gardner
Todd Mason: Alternate Worlds and other work by James Gunn (please see below).
Neer: Death Knocks Three Times by Anthony Gilbert
John F. Norris: A Gentle Murderer by Dorothy Salisbury Davis
Richard Pangburn: A Philosophical Investigation by Philip Kerr
David Rachel: Redheads Die Quickly and Other Stories by Gil Brewer
James Reasoner: The Shudder Pulps: A History of the Weird Menace Magazines of the 1930s by Robert Kenneth Jones
Karyn Reeves: I'll Never Be Young Again by Daphne Du Maurier
Gerard Saylor: Columbine by David Cullen
Ron Scheer: The New Missioner by Nancy Mann Waddell Woodrow, as by Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
Michael Slind: Thou Shell of Death by Nicholas Blake
Kerrie Smith: Spinsters in Jeopardy (aka The Bride of Death) by Ngaio Marsh
Kevin Tipple: Still River by Harry Hunsicker
Mike Tooney: Footsteps in the Dark by Georgette Heyer
"Tomcat": The Red Scar by "Anthony Wynne"
Prashant Trikannad: The Mighty Marvel Superheroes' Cookbook "presented" by Stan Lee
John Kessel passes along the sad news that James Gunn's wife Jane Gunn died yesterday; Prof. Gunn, now retired, and their son are among the survivors. Gunn, 89 (and who shouldn't be confused with the younger film director and cartoonist James Gunn) has been contributing interesting fiction and nonfiction (and some documentary film) to the sf/fantasy field since the 1950s, when among his earlier publications was his doctoral dissertation, serialized in Robert Lowndes's magazine Dynamic Science Fiction as "The Philosophy of Science Fiction" in 1953. Among his better-known fiction published over the years has been "The Cave of Night," The Joy Makers, The Listeners, and The Immortals, the last adapted for an ABC-TV television film (1969) and a subsequent tv series (1969-1971) both titled The Immortal. His The Road to Science Fiction anthologies make for both fine texts and simple good reads, and Alternate Worlds (1975) was his first book-length stab at a history and survey of sf. He makes some rather controversial assertions here (the most puzzling to me being that sex has no place in sf...a bit like saying that sf can't be about human beings), and the book is flawed (not least in the common failing, among particularly the earlier histories of sf, of trying to pack as many then-contemporary sf writers as possible into the later chapters, thus not leaving much opportunity to discuss much about any of them), but it was both a useful and enjoyable first example of sf history I was to read, not too long after I inhaled Les Daniels's similar volume about horror in literature and popular art, Living in Fear.
We can spare a thought for the Gunns, in this sad time.
Thanks for the link, Todd! Link back now at the top of the post.
ReplyDeleteIntriguing selection this week. Will be working my way through them.
And I hope a few others will be able to post (I know of one who depends on others to host his reviews whose work has been held up for days), and I might even throw in, finally. It's been a hell of a week, folks.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your contribution, Nick!
Mine's up, Todd. Basil Copper's THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the inclusion Todd, as always. Incidentally, I've sent a note to Martin about his piece on MAN IN THE NET as it should definitely come attached to the 'Patrick Quentin' byline - I've never seen it published as by 'Q. Patrick'.
ReplyDeleteThanks, guys. Jerry, it was foolish of me not to doublecheck your blog...Sergio, that was my presumption, since Martin didn't clearly tag his author credit...looks like it is indeed a Patrick Quentin...thanks again.
ReplyDeleteHi, Todd! I'm dealing with a family health situation this week, but I do have a "classic" FFB post for today, if you want to include it:
ReplyDeletehttp://inreferencetomurder.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/09/fridays-forgotten-books-the-hanging-doll-murder-face-value.html
Hopefully, next week, I can return to new fodder.
Thanks!
BV
Todd, I posted my review a day earlier. I hope it makes the grade. Thanks...
ReplyDeleteBV, Prashant--to be added soonish! Thanks...
ReplyDeleteTodd, Thanks for including me in this list, but I think the book I wrote about this week was recently published. It is not a forgotten book. Each week my blog posts are about whatever I have read that week. Very often the books are older ones, forgotten, books, but not this week.
ReplyDeletePrashant--apologies I missed yours previously...
ReplyDeleteJoe--I'm not going to worry about it too much, if you aren't...
Many thanks, Todd. It's nice to be among veterans, especially since I write about books and films rather than review them as I should really.
ReplyDeleteBackground information is certainly valuable, Prashant...never sell yourself short thus!
ReplyDeleteI don't review half the books I write about either, Prashant. A lot of the time I just stare at the cover and bash my forehead on the keyboard. Nobody seems to notice.
ReplyDeleteNick, I do that often. I believe if you read a book or watch a film and wish to write about it, then you have to review it and, well, not write about it. A lot of stuff I write goes under the "Review" tag but I know I'm only writing about them. I once worked under a newspaper editor who reviewed just two books a month because he needed that kind of time to sit down and review them and do a thorough job. But that was way before "blogs" came along!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I find that an actual proper review or critique – which I guess is what the Ripley's Game post is, despite my denial in the first Ripley Reread post on Talented Mr Ripley – takes a fair bit of time do properly, and I only have so much of that to dedicate to Existential Ennui (and The Violent World of Parker, where I also blog). So I often blog about books I haven't read yet and talk about their cover design or publishing history or collectibility or something. Plus, that way I get to write about them twice when I finally get round to reviewing them.
ReplyDeleteMine is up and running at long last, Todd. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteJust wanted to add that I did a post today on another Maigret book. (I'm obviously in a Maigret frame of mind lately) Madwoman was last week.
ReplyDeleteMAIGRET AND THE WINE MERCHANT is for today. Thanks once again, Todd.
Heck, I don't consider anything on my blog as a review. I began taking notes as a way to keep track of books I read.
ReplyDeleteWhile some of mine are more reviews, and some are more Why this book matters, if it does (and it usually does).
ReplyDeleteHa, Yvette! I had to move pretty quickly this morning, and clearly didn't see the date. Will revise.
My "reviews" are boiled down versions of chapters I'm writing for a book on early western writers, 1880-1915. More analysis than review, since I seldom make much of a judgment about their readability in 2012.
ReplyDelete