Sunday, November 3, 2019

FRIDAY'S "FORGOTTEN" BOOKS AND MORE: the links to the reviews and texts; 1 November 2019

This week's books and more, unfairly (or sometimes fairly) neglected, or simply those the reviewers below think you might find of some interest (or, infrequently, you should be warned away from); certainly, most weeks we have a few not at all forgotten titles...if I've missed your review or someone else's, please let me know in comments. And terribly sorry for what's turned out to be an illness delay, probably the longest delay in FFB's reasonably long history. This is a good week for Lawrence Block, John Pugmire, locked-room mysteries, and seasonal horror (of course). 

Patricia Abbott: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

Stacy Alesi: The M List: Fiction Reviews 1983-2013


Brad Bigelow: Trance by Appointment by G. E. Trevelyan 


Paul Bishop: the novels of Ralph Compton 


Les Blatt: Nine Times Nine by "Anthony Boucher" (William White); The Fourth Door by Paul Halter (translated by John Pugmire) 


Elgin Bleecker: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by "R. A. Dick" (Josephine Leslie) 


Joachim Boaz: The Year of the Crack (aka The Crack) by Emma Tennant 


Ben Boulden: Vengeance Valley by Richard S. Wheeler 


Brian Busby: Harlequin Books Hallowe'ens... 


Jason Cavallaro: Penpal by Dathan Auerbach, My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due, and others 


Christy (at Bristol Library): The Hunger by Whitley Strieber


Bill Crider: The Best of Xero edited by Pat and Richard Lupoff 


Martin Edwards: Skin for Skin by Winifred Duke



Peter Enfantino: Atlas (proto-Marvel) horror comics, November (All Hallows) 1952


Peter Enfantino and Jack Seabrook: DC war comics December 1975/best & worst of '75


Will Errickson: False Idols by Betty Ferm 


José Ignacio Escribano: locked room stories: "The Stalker in the Attic" by "Edogawa Rampo" (Taro Hirai)(translated by Seth Jacobowitz); "The Locked House of Pythagoras" by Soji Shimada (translated by Yuko Shimada and John Pugmire); "The Lure of the Green Door" by Rintaro Norizuki (translated by Ho-Ling Wong); and the novels of Seishi Yokomizo 


Curtis Evans: The Case of Alan Copeland by Moray Dalton; Murder is Easy by Agatha Christie; Henry von Rhau


"Olman Feelyus": Testament by David Morrell; The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt 


Paul Fraser: The 1977 Annual World's Best SF edited by Donald Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha


John Grant: The Gray Flannel Shroud by Henry Slesar; Jemima Shore's First Case and Other Stories by Antonia Fraser; The Art of Arrow Cutting by Stephen Dedman; The Nightspinners by Lucretia Grindle; After I'm Gone by Laura Lippman


Aubrey Hamilton: The Crime at the Noah's Ark by Molly Thynne; Jury Double by Edward Stewart


Bev Hankins: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North 


Rich Horton: Solar Lottery by Philip K. Dick; The Big Jump by Leigh Brackett; Michael Blumlein, in memoriam 


Jerry House: A Scent of New-Mown Hay by John Blackburn 


Kate Jackson: Case with Ropes and Rings by Leo Bruce


Tracy K: Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote; book sale finds 


Karen/"Kaggsy": Doe Lea by M. John Harrison


Colman Keane: Shadows and Warm and Willing by "Jill Emerson" (Lawrence Block); Four Lives at the Crossroads by Lawrence Block 


George Kelley: The Great SF Stories 15 (1953) edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg 


Joe Kenney: Balzan of the Cat People #3: The Lights of Zetar by "Wallace Moore" (Gerard F./Gerry Conway); Istanbul (Nick Carter: Killmaster #10) by "Nick Carter" (in this case, Manning Lee Coles)


Rob Kitchin: A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey 


B. V. Lawson: The Hanging Doll Murder by Roger Ormerod


Des/D. F. Lewis: Nox Pareidolia edited by Robert S. Wilson 


Evan Lewis: Nero Wolfe the comic strip (1956-58) written by John Broome and then Ed Herron, illustrated by "Mike Roy", "Fran Matera" and then Jim Christiansen, attributed  to and with input from Rex Stout 


Steve Lewis: Phi Beta Murder by C. H. Challinor; locked room stories: "The Yellow Room" by Paul Halter (translated by John Pugmire), Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July/August 2017, edited by Janet Hutchings; and "Vanishing Act" by Bill Pronzini and Michael Kurland, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, January 1976, edited by Ernest Hutter; The Looking Glass Murders by Philips Lore; "Gibraltar Falls" by Poul Anderson, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1975, edited by Edward Ferman; "Good Intentions" by Michael Z. Lewin, EQMM, November 2012, edited by Janet Hutchings


Gary Lovisi: Avon Fantasy Reader, edited by Donald Wollheim 


Todd Mason: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: A Month of Mystery (and such variants as AHP: Dates with Death) edited by Robert Arthur


Francis M. Nevins: Time to Murder and Create and In the Midst of Death by Lawrence Block 


John F. Norris: The Shapes of Midnight by Joseph Payne Brennan; Kthulhu Reich by Asamatsu Ken (translated by Jim Rion) (and please see comments, below) 


John O'Neill:  Cats Have No Lord and The Tangled Lands by Will Shetterly; Matter's End by Gregory Benford


Matt Paust: Parallel Play by Tim Page


James Reasoner: Young Kit Carson by H. Bedford Jones 


Richard Robinson: The Shadow: "Partners of Peril" by "Maxwell Grant" (in this case, Theodore Tinsley)

Sandra Ruttan: Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice 


Gerard Saylor: The Force by Don Winslow; Brainquake by Samuel Fuller 


Steve Scott: "Who Will Kill Travis McGee?" by Patrick Hynan and John D. MacDonald 


Doreen Sheridan: The Chatham School Affair by Thomas H. Cook

Steven H. Silver: The Unlimited Dream Company by J. G. Ballard 


Adrian Simmons: The Secret of High Eldersham by Miles Burton


Kerrie Smith: The Child's Child by "Barbara Vine" (Ruth Rendell) 


Marina Sofia: Little Siberia by Antti Tuomainen (translated by David Hackston); Nothing Important Happened Today by Will Carver


Peter Straub/Mark Finn: "The Black Stone" by Robert E. Howard, Weird Tales, November 1931, edited by Farnsworth Wright 


Scott Tipple: The Batman Who Laughs by Scott Snyder and Jock 


"TomCat": locked room mysteries; Bones Don't Lie by Curtiss T. Gardner; The Open Window by Roger Ormerod


Gordon Van Gelder: Michael Blumlein 


Bill Wallace: Weird Tales, April 1926, edited by Farnsworth Wright


Mark Yon: New Worlds SF, November/December 1964, edited by Michael Moorcock











10 comments:

  1. You're a trouper, Todd. Thank you, sir. Hope you're feeling better!

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  2. Thanks for including my Halloween posts in lieu of my absent FFB post. But I wish you would remove the (sic) after the title of the translated Japanese book. You make it seem like the publisher misspelled Cthulhu when that K is a purposeful choice. Sort of a translator's joke -- by substituting the C for a K in the invented Lovecraft word Cthulhu he gives it a Japanese flavor.

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  3. "Mildly less worse" is better then just plain lousy, I guess. Id rather read "bursting with vim and vigor" but I guess that's unlikely this week.

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  4. Fair enough , John...though it wasn't meant to be an insult so much as a denotation...this is how the title runs on the book, to help the casual scanner of the tittle realize that this is a variant spelling (evocative not only of transliterated Japanese but also of German, prone to Ks).

    Bursting with vim and vigor hasn't been my brand much of ever, alas, Rick, but thanks for the good thought! "Usually viral-disease-resistant" is a bit closer to it.

    And thank you, Elgin. Oddly enough, while looking for more striking covers for TG&MM, I came across the novelization of the television series, which was written by Alice Denham, the woman well known for setting her cap for as many fellow-writers as possible at mid-century, as well as the only woman fiction writer to be published under her name without gender-obfuscation in PLAYBOY, till after Ursula Le Guin had a story there as "U. K. Le Guin" in '69...Denham striking a deal that her story would run along with her pictorial. (Supposedly, PLAYBOY readers whined in letters to the editor about the notion of Denham or women writers of fiction in the clear. I have to wonder.) Ms. Leslie's gender-neutral pseudonym has a certain aggression about it: R. A. Dick.



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  5. Thank you, jack...and sorry to miss you, and Laurie Powers and Walker Martin and all at PulpAdventureCon...but the same malady which delayed FFB also made driving even a half-hour each way and possibly acting as an agent of infection a bad idea...

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  6. I looked for a better cover, too. But, I guess that was the original. Thanks for the notes on Denham. Leslie’s pen name makes me laugh if read like texting shorthand.

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  7. I have to wonder if she was sending a message even in the '40s...

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