FRIDAY'S "FORGOTTEN" BOOKS AND MORE: the links to reviews and related texts: 16 October 2020 (including Short Story Wednesday, #1956Club and Friday Fright Night entries)

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.

Patricia Abbott: The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes; "The Midnight Zone" by Lauren Grof, The New Yorker, 23 May 2016, edited by David Remnick, and Short Story Wednesday links

Frank Babics: Ghost Story by Peter Straub

Mark Baker: R is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton

Paul Barnett/"John Grant": The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

Brad Bigelow: This Little Hand by Pamela Kellino

Les Blatt: The French Powder Mystery by "Ellery Queen" (Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee)

Joachim Boaz: Doctor Rat by William Kotzwinkle

Brian Busby: the novels of Frances S. Wees

Larry Clow: Before the Fall by Noah Hawley

Douglas Cohen: Realms of Fantasy, October 1996, edited by Shawna McCarthy

Liz Dexter: 666 Charing Cross Road by Paul Magrs; The Amir Sisters Trilogy by Nadiya Hussein

Scott Edelman: Geoffrey Landis and Yoji Kondo

Martin Edwards: Deadly Hall by John Dickson Carr

Peter Enfantino and Jack Seabrook: Warren horror comics, July/August 1973

Barry Ergang: Fields for President by W. C. Fields 

Will Errickson: "Blood Son" by Richard Matheson, Imagination: Stories of Science and Fantasy, April 1951, edited by William Hamling (WE's Favorite Horror Stories series)

José Ignacio Escribano: "The Theme of  the Traitor and the Hero" by Jorge Luis Borges, revista Sur ("South" magazine), February 1944, revised version included in Ficciones, 1956; translated by Anthony Kerrigan for Ficciones, Grove Press 1962; "Footprints in the Jungle" by W. Somerset Maugham, Cosmopolitan, January 1927, edited by Ray Long

Curtis Evans: The Lake of Darkness by Ruth Rendell and Friday Fright Night links

"Olman Feelyus": The Chocolate Cobweb by Charlotte Armstrong; The Arena by "William Haggard" (Richard Clayton)

Paul Fraser: New Writings in SF 23, edited by Kenneth Bulmer

Cullen Gallagher: Strange Witness and League of the Grateful Dead and Other Stories by "Day Keene" (Gunar Hjerstedt)

Aubrey Hamilton: Not All Tarts are Apple by Pip Granger; The Rage by Gene Kerrigan

Bev Hankins: Murder on the Eiffel Tower by "Claude Izner" (Liliane Korb and Laurence Lefevre); Shadow on the Wall by H. C. Bailey; Talking About Detective Fiction by P. D. James

Lesa Heseltine: Hiding the Past by Nathan Dylan Goodman

Rich Horton: stories of Marie Brennan; Caitlan R. Kiernan stories; Bryce Walton stories; Leviathan by Scott Westerfield

Jerry House: Death of a Flack by Henry Kane; The Cocktail Waitress by James M. Cain (as edited by Charles Ardai); "Who Wants a Green Bottle?" by "Tod Robbins" (Clarence Robbins); All-Story Weekly, 21 December 1918, edited by Robert H. Davis; Tom Corbett's Wonder Book of Space by Marcia Martin (illustrated by Frank Vaughn)

Kate Jackson: Too Many Bones by Ruth Sawtell Wallis; The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

Tracy K: A Necessary End by Peter Robinson; "The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb" by Agatha Christie, The Sketch, 26 September 1923, edited by Bruce Ingram

Colman Keane: The Hardest Hit by Frank Scalise; Anything Short of Murder by Tony Piazza

George Kelley: The Tindalos Asset by Caitlin R. Kiernan; Author's Choice Monthly Issue 11 by Ron Goulart; The Osiris Ritual by George Mann

Mark R. Kelly: Rogue Moon (aka The Death Machine) by Algis Budrys

Joe Kenney: Triple Platinum by Stephen Holden; The Incredible Hulk: Stalker from the Stars by Len Wein, Marv Wolfman and "Joseph Silva" (Ron Goulart)

Margot Kinberg: notable short fiction by Arthur Conan Doyle, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edgar Allan Poe, Fredric Brown, Patricia Abbott, Paul Thomas

Rob Kitchin: Land of Shadows by Rachel Howzell Hall

Damon Knight: The Power by Frank M. Robinson; The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson; Murray King: Avalon adult sf releases in 1956

Karen Langley: Settling the World: Selected Stories by M. John Harrison

B. V. Lawson: 1997 Anthony Award-winners: Death in Little Tokyo by Dale Furutani; Someone Else's Child by Terris McMahan Grimes; and Detecting Women 2 by Wiletta Helsing

Xavier Lechard: crime fiction without murder

Des/D. F. Lewis: Black Static, September/October 2020, Interzone, September/October 2020, both edited by Andy Cox

Evan Lewis: "The Girl with the Silver Eyes" by Dashiell Hammett, The Black Mask, June 1924, edited by Philip Cody, as syndicated to newspapers including The Vancouver Sun, November 1936; After the Thin Man newspaper coverage/hype, and of Dashiell Hammett, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, the script's collaborators (Mark Coggins: Hammett's treatment published in The New Black Mask #5 &6, 1986, edited by Richard Layman and Matthew Bruccoli)

Steve Lewis: A Bullet for the Bride by Jon Messmann; "The Right Profile" by Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery edited by Sarah Corter and Liz Martinez

Library of America: "The Moonlit Road" by Ambrose Bierce, Cosmopolitan, January 1907, edited by Bailey Millard; "Was It in His Hand?" by Elizabeth Bishop, Grand Street, Summer 1990, edited by Jean Stein; "The Refugee" by Jane Rice, Unknown Worlds, October 1943, edited by John W. Campbell, Jr.

Robert Lopresti: "The Whole Story" by Andrew Welsh-Huggins, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, June 2020, edited by Carla Coupe and John Gregory Betancourt

Barry Malzberg: an interview with Cele Goldsmith Lalli (both having edited both Fantastic and Amazing Stories); on The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis: 

Arguably the greatest novel in our language published in the

1980's.  I have fiercely advocated for almost four decades.  Martin Cruz Smith's endorsement is on the jacket of the Random House first edition.  ("I would not play chess with Mr. Tevis.")  I knew Walter Tevis just barely well enough to call him in 1982 immediately after finishing and as quietly as possible tell him my reaction, one of reverence.  The Luzhon Defence is superb but Tevis is far beyond Nabokov here.

I feel and have gone public on this three and a half decades ago that Walter Tevis' death at 54 was a tragedy to the arts on the scale of Mozart's passing at 36.  Tevis had remarried, fled that highly contested State, Ohio, was - after a decade and a half essentially lost to alcohol and academy - writing fiercely and well, and had produced four novels and a collection in five years, showing steadily increasing assurance and power.  Granted a Biblical lifespan and an equivalent pace, the world was denied perhaps a dozen novels and two collections of immeasurable possibility.  We are blessed to have these five books after the luftpaus but they are also a taunt, a mockery (or mockingbird if you will).  Maybe the adaptation will bring him back a little.  Fast Eddie's final page in The Color of Money evokes Mozart's final composition. 

The trailer for The Queen's Gambit limited series doesn't look so great but I can hope.  All these decades awaiting this adaptation.  The backstory of its journey is as frustrating as Walter's life was tragic.  But I'll leave that narrative to Berlioz or Brahms. 

Todd Mason: Weird Tales, Spring 1991: Robert Bloch special issue, edited by Darrell Schweitzer; the 1956 publications of Damon Knight: short stories and In Search of Wonder; The Case Against Satan by Ray Russell; The Devil's Scrapbook by Jerome Bixby

Ed McBride: Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny

Stephen J. McDermott: Wild to Possess by Gil Brewer; The Bedroom Broker by Gus Stevens

Jeff Meyerson: Challenge the Impossible: The Final Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne by Edward D. Hoch

Meygan: Moon at Nine by Deborah Ellis

Neeru: Mister Enderby Missing and Tragedy at the Thirteenth Hole by "Miles Burton" (Cecil Street)

Steven Nester: Not Dead Yet by Daniel Banko

Jess Nevins: English Jack Amongst the Afghans; or, The British Flag—Touch It Who Dare! by Anonymous

John F. Norris: London After Midnight by Marie Coolidge-Rask; Lucifer and the Child by Ethel Mannin

Jim Noy: The Dead Sleep Lightly by John Dickson Carr

Ray O'Leary: Freak by "Michael Collins" (Dennis Lynds)

Kristina Olsson: Stasiland by Anna Funder (best to skip the droning introduction)

Paperback Warrior: The Big Caper by Lionel White; The Black Berets: Deadly Reunion by "Mike McCray" (Michael McDowell and John Preston); Paul Bishop's Fey Croaker novels; We Who Survived by Sterling Noel; the Swamp Master series by "Jake Spencer" (Jerome Preisler)

Christine Poulson: the ghost stories of M. R. James

James Reasoner: Whistling Lead by Eugene Cunningham; "No Light for Uncle Henry" by August Derleth, Weird Tales, March 1943, edited by Dorothy McIlwraith; "The Call of Cthulhu" by H. P. Lovecraft, WT, February 1928, edited by Farnsworth Wright; "The Hounds of Tindalos" by Frank Belknap Long, WT, March 1929, edited by Wright; "The Colour Out of Space" by H. P. Lovecraft, Amazing Stories, September 1927, edited by Hugo Gernsback

Richard Robinson: The Case of the Constant God by Rufus King; "Diplomat-at-Arms" by Keith Laumer, Fantastic: Stories of Imagination, January 1960, edited by Cele Goldsmith Lalli

Jason Sacks: We, the Venusians by "John Rackham" (John Phillifent); The Water of Thought by Fred Saberhagen

Gerard Saylor: Wall of America by Thomas M. Disch; Rut by Scott Phillips

Steve Scott: "Night Ride" by and interview with John D. MacDonald, The New Black Mask, #8, 1987, edited by Matthew Bruccoli and Richard Layman

Marina Sofia: The Beginning of Spring and The Means of Escape by Penelope Fitzgerald

Kerrie Smith: Blood River by Tony Cavanaugh

Jonathan Strahan: Rebecca Roanhorse

Simon Thomas: Thin Ice by Compton Mackenzie

Scott Thompson: Living on Yesterday and The Island of Desire by Edith Templeton

"TomCat": The Body Vanishes by [Yves] Jacquemard-[Jean-Michel] Sénécal (translated by Gordon Latta); Meredith's Treasure by Philip Harbottle and John Russell Fearn

Prashant Trikannad: "The Case of the Wandering Redhead" by Leigh Brackett, New Detective, February 1951, edited by ?Peggy Graves; reprinted from Flynn's Detective Fiction, April 1943, edited by ?Harry Steeger

Krys Vyas-Myall: Gamma, September 1965, edited by Charles Fritch and Jack Matcha

Bill Wallace: The Midwich Cuckoos by "John Wyndham" (John Benyon Harris); Weird Tales, July 1926, edited by Farnsworth Wright; Evergreen Review, August 1968, edited by Barney Rosset

Gary K. Wolfe: Sheila Williams

A. J. Wright: Alabama Poetry edited by Louise Crenshaw Ray