Showing posts with label crime fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crime fiction. Show all posts

Thursday, January 23, 2025

2024: THE STARK HOUSE ANTHOLOGY edited by Rick Ollerman and Gregory Shepard (Stark House); DEATH COMES TOO LATE by Charles Ardai (Hard Case Crime): CF publishers celebrate their notable 2024 anniversaries (25th/20th)...and index to BEAT TO A PULP: ROUND 1, edited by David Cranmer and Elaine Ash


Gregory Shepard's Stark House, which has mostly specialized in bringing vintage novels and collections of hardboiled/noir and other crime-fiction classics and "forgotten" (including previously unpublished) work back or first into print, mostly in two (or more) novels-in-one-volume trade paperback editions, for the last 26 years, and Charles Ardai's Hard Case Crime line, which has mostly focused on new (and previously unpublished from decades past) work in a similar vein in mass-market and trade paperback editions for 21 years, both serving (clearly and justly) sustained and appreciative audiences, offered in 2024 anniversary compilations: an anthology of selections from Stark House authors (including a newly-published Peter Rabe short story and a Jada Davis short novel), and a collection of twenty of Ardai's short stories (offered in the stead of another novel, such as Fifty-to-One, which he wrote to celebrate the publication of Hard Case's first fifty titles, with chapter titles taken from each of those releases). Both have had notable sidelines: Stark House (as Shepard notes in his preface) having begun with a hardcover edition of a (Ms.) Storm Constantine fantasy collection, The Oracle Lips (a title that might've worked for a Fawcett Gold Medal crime novel, as well), and has offered some further horror and fantasy titles since, as well as a few sf and western items and other fiction, mass-market paperbacks in the Black Gat imprint, and the Staccato Crime and Film Noir Classics lines. Ardai's most visible other offering at first was his series of Gabriel Hunt adventure novels, each written by a different notable adventure/crime fiction writer, beginning with James Reasoner's Hunt for the Well of Eternity, though before he founded Hard Case he worked with the Davis Publications fiction magazine group (later bought by Dell, and currently published by Penny Press) and primarily on their anthology projects--and Hard Case itself has offered a line of graphic novels to go with the purely prose items.

Ninja, our elder, gray tabby cat, will scratch her face against the heavier paper of the Stark House publication's corners more readily. If this is a consideration, be aware of this.

Contents: 
The Stark House Anthology edited by Rick Ollerman and Gregory Shepard

7 * Stark House Press: The First 25 Years * Gregory Shepard * in
10 * Introduction * Rick Ollerman * in
13 * Hangover * Charles Runyon, (ss) Manhunt December 1960
24 * A Matter of Balance * Peter Rabe (ss) 2024 (first publication)
35 * Invitation to an Accident * "Wade Miller" (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine July 1955
48 * The Tormented * James McKimmey (nv) The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine August 1967
64 * Murderer #2 * Jean Potts (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine January 1961
75 * To Kill a Wife * Lionel White (nv) Murder September 1956
89 * So Curse the Day * Jada M. Davis (na) 2024 (first publication)
198 * Art for Money’s Sake * Dan J. Marlowe (ss) The Elks Magazine February 1970
204 * Chester Drum Takes Over * Stephen Marlowe (ss) Ellery Queen’s Anthology #25, Spring/Summer 1973
216 * Sleep Without Dreams * Frank Kane (ss) [Johnny Liddell series] Manhunt February 1956
228 * The Memory Guy * Henry Kane (nv) [Peter Chambers series] Come Seven/Come Death ed. Henry Morrison, Pocket Books, 1965
241 * Nothing in My Way * Orrie Hitt (ss) Smashing Detective Stories July 1955
250 * Preventive Medicine * Harry Whittington (ss) Trapped Detective Story Magazine August 1956
256 * Die, Darling, Die * Gil Brewer (nv) Justice January 1956
275 * The Geek-Girl * "Day Keene" (nv) Adam October 1953
297 * Woman Missing * Helen Nielsen (nv) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine May 1960
318 * Backbite * Lorenz Heller (as "Fredrick Lorenz") (ss)  Justice January 1956
323 * Angie * Ed Gorman (ss) 999 ed. Al Sarrantonio, Avon Books, 1999
336 * Night Games * Bill Pronzini  (ss) Bullets and Other Hurting Things: A Tribute to Bill Crider ed. Rick Ollerman, Down & Out Books, 2021
343 * The Silent One * Fletcher Flora (ss) Hunted Detective Story Magazine #7, December 1955
349 * Beware of the Dog * Fredric Brown (ss) Ten Detective Aces February 1943, as "Hound of Hell"
354 * Hit Me * Rick Ollerman (ss) Down & Out: The Magazine v1 #1, 2017
370 * Axe * Gregory Shepard (ss) 2024 (first publication)
378 * Last Night at Skipper’s Lounge * Timothy J. Lockhart (ss) Down & Out: The Magazine v1 #2, 2017
390 * Barbarians (Chapters 1-3) * Robert W. Chambers (novel excerpt, 1917) 
402 * Politics Pays Best * E. Phillips Oppenheim (ss) [Major Radford series] The Country Gentleman February 1930
415 * Secretaries Make Such Nice Wives * A. S. Fleischman; also here (ss) Toronto Star Weekly (a 1941 issue; formerly the weekly magazine supplement to the Toronto Star and can be referred to as Star Weekly)
418 * The Dead Man’s Eyes * Robert Silverberg (ss) Playboy August 1988
432 * Disorderly * Barry N. Malzberg (ss) The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine January 1968
436 * Instruction for Murder * Bruno Fischer (ss) A Mate for Murder and Other Stories from the Pulps ed. Gary Lovisi, Gryphon Books 1992 (the magazine[s] the stories were sold to folded before scheduled publication in the 1940s, and Lovisi published a slim original-publication collection of them)


Contents:
Death Comes Too Late (20 Stories) by Charles Ardai

15 * Introduction * Charles Ardai * (in)
161 * Jonas and the Frail * Charles Ardai (ss) Blazing! Adventures Magazine #9, 2008
179 * The Deadly Embrace * Charles Ardai (ss) Truth, Justice and..., edited by Thomas Deja, 2004 ebook
203 * Don't Be Cruel * Charles Ardai (ss) Down These Dark Streets, edited by Thomas Deja, 2003 ebook
259 * Sleep! Sleep! Beauty Bright * Charles Ardai (ss) Black Is the Night ed. Maxim Jakubowski, Titan, 2022
307 * My Husband’s Wife * Charles Ardai  (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine July 2009
327 * A Bar Called Charley’s * Charles Ardai (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine November 1990
345 *  A Free Man * Charles Ardai (ss) BEAT to a PULP, Round 1 edited by David Cranmer and Elaine Ash (BEAT to a PULP, 2010)
363 * The Investigation of Things * Charles Ardai (nv) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine February 1991

Fiction reviews, long delayed, to follow. Thanks to Charles Ardai, Gregory Shepard and Patricia Abbott for help with bibliographic information.  TM



And, to add to the indices here, here's the trade paperback version of BEAT to a PULP, Round 1, the 2010 anthology drawn mostly, apparently, from stories first published by the BEAT to a PULP online magazine.

BEAT to a PULP, Round 1 edited by David Cranmer and Elaine Ash (BEAT to a PULP, 2010), xiv+396pp, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0615388243, cover illustration by James O'Barr (BtaP 20XX indicates the year the story was featured on the webzine)

vii * Foreword * Bill Crider * fw BtaP 2010
xi * Introduction * David Cranmer * in
xiii * Acknowledgements * Elaine Ash * ak
1 * Maker's and Coke * Jake Hinkson * ss BtaP 20o9
7 * A Free Man * Charles Ardai * ss BtaP 2010
23 * Fangataufa * Sophie Littlefield * ss BtaP 2010
37 * You Don't Get Three Mistakes * Scott D. Parker * ss BtaP 20o9
45 * Insatiable * Hilary Davidson * ss BtaP 20o9
53 * Boots on the Ground * Matthew Quinn Martin * vi BtaP 2010
55 * Studio Dick * Garnett Elliott * ss BtaP 2010
67 * Killing Kate * Ed Gorman * ss BtaP 2010
74 * The Ghost Ship * Evan Lewis * ss BtaP 2010
86 * The Strange Death of Ambrose Bierce * Paul Powers * ss BtaP 2010
96 * Heliotrope * James Reasoner * ss BtaP 2010
110 * The Wind Scorpion * Edwin A. Grainger * ss BtaP 2010
122 * Hard Bite * Anonymous-9 * ss BtaP 20o8
132 * Crap is King * Robert J. Randisi * ss BtaP 2010
151 * The All-Weather Phantom * Mike Sheeter * ss (first published as "Swing High, Sweet Chariot" in the online magazine Hardluck Stories, 2008, edited by Dave Zeltserman and Ed Gorman)
164 * Pripet March * Stephen D, Rogers * ss BtaP 2010
169 * Ghostscapes * Patricia Abbott * ss BtaP 2010
183 * Off Rock * Kieran Shea * ss BtaP 2010 
195 * At Long Last * Nolan Knight * ss BtaP 2010
203 * A Native Problem * Chris F. Holm * ss BtaP 2010
219 * Spend It Now, Pay Later * Nik Morton * ss BtaP 20o9
225 * Spot Marks the X * I. J. Parnham * ss BtaP 2010
236 * Hoosier Daddy * Jedidiah Ayres * ss BtaP 2010
251 * Anarchy Among Friends: A Love Story * Andy Henion * ss BtaP 2010
265 * Cannulation * Glenn Gray * ss BtaP 2010
280 * The Unreal Jesse James * Chap O'Keefe * ss BtaP 20o9
292 * Acting Out * Frank Bill * na BtaP 2010
357 * A History of Pulp * Cullen Gallegher * es BtaP 2010




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Friday, December 6, 2024

Books Received: COLLECTING MYSELF: THE UNCOLLECTED STORIES OF BARRY N. MALZBERG, edited by Robert Friedman and Gregory Shepard; CREAM OF THE CROP: BEST MYSTERY & SUSPENSE STORIES OF BILL PRONZINI edited by the author, Stark House 2024

Three of my favorite new stories in 1978, not quite a half-century ago but not far from it, the year I started reading fiction magazines regularly and probably more passionately than before or since, were "Strangers in the Fog" by Bill Pronzini, in EQMM's June issue, "Prowl" by Barry Malzberg in Fantastic dated July, and "Another Burnt-Out Case" by Malzberg and Pronzini in the October Fantastic, albeit arguably out of place in that issue, as it wasn't really fantasy, horror nor sf, but a bit of absurdism, that Barry remembers as including as much as they could that just made them laugh and laugh. (Barry doesn't seem to much like "Prowl"--it's an unsparing metaphor for relations between teens and their parents in the form of a vignette about werewolves--and the only reprint of it I'm aware of is in the Fall 2011 issue of Allen Koszowski's Inhuman magazine, apparently not with his permission.)


There's more to say about these, and the careers of these writers, and the noble efforts of Stark House, but it's been a distracting and busy week, and it's not over yet. (A d&b fortnight, by the time it's done.)

Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg by Barry N. Malzberg (Stark House Press, March 8, 2024, 979-8-88601-081-7, $15.95, 186pp, tp, co) [edited by Robert Friedman & Greg Shepard]



Cream of the Crop: Best Mystery & Suspense Stories of Bill Pronzini edited by the author (all content by BP) Stark House Press, August, 2024, 979-8-88602-099-2, $19.95, 340pp, tp, co

9 * Preface * Bill Pronzini * pr

11 *  Standalones 
13 * Opportunity * Bill Pronzini * ss * Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine December 1967
24 * Proof of Guilt * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine December 1973
33 * Sweet Fever * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine December 1976
38 * Smuggler's Island * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine December 1976
53 * Under the Skin * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine October 1977
58 * Strangers in the Fog * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine June 1978
66 * A Craving for Originality * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine December 17 1979 
95 * Liar’s Dice * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine November 1992
102 * Out of the Depths * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine September 1994
117 * Possibilities * Bill Pronzini * nv * The Strand Magazine #17, October 2005/January 2006
131 * The Cemetery Man * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine July 2013
139 * Hooch * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine June 2014
147 * Snap * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine December 2015

171 * Carpenter and Quincannon
173 * Gunpowder Alley * [John Quincannon & Sabina Carpenter] * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine August 2012  [Remarkable how often even conscientious reviewers will revise the Marcia Muller character's name into "Sabrina"...TM]

195 * Nameless Detective
197 * Thin Air [Nameless Detective] * Bill Pronzini * ss * Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine May 1979
214 * Cat’s-Paw [Nameless Detective] * Bill Pronzini * nv * Waves Press, 1983, chapbook
233 * Skeleton Rattle Your Mouldy Leg [Nameless Detective] * Bill Pronzini * nv * The Eyes Have It ed. Robert J. Randisi, Mysterious Press, 1984
256 * Incident in a Neighborhood Tavern [Nameless Detective] * Bill Pronzini * ss * An Eye for Justice ed. Robert J. Randisi, The Mysterious Press, 1988
274 * Souls Burning [Nameless Detective] * Bill Pronzini * ss * New Crimes 3 ed. Maxim Jakubowski, Robinson, 1991
281 * La Bellezza Delle Bellezze [Nameless Detective] * Bill Pronzini * ss * Invitation to Murder ed. Ed Gorman & Martin H. Greenberg, Dark Harvest, 1991
305 * Home Is the Place Where [Nameless Detective] * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine November 1995
313 * The Big Bite [Nameless Detective]  * Bill Pronzini * nv * Shots Winter 1999
326 * Who You Been Grapplin’ With? [Nameless Detective] * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine December 2014

339 * Bill Pronzini (1943-date) Bibliography * Bill Pronzini * bi

TM

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Monday, November 11, 2024

Guest Post: Kate Jackson: "Top Ten Tips for Private Eyes"

Ms. Jackson's informed and engaging blog, Cross-Examining Crime, is a regular stop for me, and she is having a bit of blog tour in support of her latest book, How to Survive a Classic Crime Novel (The British Library, 2023):


Top Ten Tips for Private Eyes

Perhaps Raymond Chandler is one of your favourite authors. Or maybe you are able to quote all the best lines from the 1941 film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. You might even know the difference between a rye and a bourbon and can reel off all manner of private eye slang at the drop of a hat. But if you woke up one morning and found yourself inside a classic crime mystery, signed up to work as a private eye, how well would you fare? Would you just survive? Or would you thrive? Well, here are some top tips to help you out. They are by no means exhaustive, but they may increase your awareness of the difficulties private detectives can face and help to put some more titles on your to-be-read pile.

1. Does your partner or sleuthing assistant badger you when you have too much alcohol (a tendency quite a few classic crime private eyes exhibited*)? Are they trying to limit how many drinks you can have? If so, then Norbert Davis’ private detective character, Doan, knows how you feel and has his own tip for dodging such prescriptive rules. His sleuthing assistant, an enormous Great Dane named Carstairs, only allows Doan to have one drink before meals, a restriction Carstairs can easily enforce due to his physical strength. Yet, Doan is able to circumvent this rule in Sally’s in the Alley (1943) by asking the bartender for four shots to be put into one glass.

2. It is best to keep your car boot locked to avoid any unwanted corpses being deposited there, a piece of advice which Doan overlooked in Sally’s in the Alley. The same goes for offices, which it is a good idea to leave under the watchful eye of a trusted assistant. Steve Conacher failed to do this and discovered a dead body in his office at the start of Adam Knight’s mystery Stone Cold Blonde (1951).

3. It is not just corpses being added to your office which you need to worry about, as important items can also be removed from your place of business, if you’re not careful. Naturally, you might keep your money and keys in a safe place, but what about your tax return form and accompanying paperwork? This is the horror Mike Magoon faces in Ellery Queen’s ‘The Ides of Magoon’ (1947), when he finds the day before the deadline for submitting his tax return that his form and the paperwork he needed to complete it, have all been stolen. No one needs that level of drama and stress in their lives, let alone the murder and blackmail which subsequently ensue once Ellery Queen begins to investigate.

4. Private eyes, if classic crime fiction is anything to go by, have to deal with some pretty tough characters and can all too easily find themselves being physically assaulted. It is not uncommon for such a sleuth to be coshed on the head, which can render them unconscious and leave them bleeding and bruised. For instance, Steve Conacher gets hit on the head four times in I’ll Kill You Next (1956). Getting clonked on the skull had become so intrinsically linked with the life of being a private detective that it is even commented on in Christopher Bush’s The Case of the Flowery Corpse (1956). Bush’s series sleuth, Ludovic Travers says to his friend: “No longer am I the incomplete detective. This case has made me, Henry. You’ve read plenty of detective novels. Novels about British and American private eyes. You know what’s expected of them and what you always get: the real top-notchers, that is. They drink whisky by the quart, their morals areas lax as the clients are beautiful, and they’re constantly getting slugged over the head. Well, now I’m in their class. It’s taken twenty years to do it, Henry, but I’ve received the accolade. I too have been slugged.”

If this is an accolade you are not in any rush to receive, then I recommend investing in some dependable protective head gear.

5. Whilst it is advisable to not offend the official police too much (as they can all too easily find ways of making your life difficult as Mike Shayne learns in Brett Halliday’s Blood on the Stars (1948)) it is still possible to have some fun at their expense, as MacNab does in Death of Mr Dodsley (1937) by John Ferguson. For example, the police get annoyed when MacNab is cryptic about searching the bookshop floor, hoping to not find anything: ‘Crabb half turned away, his disdain reviving. This was the sort of thing one would expect from a private detective – words that looked more astute but really meant nothing […] A little rift of irritation seemed about to develop. Mallet’s professional dignity had no doubt been wounded on seeing the other man go down to look over a floor he himself had already examined […]."

6. Don’t let your boss hear you grumbling that your cases are too easy, which is an error Elliot Oakes makes in P. G. Wodehouse’s ‘Death at the Excelsior’ (1914). He works for the Paul Snyder Detective Agency and his employer decides to cut his ego down to size after Elliot criticises the methods of the agency and ‘complain[s] of the infantile nature and unworthiness of the last two cases to which he had been assigned.’ To do this Paul assigns him a baffling, locked room murder in a boarding house, which involves a victim bitten by a snake. Naturally Elliot heads towards an embarrassing failure, perpetuated by his own arrogant nature. Conversely if you are the boss of a private eye firm and you have an annoying employee then you might consider copying what Paul Snyder does with Elliot. Paul can certainly recommend it, as he thoroughly enjoyed reading Elliot Oakes’ report:

‘He liked the substance of it, and above all, he was tickled by the bitter tone of frustration that characterised it. Oakes was baffled, and his knowledge of Oakes told him that the sensation of being baffled was gall and wormwood to that high-spirited young man.’

7. Whilst many of your cases, as a private detective, will be routine work, involving missing persons, cheating spouses and stolen property, always be prepared for the unexpected, particularly if you find yourself working within a science fiction styled private detective novel. After all, in such a story, you could be expected to investigate a killer aardvark which instills suicidal depression in its victims, a situation Davis faces in Arthur Bryan Cover’s ‘The Aardvark of Despair’, which is published in the collection: The Platypus of Doom and Other Nihilists (1976).

8. Make sure you pick a sleuthing assistant who can pull their weight when it comes tothe detective work. I would argue that Frances Crane’s Pat Abbott fails to do this, as Jean (who he eventually marries) is reluctant to follow up leads and even refuses to search a suspect’s room in The Golden Box (1942), due to its untidiness and scuffed furnishings.

9. It is important to get paid first (either in full or a retainer) as in classic crime fiction there is always the chance of your client being bumped off before the case has been concluded. No client, no fee. John J. Malone encounters this problem in ‘His Heart Could Break’ (1943) by Craig Rice. In addition, I would suggest that clients who refuse to tell you all the key details straight away (and usually insist on you meeting them in person later on to hear more) are more likely to have an early demise, as evidenced in Roman McDougald’s The Deaths of Lora Karen (1944).

10. Remember as a private detective you are never off the clock. New clients and cases do not confine themselves to working hours and have the annoying habit of popping up during your social hours. John J. Malone certainly discovers that they can ruin your date night in ‘Shot in the Dark’ (1955) by Craig Rice. There’s nothing more romantic than a distraught man nearly collapsing on the front of your date’s car yelling: “Violet! She’s dead! He killed her!”

* Not every private eye in fiction struggles with alcohol dependency. For example, Humphrey Campbell in Geoffrey Holmes’ And Then There Were Three (1938), drinks nothing stronger than milk. Moreover, Mike Magoon in ‘The Ides of Michael Magoon’ (1947) by Ellery Queen ‘neither smoked nor drank – asthma barred the one and, as for the other, his good wife had the nasal infallibility of a beagle.’

(Copyright 2024 by Kate Jackson)

Kate Jackson blogs at www.crossexaminingcrime.com and she is a member of the Crime Writer’s Association. Kate is compiler of the puzzles in The Pocket Detective (2018) and The Pocket Detective 2 (2019). She also contributed to the publication: The 100 Greatest Literary Detectives (2018), edited by Eric Sandberg, writing on Juanita Sheridan’s Lily Wu. Her latest publication with the British Library is How to Survive a Classic Crime Novel (2023). This work was shortlisted for the H. R. F. Keating award for Best 2023 Biographical or critical book related to crime fiction.

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