Friday's "Forgotten" Books: more links

This week's collection of links to reviews and citations of the books (and other literature) listed below; other items might be added over the course of the day. Next week, Evan Lewis will be hosting FFB at his blog, Davy Crockett's Almanack..., then it comes back here the following Friday, and then on home to Patti Abbott (nee Nase)'s Pattinase the subsequent week. Please let me know if I've forgotten your or someone else's post in comments...thanks, as always, to you readers and to all the contributors.


Phil Abbott: The Time It Never Rained by Elmer Kelton

Walter Albert: A Killing in Comics by Max Allan Collins

Sergio Angelini: Doll as by Ed McBain

Yvette Banek: Breakfast at Madeline's by Matt Witten

Joe Barone: The Round House by Louise Erdrich

Fred Blosser: The Burglar by David Goodis

Brian Busby: Artists, Models and Murder by Tedd Steele

Bill Crider: The Empty Trap by John D. MacDonald

William F. Deeck: Death of a Deserter by Lynton Lamb

Martin Edwards: Sinister Crag as by Newton Gale (Muna Lee and Maurice Guiness)

Curt Evans: Death by the Lake by Leo Bruce

Josef Hoffmann: 12 Important Essays on Crime Fiction (translated by Pauline Cumbers)

Jerry House: The River Pirates by Manly Wade Wellman

Randy Johnson: Coyote Wind by Peter Bowen

Neer: The Body on the Beam by Anthony Gilbert

Nick Jones: The Jugger as by Richard Stark (Donald Westlake)

George Kelley: P. G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters by Sophie Ratcliffe

B. V. Lawson: The End of Solomon Grundy by Julian Symons

Evan Lewis: The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Steve Lewis: Dirty Deeds by Mark Terry;  After the Deacon Was Murdered by Cornelia Penfield

Francis M. Nevins: The Second Street as by Edwina Noone (Michael Avallone)

John F. Norris: The Black Camel by Earl Derr Biggers

Richard Pangburn: The Dogs of War by Kem Nunn

James Reasoner: So I'm a Heel as by Mike Heller (Arnold Hano)

Karyn Reeves: The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship by Stephen Potter

Richard Robinson: Death in the Old Country by Eric Wright

Gerard Saylor: Power Ballads by Will Boast

Ron Scheer: The Grafters by Francis Lynde;  The Buffalo Commons by Richard Wheeler

Michael Slind: Call the Next Witness by Philip Mason; The Sound of Sirens by William Brasse

Dan Stumpf: The Undying Monster by Jessie Douglas Kerruish

Kevin R. Tipple: Songs of Innocence as by Richard Aleas (Charles Ardai)

"TomCat": the novels of Jan Ekström 

"Trent": Downtown as by Ed McBain

Prashant Trikannad: Buchanan's Siege as by Jonas Ward (William Ard); Blade: The Navajo Trail as by Matt Chisholm (Peter Watts)

a handful of Bok cover illustrations (and a Wesso)

cover by H. W. Wesso? ISFDb says so...but Hannes Bok did all the interior art n the issue.

Featuring stories by founding editor Frederik Pohl ("James MacCreigh") and Robert Heinlein ("Lyle Monroe") and Pohl's fellow "Futurian" Walter Kubilius...and such older hands as Neil R. Jones and Ray Cummings. Not on the cover: Robert Arthur, "Futurian" Richard Wilson, and one Joseph Gilbert, who published a handful of stories, along with two "Probability Zero" tall-tale humor pieces, in a range of the sf magazines publishing in the early '40s. The human figures are definitely not Bok-ish...but the flying lizard creature strikingly resembles Bok's kind of creature...presumably, Wesso's, as well! (Bok might've taken more care to have the door fit into its jamb...)

A Bok cover for a novel by the famously inept Mullen. All Bok images below:

more links: Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: the links

The Daytrippers

Here are the links to this week's reviews and citations of insufficiently appreciated a/v items, mostly film and television but not all...and, as with most weeks, there might be a few additions to the list over the course of the day.  If I've overlooked your or someone else's post, please let me know in comments...thanks to all the contributors, and to all you readers. 

Alphaville

Bill Crider: Alphaville  [trailer]

Brian Arnold: Adam West hosts The Hollywood Palace (1966)

B. V. Lawson: Media Murder

Dan Stumpf: A Woman's Vengeance; The Undying Monster

Ed Gorman: Ironside

Elizabeth Foxwell: "The Case of the Mirror of Portugal" (The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes)

Eric Peterson: The Film Podcast

Evan Parker: Star of Midnight

Miss Julie

George Kelley: The Anton Chekhov Collection; Miss Julie (1999 film)

How Did This Get Made?: The Devil's Advocate

Iba Dawson: Apartment for Peggy; Moguls and Movie Stars

Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: The Jerry Lewis Show[s] and their offshoots

P. J.

J. Kingston Pierce: P.J. (1968)

Jackie Kashian: Mark Anderson and Melora Creager on Shakespeare

James Reasoner: The Pacific

Jeff Flugel: Fantastic Voyage

Jerry House: "The Meddlers" (Lights Out the tv series)

John Charles: The Girls from H*A*R*M

Juri Nummelin: Inglourious Basterds

Kate Laity: Slickman A4 Quotation Event

Kliph Nesteroff: The Dick Cavett Show and Zabriskie Point

Laura: Moonlight Murder

Lucy Brown: Sister Kenny

Martin Edwards: Equus

Bullet in the Face

Michael Shonk: Bullet in the Face

Patti Abbott: My 10 Favorite Quirky Overlooked Movies (and Jeff's Seven, in comments)

Prashant Trikannad: Tora! Tora! Tora!; Pearl Harbor

Top tv spy John Drake

Randy Johnson: On Borrowed Time; The Third Man; Payment in Blood (aka Sette Winchester per un massacro)

Rick: Shindig!

Rod Lott: Night of the Living Dead 3-D: Reanimation

Ron Scheer: Single-Handed

Scott Cupp: Dragon Age: Redemption

Sergio Angelini: Top 20 TV Spies

Stacia Jones: February Movies to Watch For

Stephen Bowie: 87th Precinct

Yvette Banek: Bulldog Drummond (1929 film)

Saturday Music Club: some pop music over the last century

Ruth Etting: "Love Me or Leave Me"


The Mills Brothers: "Caravan"


The Glenn Miller Orchestra: "Blues in the Night"


Blossom Dearie: "Someone to Watch Over Me"


The Seekers: "I'll Never Find Another You"

A studio version which can't be "embedded" in the US

Joni Mitchell: "Help Me"


Bangles: "The Real World"


Sade: "No Ordinary Love"


The Go! Team: "Ladyflash"


Anthony Benedetto and Stefani Germanotta: "The Lady is a Tramp"

FFB: TEN TALES CALCULATED TO GIVE YOU SHUDDERS edited by Ross Olney (and its sfnal companion), Whitman 1972

Whitman, as an expression of Western Publishing, was certainly omnipresent in the mid-price and discount department stores, and the drugstores, of my youth, with their comics and even more notably with their usually brightly-colored, cheaply produced books, which, like Grosset and Dunlap's various series books for children (Nancy Drew, the Hardys) but slightly less well-bound, had no dust jackets, but full-color illustrated board covers. I owned copies of at least some of their classics for children (such as Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, a book which did defeat me as a youth in its dullness and dreariness in the early going), Big Little Books (the one I remember best was Woody Woodpecker and the Meteor Menace written by Don Christensen, which was my first encounter with the concept of a Grand Vizier, and of course an evil one), and some original items (usually media-driven...I had a hand-me-down copy of Doris Schroeder's Annette and the Mystery at Smuggler's Cove, part of that veteran screenwriter's Funicello book series commissioned by Disney and Western). Among the last were two rather good entries edited by Ross Olney.

Ross Olney has been mostly a writer of YA materials, and while I'm not sure I ever read any of his books, I'm particularly surprised I didn't come across (if I didn't) either of his two anthologies here, the horror item even moreso than the earlier sf volume...but not too many libraries carried Whitman books, seen as downmarket and disposable (and in severe need of rebinding if they were to survive at all in the circulating environment). I might've not taken too seriously any casual encounter with Shudders, since who expected a Whitman anthology to contain much of compelling interest, not Safe for the Kiddies? But, if so, I was mistaken, as a glance at the Weird Tales-heavy table of contents might suggest:

Ten Tales Calculated To Give You Shudders (Whitman 1972) (indices courtesy ISFDb:)

• 13 • A Forewarning • essay by Ross R. Olney
• 19 • Sweets to the Sweet • (1947) • shortstory by Robert Bloch
• 34 • The Waxwork • (1931) • shortstory by A. M. Burrage
• 56 • Used Car • (1932) • shortstory by H. Russell Wakefield
• 80 • The Ghost of Fear • (1896) • shortstory by H. G. Wells (variant of The Red Room)
• 102 • The Whistling Room • [Carnacki (William Hope Hodgson)] • (1910) • shortstory by William Hope Hodgson
• 132 • The Last Drive • (1933) • shortstory by Carl Jacobi
• 141 • The Monkey's Paw • (1902) • shortstory by W. W. Jacobs
• 160 • Second Night Out • (1933) • shortstory by Frank Belknap Long (variant of The Black, Dead Thing)
• 176 • The Hills Beyond Furcy • (1966) • shortstory by Robert G. Anderson
• 194 • Floral Tribute • (1949) • shortstory by Robert Bloch

It's notable that relatively few Whitman books have introductions, much less long ones, and more notable yet the lack of watering-down this assembly presents to the young reader; the majority of these are chestnuts, though the other near-half weren't widely anthologized, and most of them had also been published in other YA anthologies over the previous decade, though not all (a lot of overlap with Robert Arthur's "Hitchcock" anthologies aimed at adults and for the YA market, for example). I'd forgotten I'd encounterd the FB Long story elsewhere, for example (in a "Hitchcock Presents:" volume, and in another Robert Arthur horror antho for young readers) (and it's always amusing to be reminded of Burrage's initial pseudonym, "Ex-Private X"). The Anderson was from a then fairly-recent Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine issue, and beginning and ending the book with Robert Bloch (and these Bloch stories, particularly "Sweets") wouldn't've hurt my feelings any as a young reader. Olney is particularly an aficionado of cars and auto racing, hence the choices of these particular Jacobi and Wakefield stories, at least. 

Whitman had taken a slightly less impressive, but still good and only slightly idiosyncratic, science fiction anthology from Olney previously, with two from William Campbell Gault in that book...Gault, of course, is best remembered today for his crime fiction, but was a fairly consistent if rarely exceptional contributor to sf magazines, and one of the great stars (if not the greatest) of the sports-fiction magazines (and made much of his money in the 1960s from his YA sports novels), and I suspect Olney was particularly fond of Gault's auto-racing fiction...


Tales of Time and Space (Whitman 1969)

• 10 • Yesterday's Fantasy, Today's Fact-an Introduction • essay by Ross R. Olney
• 15 • All the Time in the World • (1952) • shortstory by Arthur C. Clarke
• 34 • Puppet Show • (1962) • shortstory by Fredric Brown
• 50 • Birds of a Feather • (1958) • novelette by Robert Silverberg
• 82 • Clutch of Morpheus • (1946) • shortstory by William Campbell Gault [as by Larry Sternig ]
• 105 • The Last Command • [Bolo] • (1967) • shortstory by Keith Laumer
• 136 • Fog • (1951) • shortstory by William Campbell Gault
• 161 • The Martian Crown Jewels • (1958) • shortstory by Poul Anderson
• 189 • Of Missing Persons • (1955) • shortstory by Jack Finney 

I'm very certain I never encountered the sf anthology in my early reading, and still wonder if saw and simply never got around to the horror book (the first edition of which is proud to note that it's published on recycled paper, and that paper is of a better grade than that used on the Whitman books I recall above--I wonder if this was a shortlived upgrade in the production process generally of these books)...all told, either of these books wouldn't be the worst introduction to their fields for young readers still (if not quite up to the Robert Arthur "Hitchcock" anthologies, or some of the other landmarks I've reviewed previously).

This week's FFB list of links is being assembled by Evan Lewis at his Davy Crockett's Almanack of Mystery, Adventure and the Wild West (speaking as we have of personages caught up in the Disney machines), and will be hosted here again next Friday, with one more pass through Evan's and then my blogs before Patti Abbott returns to hosting them. 

January's Underappreciated Music: the links

Patti Abbott: Tuesday Night Music

Brian Arnold: "Batman is Minding His Business..."("Orange Colored Sky") by Adam West and friends

Sean Coleman: The Beatles on Apple's rooftop

Bill Crider: songs of the day

Lee Hartsfeld: Don Richardson

Jerry House: "The Hippopotamus Song" by Chuck Mitchell; hymn time

Randy Johnson: Kingdom Come (eponymous)

George Kelley: So by Peter Gabriel

Todd Mason: some chamber music; Teo Macero's music;
some music for Martin Luther King, Jr day;
some cover versions; choreography for The Rite of Spring;
winter jazz

Marty Moss-Coane: Music of Ansel Adams: America by Dave Brubeck and Chris Brubeck

Richard Pangburn: Old Rivers by Walter Brennan

Lawrence Person: "Time" by Echodrome

Charlie Ricci: Rose of Cimarron by Poco

Ron Scheer: Saturday Music