Books for Sale!

I'm slowly but surely adding books to my primary website: eBay. The first eleven books are now available.

As the days pass I'll add more. By the end of this month there ought to be close to 100 books uploaded.  Auction items that do not sell after the initial listings I will move those books to Biblio.com.  Still have to create that account and upload anything there, but rest assured I will be there within two months.

 Currently, I have a small variety of vintage 20th century mystery novels. Some of the authors include John Rhode, Joan Fleming, Manning Long, James Ronald (writing as "Michael Crombie"), and the usual obscure and forgotten writers. The copy of Lady in A Wedding Dress I mentioned in my first post last week is there now waiting for a buyer. (Hurry, Scott!) Future writers include Bruce Graeme, B. L. Farjeon, Carol Carnac (aka E.C.R. Lorac), Francis Gerard, Miles Burton, Georgette Heyer, George Baxt, Dorothy Bowers, and Ann Rowe.  The majority of the books I am currently selling have been reviewed on this blog or appear in the essays I contributed to the Edgar nominated non-fiction work Murder in the Closet (Macfarland, 2017).  

You can quickly access all my eBay listings by clicking HERE. When you get there, please make a note of my eBay seller name if you are interested in returning. Or better yet mark the page in your browser's Favorites.

Happy hunting!  Hope you become one of my regular customers as well as a regular reader.

A Year in Review (part 1)

Sometimes a sudden change in one's life is all one needs to reevaluate what gives life purpose, meaning and most importantly joy.

I am now retired.  It was planned for this year, but came six months earlier than anticipated.  I was made an offer I couldn't refuse, so to speak. In the past two weeks I have had to fast forward all my planning that I was going to spread out over three months. Then yesterday a financial emergency had me spending close to three hours cancelling auto-payments and reorganizing that part of my life.  When it was all solved, I sat back and reflected. I realized that 2025 is a year of new beginnings in more ways than I ever anticipated. With new beginnings comes a re-evaluation of what I missed doing and what brought me not only satisfaction but actual joy. And here I am again.

When I left the blog I entered a new phase of creativity in the world of theater which I had also abandoned back in 2013 or so.  I've had modest successes (though very little monetary reward) but it was all exhilarating and joyous, aspects that were greatly missing from my life for decades. Now I'm finding a balance between theater and blogging as well as a return to bookselling. Slowly but surely you will find me selling online in at least two places in the coming weeks.  But for now let's catch you up on what I read over the past year and a half. Well, at least the most noteworthy books.

In 2024 I spent much of my time reading newly published books, discovering writers working now as opposed to being obscure, forgotten and usually very dead. Here are some highlights for those who mix their vintage reading with contemporary and new books:

• Benjamin Stevenson - Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (2023) and Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret (2024) I think this guy is one of the best traditional mystery writers out there. He worships fair play motifs, and also sort of sends up the rules and conventions of traditional detective novels. I love the meta-fiction part of each book. His novels are not only puzzling and engaging but very witty with a offbeat sense of humor.
• Tom Mead - Cabaret Macabre (2024) Loved this rule breaking impossible crime mystery. The best of his three novels so far, I think.
  

Margot Douaihy - Scorched Grace (2023) and Blessed Water (2024)  Features a chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, queer nun. How's that for modern? Pretty much a fair play mystery writer. BUT! You must read them in the order listed. The second book spoils the first book three times. Ugh. Luckily, I read them in order.

Angie Kim - Happiness Falls (2023) A domestic tragedy mystery that deals with a teenager with autism and the violent accident that lead to his father's death. Profoundly moving.

B.R. Myers - A Dreadful Splendor (2022) The best of the historical mystery novels I read that dealt with spiritualists and ghosts. A fraudulent medium is rescued from prison and given the opportunity to prove her "talent" is genuine when a rich man offers her legal representation in court if she can show evidence that his dead wife has moved on to eternal peace in the afterlife.  Set in 19th century England.  This first novel won the Mary Higgins Clark award from the MWA who also do the Edgar awards.

Stuart Turton - The Last Murder at the End of the World  (2024) Inventive, complex genre blending mystery/sci-fi commenting on the prevalence and encroaching dangers of AI. Oddly, there was a TV show (A Murder at the End of the World) that seemed to have been inspired by this book if not outright plagiarized. The plot of the TV show was more an And Then There Were None ripoff, but ultimately the use of AI in each work resulted in essentially the same story as each finale was almost identical.

I read a slew of horror novels and ghost stories in 2023 and 2024 and would love to rave about those too, but I have to move on to the vintage nuggets of gold from 2024. Following the habits of a few of my fellow vintage mystery bloggers I'll pick the best vintage mystery I read each month last year.  And here are the first six...

JANUARY:  Lady in a Wedding Dress - Susannah Shane, aka Harriette Ashbrook (1943) What a coup this was! I've been looking for this book for over a decade.  Then when copy turned up on Ebay I snagged it for only $18. Three days later another copy was offered on Ebay and this one had a DJ and was only $15.  Steals, both of them! (Don't worry. I'm not a greedy bastard. I'll be selling the one without the DJ and it's in excellent condition.)  This was an exciting, complex mystery novel but does not (As I originally thought) feature her series private eye Christopher Saxe.  It's an involved puzzler featuring a dress designer who is murdered and the bride who is discovered in a blood stained dress moments after the murder occurs. Did she do it? In my reading notes I described the climax as a "Thunderstorm of hurricane proportions: car wrecks, accidents, power failure. Blood transfusion reveals shocking secret..."  Hits a lot of excitement buttons for me.

FEBRUARY:  The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo - Michael Butterworth (1983) Comic crime novel about a shoe salesman who in order to inherit his dead unce's estate must comply with a bizarre last wish according to the eccentric's will.  The nephew must take the uncle's dead body to Monte Carlo on an all expense paid vacation and gamble away a set amount of money. How on earth is he going to pull that off? If he fails, then the money goes to a charity that cares for rescue dogs. Along the way the woman who owns the Universal Dog Home of Brooklyn becomes his partner in the vacation adventure.  Gangsters, disguises, silliness galore.  Amazingly, this book was turned into an award winning musical called Lucky Stiff by Stephen Flaherty & Lynn Ahrens, the duo best known for Ragtime and Once on This Island.  This was one of their earliest collaborations.

MARCH:  The Forest Mystery - Nigel Burnaby (1934)  Obscure and definitely forgotten writer (a journalist during the 30s and 40s) who wrote only five mystery novels.  This one is about woman who has escaped from an asylum whose nude body is found in a wooded area off a remote country road. The body is battered and almost unidentifiable. Her husband is implicated in the crime and must clear his name. Intriguing plot twists with an ending that reminded me of Anthony Berkeley's early rule-breaking mystery novels. Innovative and often witty. Was so unusual that I bought two more of his books. Still have yet to read those.

APRIL: No real winner this month. I read four new books (three of them superior and two already mentioned above in the modern section. Only read one vintage mystery: Too Much of Water by Bruce Hamilton (1958).  I didn't really like it. Not up to the level of his other earlier novels, two of which I reviewed here at Pretty Sinister Books. Very talky, little action and an unsatisfactory, slightly contrived, resolution with one of the deaths turning out to be an accident.  Only good thing about the book was the cool DJ and the plan of the cruise ship that was the novel's setting.

MAY:  Swing High Sweet Murder - S. H Courtier (1962)  One of my favorite mystery writers.  A shame his books are so damn hard to find.  Miraculously, I bought five of Courtier's books in the past two years and read almost all of them in 2024. All but one had a lot to recommend them. This is an impossible crime mystery about a tennis coach found hanged in a treehouse which serves as a fire tower for the area. Set in Australia, of course, with his series detective policeman "Digger" Haig. It cries out to filmed because the setting is so unusual and demands to be seen rather than imagined.  I had to re-read passages to figure out how the house was built in this massive tree.  Features a minor character who is developmentally delayed and has the talent of mimicking indigenous bird calls.  The tennis background is also fascinating making this doubly tempting for sports mystery fans as well as impossible crime devotees.

JUNE:  It Happened in Boston? - Russell H Greenan (1968)  Utterly bizarre, often contemplative and prophetic, thoroughly entertaining. For once it’s a book that is easy to find and affordable to buy in cheap paperback copies.  Highly recommend this unclassifiable "mystery". While not exactly a detective novel it does qualify as a crime novel but that aspect is the least of its merits. Absurd, satiric, trenchant and witty.  Greenan was sui generis among the writers of the mystery world. In an ideal world everyone would know him, his books would have received several awards, and he'd still be in print. One plus -  this book was reprinted by The Modern Library in 2003 with an intro by Jonathan Lethem. But I think that edition had a small print run. I dare not summarize nor mention any of the story of It Happened in Boston? for it must be personally experienced. The most surprising aspect of this book is it's about the art world and NONE of the blurbs on ANY of the editions mention this facet of the story. Those who enjoy art mysteries or novels about the art world take note! I thoroughly enjoyed this book. A true must read for people who love imaginative fiction of any type. With a mystery or without -- it's a damn fine book. 

 I'll post the next six months' worth of highlights of 2024 vintage mystery reading later this week.

"If you build it, they will come." So goes the famous line in the movie Field of Dreams. And they did come to this blog for years and years.  Perhaps if I rebuild, then they will return.  If you are one of them now reading this, thank you for returning.  I hope to stay here for as long as I can this time. 

Psst... Over Here!

Hello, there! Remember me? I think eight month’s hiatus is a little too long to have taken for what I thought was going to be “a little break”. What have I been up to? Oh, this and that…

I came to realize that like many collectors I had gradually turned into a monomaniac of sorts and I didn’t like it. My literary anecdotes were boring people and more importantly I was boring myself. I wanted to avoid vintage detective fiction for a while. It was long time that I returned to reading contemporary fiction of all types, reading non-fiction (!) that led me to seeking out the histories and memoirs that once upon a time I enjoyed even more than mystery novels. As I veered away from detective and crime fiction I rediscovered my passion for supernatural horror from all eras. In the process I learned that there has been a revival of “traditional” supernatural fiction in the past three years similar to the renaissance in detective fiction (both reissues and new writing). Quite an eye-opening surprise and a delightful one for someone like me who has always loved ghost stories, haunted house novels, and metaphoric treatments of the monster hiding under your bed.

And so after eight months I’ve come full circle and I’m ready to share with you some of the unusual and intriguing titles I’ve devoured since December 2022. Like this one…

Flowers for a Dead Witch by Michael Butterworth

Readers of this blog will know that I love a good mystery novel dripping with Gothic elements and accented with witchcraft, hexes, black magic, voodoo, hoodoo or whatever the author is calling it. Butterworth’s third mystery novel is a brilliant example of the first revival of traditional mystery writing that occurred back in the 1970s. In Flowers for a Dead Witch (1971) he gives us what at first seems to be yet another of those Gothic “romances” that filled bookstore shelves and drugstore spinners five decades ago. Polly Lestrange travels from Canada to Suffolk to visit her bedridden ailing great-aunt in a crumbling medieval manor complete with moat surrounding the entrance. She is greeted by Miss Chesham, the great-aunt’s over protective companion who refuses the Polly’s request to visit the old woman. Even the local physician caring for Great Aunt Granchester insists that Polly leave the old woman alone. Well, what Gothic heroine is going to listen to either person? Certainly not this one and Polly determinedly breaks into the old woman’s room one windy and rainy night (of course it rains a lot in this book. It has too!) to discover… Oh, but that would spoil it all. The old woman has a secret of course and it will only be revealed in the final pages.

Before the startling conclusion – which I confess really took me by surprise – our plucky heroine will encounter a ragtag group of rebellious teens, rumors of a witchcraft cult cavorting naked in the moonlight, an ancient cemetery home to a mausoleum containing the corpse of a woman executed for witchcraft 400+ years ago, and literally stumble upon what appears to be the charred remains of that executed witch. But how is that possible? A 400 year old corpse of a woman burned at the stake would be nothing but rotting bones if not a pile of dust in 1971. The body found in the coffin in the mausoleum is freshly dead, and burned beyond recognition. When both the local reverend and his wife go missing whispers of foul play mix with the rumors of witchcraft.

This was the first book I’ve read by Michael Butterworth (1924 – 1986) who prior to turning his hand to bizarre crime and mystery novels was primarily known as a writer of comic books. Oh! A warning: Don’t confuse him with another (still living) writer of the same name who wrote science fiction novels and SF TV show novelizations. I had to notify the Admin of a crime fiction website that he conflated both Butterworths. I advised him to remove all the SF titles from the mystery writer Butterworth’s bibliography. He speedily updated that page on his website.

If Flowers for a Dead Witch is any indication of what Butterworth is capable of then I’m eager to check out as many of his other books that I can find. Most satisfying is that this is a legitimate detective novel with fair play clueing. Assiduous readers may catch onto what I overlooked as I foolishly fell for all of the writer’s rather clever red herrings. Butterworth mixes the formulaic plot of those 70s Gothic romances churned out by writers like Phyllis Whitney, Victoria Holt, and Mary Stewart with genuine mystery novel conventions and thankfully improves on both. Of course with a generous helping of creepy superstition and lurid witchcraft legends the plot is considerably spicier and more intriguing. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and completed it in a speedy two days. There are several copies available for sale out there in the vast shopping mall of the internet. I’m sure it ought to turn up in local libraries both in the US and UK. Check it out!

Michael Butterworth Crime & Detective Novels
The Soundless Scream (1967)
Walk Softly in Fear (1968)
Vanishing Act (1970) (US title: The Uneasy Sun)
Flowers for a Dead Witch (1971)
The Black Look (1972)
Villa on the Shore (1973)
The Man in the Sopwith Camel (1974)
Remains to be Seen (1976)
Festival! (1976)
X Marks the Spot (1978)
The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo (1983)
  -- adapted into a musical: The Lucky Stiff by Ahrens & Flaherty
A Virgin on the Rocks (1985)
The Five Million Dollar Prince (1986)

As by “Sarah Kemp” – all feature Dr. Tina May, a psychiatrist detective
Goodbye Pussy (1978) (US title: Over the Edge)
No Escape (1984)
Lure of Sweet Death (1986)
What Dread Hand (1987)

Best Vintage Mystery Reprint 2022, part two

 The nomination process continues across the vintage mystery blogosphere this weekend.  Others have theirs posted.  I was away the entire day yesterday, up in Milwaukee to see their version of A Christmas Carol, a delightful adaptation with some stagecraft wizardry I'd never seen before, that was partly inspired by the British Christmas pantomime tradition (the artistic director of Milwaukee Repertory, Mark Clements, is originally is from the UK). Anyway, here I am a day late with my second offering for this year's award for the Best Reprint of the Year or the ROY as it has become known among the  mystery novel cognoscenti.

Once again I've picked a book I've already reviewed in previous years.

No Questions Asked by Edna Sherry

Seems it takes a long time for my tastes in books to appear in new editions.  Stark House Press has managed to snag rights to a rare Edna Sherry book that has never seen a reprint since it first appeared back in 1949. The new edition includes the requisite introduction by our own Curt Evans and gives great detail into Sherry's interesting life, both personal and professional.  He traces her writing roots back to her pulp fiction days and mentions her partnering with two male writers (as I did oh so cursorily in one of my Sherry posts) while also offering up fascinating biographical tidbits.

I first read and reviewed the book back in September 2021. Here are a few paragraphs from what I wrote:

Sherry’s novel is a brilliant mixture of multiple subgenres, a well-oiled machine of suspense and complex conflicted characters. Steve [Lake, the cop protagonist] is enraged with jealousy on one page then overcome with guilt on the next. His snarky and mean spirited lieutenant, a bully of a rival back at the station house, is an opportunistic cop eager for the captain’s desk at the start of the book then morphs into one of Steve’s allies by the end. Vicki [Steve's wife] is torn between telling her husband the truth and continuing with her weakening deceit. The novel is also an intriguing study of the tacit policemen’s code of honor and what cops will do for one another when one of their own is implicated in behavior that could ruin his career and life. In that regard this book is more timely than ever and might be cause for debate among those highly critical of such unwritten and questionable ethics.

No Questions Asked would have made an excellent film or TV episode. Brimming with cinematic details, excellent characters, and the requisite twisty plot peppered with unexpected moments this is a second novel that shows a real pro at work. Some enterprising Hollywood type ought to get a hold of this still resonant and suspenseful novel and could make it as memorable as Sherry's debut novel Sudden Fear that in its cinematic adaptation garnered four Academy Award nominations.

The novel mixes traditional detective novel structure and plotting with espionage and inverted detective novel narrative. We get a mistrustful wife, jealous cop, rival cop looking to shame his colleague and take his place as captain, a Red Scare subplot with a dash of spy stuff, and because this is an Edna Sherry novel some colorful scenes at the horse racetrack. I enjoyed this book quite a bit for its intriguing mix of subgenres and the action oriented story.  I'm glad Stark House brought it back from the limbo of Out-of-Printdom and hope it gains a wide audience. Edna Sherry deserves to be known for all her work not just her debut, Sudden Fear, an excellent crime novel in its own right.

LEFT INSIDE: Promotional Post Card from 1938

Today for a change we have a legitimate "Left Inside" find.  I was sort of cheating for the past couple of months using inscriptions and bookplates (and there are more of those to come in case you were suffering from withdrawal) due to a lack of ephemera left inside my books. A plethora of bookplates and POIs  began turning up as well as autographs so I started taking photos and have quite a file to choose from now.  This post card, on the other hand, was a delightful and long overdue find.

And the book itself is an even better find!  One of the best purchases I've made in years. It's an incredibly rare copy of Death Walks Softly (1938) --a Nigel Morland book, one of the Inspector Tandy detective novels he wrote using his "Neal Shepherd " pseudonym. At a mere $35 it was a steal. The description promised the exceptionally scarce dust jacket though based on the price clearly the seller had no idea about that. Overall, the description noted minimal damage and a book in good condition. A bare bones description to be sure and leaving a lot of room for my usually cynical imagination to fill in with all sorts of expected flaws. It could mean anything from genuinely good to battered and worn because "good" in the book trade does not mean good at all. Usually "good" translates to barely good. In truth the rating can be used to cover a condition that ranges from usual wear to beaten to hell.  This counterintuitive grading system that's been in place for centuries frankly still baffles me. 

Imagine my surprise when I opened the package to discover a review copy in Very Good condition!  Minor wear, faint foxing to the foredges, some tanning to the edges of the dust jacket, but absolutely much better than a mere "good."

Laid inside I found a bonus not mentioned in the seller's description. A promotional post card from Constable & Co., the publisher, intended to be sent to professionals in the chemistry world. This makes me think that the book was a review copy and that the recipient was to send the card out to help promote sales. It also alludes to the fact that the book is the first in a new series although that fact is never mentioned outright. The front of the card has a miniature of the dust jacket illustration, but in black and white. The actual dust jacket is in three colors (blue, green and black). Click to enlarge for full enjoyment. You'll most likely have to enlarge the second one in order to read the message.

I own three of the four Neal Shepard books and have been promising to write about them for years now.  I think I've mentioned in passing the plot of Death Flies Low in a couple of comments over the past ten years, but still have not written up reviews of any of the books. They are all scientific detective novels with bizarre murder methods and unusual motives. Along with another brief series featuring Sgt Johnny Lamb that Morland wrote as "John Donavan" they are the best of his detective novels. Expect reviews of all the Neal Shepherd books starting in March and continuing through April. You'll have to wait for the photos of the beautiful copy of Death Walks Softly in the first review in the coming weeks.

Advent Ghosts 2021: "Who Comes This Night, This Wintry Night?"

There may be no snow on the ground in Chicago, but the Christmas lights are up, the wreaths are hanging on front doors and the sidewalks are bustling with frantic shoppers. It's the holiday season and that means it's Advent Ghosts time. Loren Eaton who blogs at I Saw Lightning Fall invites bloggers and creative writers to contribute vignettes for his Advent Ghosts celebration. It's a Flash Fiction Challenge of sorts but with a word limit set at exactly 100. No more, no less.  The only other rule is that we write in homage to the Victorian tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas time.  Be it old-fashioned, chain rattling specters or more terrifying visions of bloody horror each writer makes up his or her own mind how to interpret that rule. 

Here's my contribution inspired by vengeful, angry gods of the forest at wintertime. 

Who Comes This Night, This Wintry Night?

No one was going to spoil his Christmas hunt. He was keen on bagging a ten pointer, heard there was a stag worthy of a mounted trophy. Hoof marks in the snow! Easy tracking now.

Through the fog he saw antlers. No stag’s head beneath those horns. A sardonic grin on an eerily handsome human face. Powerful arms swung out and struck down the rifle.

“Peace on Earth, Hunter.”

A flock of starlings took flight. Their shrill calls drowned out a human scream in the forest.

Cernunnos made his way back through the wood satisfied with another Winter Solstice sacrifice.

Best Vintage Mystery Reprint of 2021, part two

Here's my second nomination for Best Vintage Mystery Reprint of 2021.I've chosen a male wirter for this second book, a classic writer whose books deserve wide readership, and a book that has been ought of print for nearly a century.

But first some mandatory plugging. Reprint of the Year (I still refer to it by the original, longer, and more specific title) is the brainchild of Kate Jackson. Everything you need to know about this years' contest can be found at her blog Cross Examining Crime. There will be two nominations from each of the twelve participating in-the-know crime fiction mavens. The first nominations were posted on everyone's blogs last week. Voting opens tomorrow, December 19 and the winner will be announced on December 30.  Head over to Kate's blog to cast your all important votes. 

Without further ado, Pretty SInsiter offers for your consideration vintage mystery reprint #2:

The Wintringham Mystery by Anthony Berkeley

• Berkeley, of course, is one of the giants from the Golden Age.  Any reprint of one of his books is cause for celebration, especially in the US where during his lifetime very few of his books were ever reprinted. As far as I know only his crime fiction under his pen name "Francis Iles" was reprinted in paperback during the 1940s and maybe 1950s. Though many of Berkeley's books were reprinted in the US in hardcover (prior to the invention of the mass market paperback in 1939) I can't think of a single Anthony Berkeley mystery that was reprinted as a paperback in the US.
• 
  The Wintringham Mystery is a rarity in Golden Age Detective Fiction.  It appeared originally as a newspaper serial in the UK then received a modest printing in hardcover under a new title -- Cicely Disappears.  After that just like its title character it disappeared into the Limbo of Out-of-Printdom for a very long time.  It's wonderful to have it back finally among the living.  I'd never seen a copy at all until this reprint came out.
• Check out the nifty floor plan at the top of this post!  I love floor plans and maps of the scene of the crime.  Give me more of them in modern crime fiction books, please.  Publishers and writers are you listening?
• The Wintringham Mystery first appeared in 1926 as a serial.  A year later under one of Berkeley's oddball pseudonyms (A. Monmouth Platts) it was published in book form by John Long Ltd. As one might expect for such an early detective novel it's teeming with conventions and tropes that even in this early time were probably considered tiresome or predictable. Yet typical of Berkeley he subverts most of these conventions and employs fanciful and innovative ideas in his plotting that makes the book a corker of a mystery.  Notably, for much of the book there is no murder! And when a violent death occurs -- once again typical of this inventive writer -- one never knows if the victim suffered an accident, murder or committed a weird type of suicide until the final chapter when all is explained.
• The plot features an amateur sleuthing duo of a young man and woman who eventually fall in love.  It reminded me of the early Christie books of the 1920s in which adventure seeking Bright Young Things did battle with secret societies as well as the detective novels of Herbert Adams who always let his detective duos find not only the killer but love in the finale.
• Readers familiar with the detective novels of Vernon Loder and John Rhode might be excited to  know that Berkeley makes use of a motif that those contemporaries of his would later use in numerous detective novels: death by devilish mechanical means. Like Loder he also employs a detective novel convention (one I have still have not revealed on this blog) that makes that death doubling surprising.
• Finally, though the book is mostly about a mysterious nearly impossible disappearance there is also a mystery about the violent death. The explanation for that death makes use of one of the Golden Age's hoariest of clichés and made me smile in the way that Berkeley manages to subvert that one as well.

Not enough reasons for you? Well, here's one more. I learned that Sarah Weinman also picked this book (along with two others) as one of her favorite Golden Age reprints for 2021.  I love it. Great minds, eh?

What are you waiting for?  Go buy your copy of this extremely inventive, thoroughly entertaining and 100% old-fashioned detective novel.  It contains everything we love that makes mystery novel reading so fun.

Best Vintage Mystery Reprint of 2021, part one

As the ubiquitous commercialization of Christmas invades our lives let us once again turn to the end of the year tradition begun by our dear friend Kate Jackson who blogs at Cross Examining Crime and look at candidates for Best Vintage Mystery Reprint of the Year.  2021 offered up a cornucopia of reprint editions of crime fiction and covered all aspects of the genre from traditional detective novels to clever thrillers to tension filled novels of suspense.  There were over 100 books on the list Kate sent us and I found over 50 more on my own, not the least of which was the surprise addition from Penguin of some long out-of-print books by Mabel Seeley, one time bestselling writer in the stable of Doubleday's Crime Club back in the heyday of that seminal publisher.  It was too late for me to nominate The Listening House (1938), her pioneering mystery novel heavily influenced by Rinehart, Eberhart and the rest of the HIBK school,  because I had already chosen my nominees.  But I think I found two excellent books despite not knowing of the Seeley's reprints.

Unlike most of the others who participate in the is end of the year ritual among the vintage mysteyr bloggers I adhere to a personal standard in choosing these "Best of the Year" reprint candidates. For those who missed this extravaganza in past years (or are too lazy to look it up from this blog's archives) I'll give you my own two most important rules for what I feel merit a wise choice of a vintage reprint:

1. A truly forgotten author, long out of print
2. Writing and plotting that contributes substantially to the genre

Enough of the preamble.  Here's Nominee #1 from your opinionated maven at Pretty Sinister Books...

 

Sing Me A Murder by Helen Nielsen

• Nielsen is an underappreciated and neglected writer over shadowed by her contemporaries Margaret Millar, Charlotte Armstrong and Ursula Curtiss who tend to get all the accolades when the talk turns to mid 20th century women mystery writers.
•  Her crime fiction uses the conventions of traditional detective fiction but often subvert them with innovative plotting, unusual characters, and contemporary insights for fans of history and sociology. Sing Me A Murder incorporates popular music into the storyline (a key character is a singer and recording artist). We also get some intriguing background on 1950s architecture, automobiles and car maintenance!  All of it help in solving the various mysteries in the novel.
• Nielsen's characters are vibrantly depicted.  Often it is the supporting players in the story who are the most attractive and get some of the best scenes.  I remember a nosy neighbor who stole the show, so to speak, in her scenes. Also a gas station attendant has a couple of great monologues. This rings true to me. That the people we take for granted, the background players in our lives, are often those who consciously or not have the greatest influence on us.
• She's a damn fine writer with an excellent command of English and sometimes startling uses of imagery and metaphor.
  
• Stark House Press has reprinted Sing Me a Murder in a twofer bound with Nielsen's equally innovative and gripping crime novel False Witness.  So you get two Nielsen books for the price of one if you buy the reprint of Sing Me a Murder. (Am I cheating?  Don't care!) 

You can read the full review of Sing Me A Murder back in the archives of 2016 posts by clicking here.  The Stark House Press reprint has been on sale since November of this year.  Highly recommended!  And make sure you read False Witness too!  The review for that second book can be found here. 

Tune in next week for my male writer nominee, a true classic and a giant of a writer in Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

POETRY SPECIAL: Wayside Bundle - Constance Hargreaves (actually Frank Baker)

 

Here's an unusual post for Pretty Sinister Books and the second one inspired by a post I read at A Hot Cup of Pleasure, a book blog hosted and written by Neeru.  This is not unrelated to the content of my own blog for the book that Neeru wrote about in the inspirational post is the renowned Miss Hargreaves, a marvelous fantasy about a fictional character who comes to life.  I wrote about Miss Hargreaves and its author Frank Baker in this blog's inaugural year and it continues to attract the attention of people who rarely come here to read about murder, mayhem and horror. Miss Hargreaves is the antithesis of the kind of books I usually write about, but it still celebrates the human imagination and is, ultimately, a treatise on the power of creativity.  These are also aspects of genre fiction that I discuss in the many books of crime, adventure and supernatural that usually pop up here.

Wayside Bundle (1959) is a book of poetry by Constance Hargreaves, the title character of Baker's fantasy novel. She never existed but in the imagination of Norman Huntley, the protagonist of that novel. Baker, as a gift for his literary friends who had read the novel and fallen in love with the character, created this volume of her poetry alluded to over the course of the novel.  Features of her character's personality crop up in the subject matter of the poems which makes it all the more enjoyable for anyone who has read the novel Miss Hargreaves.  

THINGS I LEARNED: Many of the poems are written in doggerel verse, a feature of her writing mentioned in the novel, but there are also non-rhyming poems and more formal structures like a couple of sonnets and two poems that use the arcane form of a triolet, a short poem of eight lines with only two rhymes used throughout. I'd never heard of a "triolet" until I read these two examples.  I had to look up whether or not the form actually existed.  Here is a brief overview of a triolet according to the American Academy of Poetry: "French in origin, and likely dating to the thirteenth century, the triolet is a close cousin of the rondeau, another French verse form emphasizing repetition and rhyme. The earliest triolets were devotionals written by Patrick Carey, a seventeenth-century Benedictine monk. British poet Robert Bridges reintroduced the triolet to the English language, where it enjoyed a brief popularity among late-nineteenth-century British poets." For an example of the triolet devoted to a serious topic rather than the usual lighthearted verse, they cite Thomas Hardy's "How Great My Grief," a poem I did not know. In fact, I didn't know Hardy wrote anything other than bucolic and melodramatic family saga novels.

And so since I apparently am one of the lucky souls who has acquired one of the rare 350 copies of Wayside Bundle -- ostensibly by Constance Hargreaves, but really written by Frank Baker -- I offered to post some of the poems here.  Neeru mentioned in a comment on her post that some of the Hargreaves poems from this pamphlet (it's a mere 24 pages of handmade laid paper and stapled to a flimsy cardboard cover) are published in Bloomsbury's reprint of Miss Hargreaves.  This is the edition that nearly everyone in the book reviewing blogosphere has read since it was released in 2009 and why there is a mini cult surrounding the novel these days. Neeeru left a list of the poems in her comment and I've decided to post some of the poems that were not reprinted in that edition.

Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, the poetry of Miss Constance Hargreaves!

This is a footnote that appears at the bottom of "to the Reader"
Miss Hargreaves refers to her relative in the novel when first introduced to Norman's parents

Advent Ghosts 2020: A Pair of Ghostly Vignettes

Once again we find ourselves in the week before Christmas and Loren Eaton of I Saw Lighting Fall has invited various writers to contribute their frissons of ghostly yuletide frights and visitations from beyond.  The catch?  Each micro story is a drabble consisting of precisely 100 words. No more, no less. And each must be a ghost story or an eerie tale or a twisted Roald Dahl story with a nasty surprise.  However they take shape, whether it be a traditional ghost story with an uncanny spirit or a tale of gruesome horror, they have all manifested themselves today, December 19. Here are my two contributions.  Not as nasty I usually whip up, but given these days when many loved ones have slipped away from omnipresent illness and disappeared into the ether I thought perhaps these were more suitable and slightly more hopeful.

 

   "If Only in My Dreams"

This was her favorite. Every year they saved it for last and placed it at the apex of the tree. Not a traditional star, but a glass blown dog -- long ears, comical Santa hat and sad-happy eyes. This year she’d go it alone.  Uncle Sebastian was another casualty of the ubiquitous virus.

Sudden movement distracted her from her reminiscence. The ornament left her fingers and was guided to the treetop.  In disbelief she stepped up, reached out for the floating dog, felt a warm touch.  Her hand and one unseen were placing the ornament as they did every year.

"Mark Ye Well the Song We Sing"

So what if he couldn’t see the Christmas lights anymore.  More like light pollution than Christmas spirit.  Vision going, going, soon to be gone… But his hearing was sharp and keen as ever.  Music saved him.  The carolers were approaching.  He opened the door to get the full effect.  Hazy shapes, no faces discernible.  But the sound, oh the sound.  Harmony, melody, true song.  He felt like inviting them in.  Were they even clothed?  They could do with a Irish coffee with plenty of whiskey.  Sound faded, hazy visions melted like ice and not even a footprint was left behind.

Calling All Mystery Mavens!

Have you ever wanted to be a collaborator?  Here’s your chance. I am, in a word, stuck.

I’m having difficulty finishing some research for a piece that will appear in a new reprint come Spring 2021. My brain is in a fog, my internet searches have turned up little, my reference books are lacking in a cross reference for a specific subgenre. Now I find myself as a last resort turning to my fellow readers and experts for help. Here’s your chance to be a research assistant. No pay, folks, just the minor boost to your ego and my undying gratitude.

Please let me know of any detective novels prior to 1950 that feature as the main story a murder by proxy plot. This is a story in which someone commits a murder for someone else, often the story will include the murder trade-off: “You kill this person for me and I’ll kill someone for you.” This is not the same as a character hiring a hitman to do a murder. No money is exchanged at all. The best known example is Strangers on a Train, but I know for a fact it is not the first mystery novel to use this now very well-known plot device. On my own I came up with only two obscure titles by little known writers, but I would like to know of any others preferably by better known, recognizable names.

So please leave your suggestions in the comments below. Give me the title, author, publication date, and the main plot in summary. Thanks in advance for your help. You may see your efforts in print in 2021!

Magicians and Mediums and Murder! Oh My!

Magic fans, impossible crime aficionados, and those interested in the parallels between mystery writers' use of misdirection and a magician's sleight of hand talents might be interested in the latest podcast from JJ's on going series "In GAD We Trust." Of course in that punny title the letters GAD stand for Golden Age of Detection.

Not too many recognizable detectives turn up in this discussion because frankly most of the magician detectives from the Golden Age are found in the pages of long forgotten pulp magazines from the the early 20th century. Too few of those thousands of stories have been reprinted in collections for 21st century readers. But we do cover The Great Merlini created by magician mystery writer Clayton Rawson as well as another of Rawson's magician detectives who appeared only in pulp short stories. The impossible crime mystery masterpiece The Rim of the Pit by Hake Talbot, also a magician turned mystery writer, is discussed with admiration too.


We travel all over the magic in mystery spectrum with a somewhat chronological exploration starting with some pulp stories from the very early days of that business and my discovery that Charles Fulton Oursler (aka Anthony Abbot) had been writing weird mysteries, many with magician detectives, between 1919 and 1929.  Ken Crossen and Bruce Elliott turn up, we segue into talk of seances, mediums and the fraudulent spiritualists of the early 20th century a topic that popped up in many novels of the era. The rarely mentioned, quite forgotten, American mystery writer Henry Kitchell Webster makes a long overdue appearance when I discuss his excellent crime novel The Ghost Girl and the talk of seances and mediums in books gives way to TV shows and movies that feature either magicians or seances.

It's quite a hodgepodge of a discussion. We have a lot of fun, there's much more laughter than in the other talks. (It's the American with no real filter talking, after all.)  And you will finally hear what I sound like, why I'm so odd, and why I have been drawn to macabre genre fiction since I was a child.

Why not have a listen! Click on this link Episode 4: Magic, Mummery, and Misdirection.

To Face Unafraid, The Plans That We Made

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Blessed Solstice
...and all that jazz!
In a shameless promotion for a local theater group -- the Tony award-winning Lookingglass Theatre Company -- I offer up this little holiday confection. It's a one minute montage of scenes from their original Christmas pantomime adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale "The Steadfast Tin Soldier."  I saw this with Joe as part of my birthday theater extravaganza, four plays over two days.  It was by far the best of the lot -- a magical, enchanting and transformative theatrical experience for us both.  If you live in the Chicago area I highly recommend you get tickets before it closes on January 13.  It's one of the most unique and inventive productions I've seen in the 32 years I've been living here. You may feel you were transported to Victorian era England just as we were.

Here's wishing you all a wonderful and memorable holiday season.

May all your wishes come true and may we all

look forward to a saner, more beautiful 2019.

Best Vintage Mystery Reprint of 2018, part two

Here's my second nomination for our vintage mystery blogging community competition to name the "Best Vintage Mystery Reprint of 2018." As you know, last week we all wrote about our first of two books that we think deserve the digital award and the high outpouring of love from the blogging community -- that's you! -- will help decide the winner. For all the details see Kate Jackson's post over at Cross Examining Crime. So enough of this obligatory introduction. Onto the announcement!

Once again I find myself bending the rules because I want to nominate an entire series of books that have been reprinted. Similar to last week's choice of The Threefold Cord by Francis Vivian, I thoroughly enjoy the character of the lead detective. Also, like Vivian this author I'm nominating is a literate writer who is unsparing with his sense of humor. Finally, I think the plots are original and the books are fine examples of the traditional detective novel which of course means that the books include the fast diminishing art (not altogether lost as of yet!) of "fair play clueing."

And so Pretty Sinister Books would like to nominate the newly reprinted detective novels of R. T. Campbell released by Dover, a publisher that seems to be unnoticed by almost everyone in the vintage crime fiction blogging community. And as the best of the lot I select ...drum roll...

Death for Madame by R. T. Campbell

To entice you like a manipulative marketing maven, behold the blurb taken directly from the back cover:

Max Boyle was hoping for a quiet life after the rough and tumble of World War II, but "my life with Professor Stubbs had been nothing more than one damned murder after another, and even in between murders I'd had no peace." As the professor's/amateur detective's assistant, Max is inevitably drawn into the latest imbroglio, this one involving Stubbs' drinking buddy, an amiable lunatic known as Mr. Carr. It seems that Mr. Carr's dotty old Aunt Lottie, who ran a tawdry hotel in Notting Hill, was found strangled in her rocking chair. Each boarder is mentioned in her will, and all of their alibis are weak.

There's more but I'll stop. You get the three best characters listed above, most importantly the detective Professor Stubbs.  Here are my unconventional reasons for selecting this book:

• Another under-the-radar author of detective novels that everyone should know and read. I only learned of Campbell thanks to Dover's reprints of the first two Prof. Stubbs back in the 80s and now we have four of the seven books available for our reading pleasure.
• A delightful amateur sleuth who may remind hardcore fans of such stalwart heroes of our genre as Sir Henry Merrivale, Arthur Crook, and Reggie Fortune. Stubbs is another rotund, irreverent, beer guzzling, brilliant man who suffers no fools gladly.
• Clever plots with lively characters, literate writing and the best of all--
• Laugh out loud humor like this passage from Chapter 3

He appeared in the doorway wrapped in a voluminous and violently tartan dressing gown, so violent, in fact, that I suspect that it must have been responsible for the interdict on tartan after the 1745 rising. I knew that it would have frightened the guts out of me if I had had anything in the way of a hangover.

Only Bev at My Reader's Block seems to be aware of the adventures of Professor Stubbs. Her review of Bodies in the Bookshop (click on the link to read it) is proof that Campbell still has the power to delight the most discriminating of detective fiction readers. Bev with her often perspicacious reviews has proven time and again to be highly discriminating.

Death for Madame falls at the end of the brief series of seven books, but of the two newest reprints Death for Madame best exemplifies Campbell's approach to the detective novel. The final book in the series Swing Low, Swing Death, has also been reprinted by Dover along with Unholy Dying and Bodies in the Bookshop which were the only Stubbs books available in reprint editions since the late 1980s. Swing Low... is one of the most unusual of the Prof. Stubbs mysteries. As much as I enjoyed it for a whole different set of reasons I couldn't offer it up as the "Best Vintage Crime Reprint" because it is more a satire of the modern art world than it is a detective novel.

I know that neither of my nominations will get many votes, (if any at all!) but it did give me a chance to once again remind everyone of the Francis Vivian mysteries with my mention of The Threefold Cord and to clue everyone in about the fine work that Dover Publications is doing in this Vintage Crime Fiction Renaissance. In addition to Campbell's books, over the past year Dover has managed to reprint (all without any fanfare or marketing blitz) books by Frances & Richard Lockridge, Ellis Peters, Joan Fleming (one of my favorites), and even Bill Pronzini and Max Allan Collins.  Time for us to pay a little more attention to the American publishers rather than limiting ourselves to Dean Street Press, British Library Crime Classics and HarperCollins as the hallowed triumvirate of vintage crime reprints.

Voting starts next week and the winner will be announced soon. Good luck to all the nominees!

Best Vintage Mystery Reprint of 2018, part one

Here’s a list for you. Tell me if you know what they all have in common.

• Heart to Heart by Boileau-Narcejac
• Withered Murder by Anthony & Peter Shaffer
• The Midnight Mystery by Bertram Atkey
• Three Dead Men by Paul McGuire
• Thirteen Stannergate by G. M. Wilson
• Murder on the Day of Judgment by Virginia Rath
• Stranger on the Highway by H. R. Hays

Pretty easy, I’d say. All of them are fantastic crime novels that still have not been reprinted and the original editions are difficult to  impossible to find now. Plus, all of them are books I’ve written about on this blog praising them and often dropping hints in the final paragraph to publishers that here is a title they ought to reissue. In some cases like G.M. Wilson and Boileau-Narcejac every single book ought to be reprinted. These are the books, I believe, readers would like to see back in print. The gems that have been languishing in Out-of-Printdom (some for over eighty years) and copies of the original editions are disappearing from the face of the planet. Literally! It’s very frustrating to me to see books that readers have been longing for, books that seriously cannot be found anywhere, being passed over for others that are getting their second, third and fourth lives.

Why all this talk about reprints yet again?  Because as we approach the end of 2018 Kate Jackson has rounded up a coterie of in-the-know vintage crime book bloggers who will offer up their opinions on the "Best Vintage Crime Reprint of the Year." It's an unofficial ceremony with no real trophy, only a virtual reward and a round of applause from all the readers of vintage detective and crime fiction. The best part? You get to choose the winner!

Kate will gather all the links to the various blogs at her home Cross Examining Crime.  For the next two Saturdays bloggers will write about two of their favorite books that were lucky enough to be reprinted this year. Then you help decide the winner by voting for your favorite among the 20 books that will be discussed.

I know that I have a completely different idea of what books deserve to be reprinted as opposed to publishers who want to reprint books that will sell. Also, I'm sure I have a radically different idea of what makes an award-worthy reprint from the rest of my book bloggers in this community of  Mystery Fiction worship.  So when I turned to the very long list of reprinted titles throughout this year I was looking for two things

1. A truly forgotten author, long out of print
2. Writing and plotting that contributes substantially to the genre

I’m not one who wants to reward a book for finally being reprinted when thousands of copies have been available for decades and people were unwilling to actually buy an old edition. And so I’m not going to be screaming for joy that Patrick Quentin, Christopher Bush or others like them have been reprinted. It’s wonderful to see new editions of these books, but with the exception of a handful of Bush’s mysteries none of them have been truly difficult to find if you wanted to read their books. I’m more interested in discoveries and clever writers who went of print very fast, who were overshadowed by their contemporaries, who never really had a long life in print, never got paperback editions in their lifetime but should have. In short, I'm the champion of the underdogs and the dismissed.

I was excited to see Vernon Loder’s books come back into print. I smiled when The Shop Window Murders caused a minor sensation in the vintage crime blogging community. When I wrote about the book on my blog in 2013 it was one of the most commented on posts of that year. That’s the kind of writer who deserves a revival. That's the kind of book I'm always looking for -- an unusual and imaginative detective novel, filled with humor, oddball characters, bizarre situations. That’s what the genre was all about. That's a book that deserves and award. But someone beat me to that title and picked it first.

And so I move on to my first choice for Best Reprint of 2018:

The Threefold Cord by Francis Vivian
(Actually I wanted to list all of the Inspector Knollis books, but I have to pick one title to signify the best of the lot)

Reasons?

• I’ve never heard of Vivian before it was announced that his books were being reprinted by Dean Street Press.
• His books are very difficult to find in original editions. Some cannot be found at all!
• He is an imaginative writer, inventive with his plots, and engaging in his storytelling.
• The Threefold Cord has not one, but several, damn good mysteries.

I'm not going to discuss the book. I've already done that here.

That’s the kind of book I want to see more of in this exciting age of renewed interest in detective and crime fiction of the past. Give us writers we’d never find on our own, books that are truly impossible to get hold of. And find books that celebrate the imagination – the one gift that should be the hallmark of a novelist in any genre. Believe me, these are the ingredients of books that will sell. And they make readers happy and eager to read more.

Tune in again next Saturday for my second nomination for Best Reprint of 2018. Oh, and you can wish me a happy birthday then if you'd like.

For the full details on "The Best Reprint of 2018" see this post at Kate's blog.

Bookselling Absurdity #57: Buy My Prize, Please!

I went looking for a cheap copy of a very easy to find John Dickson Carr book today and stumbled across this absurd listing on eBay. If you've been having a bad day, then prepare yourselves for a well deserved fit of hysterical laughter this will no doubt unleash.

This edition, I believe, is printed on gold leaf pages with platinum ink.

The shipping price is to the US, by the way. We always get the shaft from eBay sellers on international shipping fees even for a paperback that weighs about 5.5 ounces (155 g). You'd hope that this avaricious madman of a bookseller would at least give you free shipping if you live in Australia. But of course if you had this amount of spare Australian cash to spend on a paperback book published in 1986 (or thought you had it) you'd probably be living in a private sanitarium somewhere in Alice Springs.

Murder in the Closet Nominated for Edgar!

"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

I was so excited to read this afternoon that Murder in the Closet: Essays on Queer Clues in Crime Fiction before Stonewall (McFarland, 2016) has been nominated for an Edgar in the category Best Critical/Biographical Work.

Congratulations to Curt Evans who has been long overdue for recognition for his critical writing on the history of detective fiction, its developments and the lives of many under-appreciated and forgotten crime writers. Curt created the concept for Murder in the Closet and recruited over twenty writers from both international academia and the blogosphere. I was one of those contributors and delivered four essays, three of which made it to the final book. The final product is what I consider to be a landmark anthology of critical essays covering the treatment of LGBTQ themes in Golden Age detective fiction as well as discussing the lives of many gay and lesbian mystery writers like Hugh Wheeler & Richard Webb, Beverley Nichols, Patricia Highsmith, Nancy Spain and George Baxt.

I'm so proud to be part of this book and that Murder in the Closet has been recognized by the Mystery Writers of America. A more detailed post about the book, its contents, and its origin appears on our esteemed editor's blog The Passing Tramp.