Reprints Looming on the Horizon

I was hoping that I would be able to give you some wonderful news about a few reprints, but alas there are delays with one exciting reprint that was supposed to be out this fall.  Some of you may have already discovered that it's in the works if you've been out there a-Googling.  But I promised the publisher not to promote it until the rights are officially cleared and it's taking some time.  But rest assured the book will be here, just a bit later than planned.  Assiduous readers will find more details in a recent comment exchange at the bottom of a past post on said book.  I will say no more until I'm allowed to.

However! Don't get your panties in a bunch, gang.

There is other exciting news I can announce -- Cecil Wills detective novels are coming back!

Those lovable rascals who run Ramble House have teamed up with yours truly and they will be reissuing two rather scarce, very early Wills mystery novels featuring his series detective Geoffrey Boscobell. Both should be out by the end of this year, possibly sooner.  Author in Distress, Will's debut mystery  novel and the first with Sgt. Boscobell, will be the first released followed shortly thereafter by a new edition of the third Boscobell mystery novel Death Treads.  Plans are to reissue both as retro mapbacks the way many of the early Ramble House detective novels and mystery novels paid tribute to the highly collectible original Dell Mapbacks back in the early 2000s when RH was first reprinting Golden Age mystery fiction.  With artwork by Gavin O'Keefe and partly inspired by the maps and floor plans found in the original books I have provided these promise to be attractive new editions.  I'll be writing up a brief study of the Boscobell detective novels as a foreword to both new editions.

But that's not all, kiddos!

Galileo Publishers -- the same fine company that reprinted Clifford Witting's mysteries and will continue to do so over the next couple of years -- have secured the rights to the extremely hard to find mystery novels of Joan Cockin.  Her quirky detective novel, Villainy at Vespers, about the arcane art of brass rubbing, smuggling and bizarre murders was reviewed here at PSB back in February 2020.  All three of Cockin's detective novels starring her policeman Inspector Cam are planned for release over a two and half year period.  Villainy at Vespers will be the first. I believe it comes out in the fall or around Christmas.  It will be followed by Curiosity Killed the Cat (actually the first of the three mysteries) and end with Cockin's  highly elusive (dare I say rare?) and last mystery novel Deadly Ernest.  I've never seen a copy of that third book in my lifetime and I'm eager to get my hands on a review copy.

And the pièce de résistance, mes amies?

After years of thinking about creating my own imprint it's finally happening.  If all goes well Pretty Sinister Books will burst forth into the indie press world with the complete works of forgotten American writer Elma K. Lobaugh in the coming months.   I also have plans to reissue the nearly impossible to find detective novels by the highly original, utterly inventive, deliciously witty and thoroughly bizarre Reginald Davis. The line-up will then focus on dozens of under-appreciated and overlooked early 20th century American mystery writers whose books have languished in the Limbo of Out-of-Printdom for too long.

So much to look forward to as we head into the dog days of summer and autumn wends its brisk breezes and falling leaves our way.

Onward and upward!

Moonstone Press Giveaway - A Case for Solomon

What makes September a happy month? Another book giveaway, of course.

As announced last month A Case for Solomon, the third of Bruce Graeme’s Theodore Terhune series of detective novels and reprinted by Moonstone Press, has been released. I received my box of books a few days ago and I’m offering two copies in a giveaway.  That's right -- two copies!  One copy each to two lucky people.

Terhune reviews a courtroom transcript of a 20 year old murder trial over the course of the novel and uses the transcript as if it were a literary work, gleaning clues as to the personalities of those testifying based solely on their speech and language as recorded in the court documents. To enter this giveaway, just leave a comment below and mention your favorite courtroom detective novel. If it’s been out of print for decades you might want to mention that and I’ll see what we can do to get it back in print. I’ve been rather successful on the front lately.

This contest is open to readers in USA, Canada and UK. I’m afraid all other parts of the world are affected by significant mail restrictions or delays that are too worrisome for me to risk mailing anything from the US. I’ve read all the warnings from the USPS website and as of August 26 airmail delivery, especially to Australia and New Zealand, is too unpredictable. If you live in either country I apologize that you miss out again.

Anonymous comments will not be eligible. Please make sure that you leave your name or some sort of ID when you leave your comment. If you win you will be responsible for emailing me your name and mailing address. Runners-up will be selected if I do not hear from winners within three days.

CONTEST CLOSED

The Pretty Sinister Influence, or News on Reprints & Reissues

Lots of news on my overwhelming influence in getting books back into print.  OK, that's an exaggeration.  But suggestion and influence seem to commingle these days.

First. the Bruce Graeme Project of reissuing the Theodore Terhune mystery books continues with the release of the third title from Moonstone Press: A Case for Solomon.

It's been on sale since the beginning of this month at various internet sites in the UK and should be available from the US based Amazon very soon. At Book Depository the listing for this book does not have Bruce Graeme's name as the author, but instead has mine as the author of the introduction. Oops! But my often bruised ego doesn't mind that at all.

The rest of the Terhune mysteries will follow in quick succession:
Work for the Hangman in September, Ten Trails to Tyburn in October, A Case of Books in November, And A Bottle of Rum in December.

A few months ago Stark House sent me a copy of their latest Black Gat paperback reprint of Tears for Jessie Hewitt by Edna Sherry. I was surprised and happy to see this back in print. Back in 2019 I reviewed Sherry’s novel and had good things to say about it. For those of you who like noir fiction it comes recommended. A snippet from my blog post appears inside the book as the last laudatory blurb. You can read my full review on Tears for Jessie Hewitt here.  

Out of curiosity I wanted to what else Greg Shepherd had reprinted in his Black Gat imprint. These are single, smaller books in old-fashioned 4.25" x 7" size rather than his 2-for-1 volumes in larger trade paperback size. Imagine my delight when I saw this:

Yet another book I raved about on this blog.  And there's a portion of my rave right on the front cover! If you want to read the rest of the review for So Young, So Wicked click here.

Saving the best news for last.  The long awaited reprint of Pray for the Dawn by Eric Harding will soon be out from our good friends at Ramble House.  As soon as I get my copy I'll be sure to let everyone know it’s available for purchase.  In quirky style so suited for Ramble House Pray for the Dawn will have an Afterword by Yours Truly rather than a foreword.  With an afterword I was able to talk about all sorts of surprise elements in the book without worrying about ruining the story for anyone. 

Expect book giveaways and fun contests to win copies when the Moonstone and Ramble House books are ready for sale.

Home Is the Prisoner/The Little Lie Gets Booklist Rave

Some of you may know that I was involved in another Jean Potts reprint from Stark House Press. After the rousing success of the first Potts twofer -- Go Lovely Rose/The Evil Wish -- the publisher followed up with another two-in-one volume. That book, Home Is the Prisoner/The Little Lie, was released earlier this month. Greg Shepard sent me yet another glowing review from Booklist.  Although this one didn't achieve a "Booklist Starred" rating like last year's Potts reprint the two new novels clearly come highly recommended.  See the full review below.

Home Is the Prisoner/The Little Lie is available online by visiting the Stark House Press website or any of the usual online bookselling sites. This volume includes another foreword by me about Potts' literary style and innovative contributions to the genre as a crime fiction pioneer.

NEWS FLASH: Jean Potts, Attention Getter

As many of you already know Go, Lovely Rose/The Evil Wish will soon be available for purchase from Stark House (release date Feb 15, 2019). Greg, the publisher, received a lovely notice from Booklist -  one of their treasured starred reviews.  Here it is:

Go, Lovely Rose / The Evil Wish.
by Jean Potts
Feb. 2019. 304p. Stark House, paper, $19.95
(ISBN: 9781944520656)
Stark House's ongoing project—reissuing high-class crime fiction from a vanished time—strikes gold with this double-decker release of two fine novels by the nearly forgotten Potts. Go, Lovely Rose dates from 1954; The Evil Wish from 1962. Employing techniques both classic and contemporary, the two tales share the meticulous build-up of tension typical of the Golden Age and the modern tendency to use a crime as an excuse to explore the lives affected. The "Rose" of the first novel is dead when the narrative begins, a crumpled heap with her skull bashed in. There's some detective work here—keep an eye on that headband—but Potts uses rich, vivid language to examine the damage Rose did to a handful of people with their own secrets. If Hitchcock had written a novel, it would have been similar to The Evil Wish, with its study of the corroding effects of guilt. Two sisters plot to murder their father and his fiancée. Turns out they don't have to, but their obsessions—What did the neighbors overhear? What's in that diary?—lead them to near madness. And real crime. Two masterpieces here.    — Don Crinklaw

As the editor of Booklist told us in his cover letter: "A star beside the title indicates a work judged to be outstanding in its genre." More importantly, Booklist is the reviewing and news journal of the American Library Association, the magazine which thousands of librarians across the US use to make their decisions in purchasing new books for their collections. Let's hope that the review can drum up sales for libraries all over the USA. That would make me immensely happy!

From the Department of Life's Unexpected Ironies: The author of this review is writer and English professor Don Crinklaw who not only is the husband of mystery writer Elaine Viets, he also used to be a somewhat regular customer of mine over ten years ago when I was selling books as the owner of Pretty Sinister Books, my former online bookstore.

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.

Coming Soon: Jean Potts Reprints!

Well, I've just handed in my final draft of the foreword for the next exciting reprint from Stark House Mystery Classics. After reading my piece on Go, Lovely Rose and my astonishment at what a great writer Potts was Greg Shepard began reading her crime fiction. Like me he was impressed with her books, like me he also couldn't stop reading them. In fact he's read more than me as of this date and has pointed me to some of her best ones I still have yet to read. For several months Greg did dogged research, searching for the proper literary executor in order to gain permission to reprint her books. His hard work paid off.

Coming in a few months the world will have the first paperback reprint of two Jean Potts books in over fifty years. Go, Lovely Rose, her Edgar award winning debut detective novel will appear side by side with her Edgar nominated novel The Evil Wish. That's two of Potts' best novels in a single volume! And both reviewed here at Pretty Sinister Books.

When the book is available for purchase I'll make another announcement. But I know this book is ready for the printer and eager to get out there into the world.  Though I didn't do as much work as Greg did I'm very proud to have been largely responsible for getting Jean Potts back into print. This is the first time I can definitely claim that honor after years of being only influential in reviving interest in other writers and seeing their books eventually get back into print. With luck we'll see more of Jean Potts in Stark House Press reprints.

NEW STUFF: The Other Passenger reprint coming soon!

Valancourt Books tells me that their exciting reprint of The Other Passenger by John Keir Cross will be released on December 12.

Exciting for at least two reasons:

1. It's the first time this landmark collection of supernatural and weird fiction has been reprinted in its entirety since its original publication in 1944.  In 1961 an abridged reprint of nine stories, omitting half of the total 18 tales in the original, was released by Ballantine Paperbacks.

2. This edition has a new introduction by some know-it-all genre fiction expert named J. F. Norris. He sure gets around.

They dared to put my name on the front cover. Such a honor. And if you get out a magnifying glass you can even see it!

I had a lot of fun researching this one. Learned all about Keir Cross' juvenile mystery and fantasy fiction (discussed in my The Other Side of Green Hills post), his career as a radio program scriptwriter, and his influence on other genre fiction writers.

Go order your copy (hardcover, paperback or digital) today! Please. Click here to go to the Amazon page for the book.

Calling All Johnny Fedora Fans!

A few days ago I received an email from Desmond Cory's son Richard McCarthy announcing the latest eBook release in the Johnny Fedora series. Here's the publicity for it:

A British secret agent in a deadly manhunt at the dawn of the Cold War.
Trieste 1952.
Johnny Fedora, a debonair British secret agent, knew he had only one week to prevent the Communists taking over Trieste - if he could stay alive to find the dreaded political genius Panagos, whose acumen for anarchy had left a trail of bloody revolution across the continent.
Spy adventure in the historical background of Europe soon after WWII.
In a relentless race against the clock, Johnny finds: a dead man's last message, a beautiful woman falling into his arms, a hidden photograph, and three unknown women whose initials spell out an A B C code.
Winner of the Sunday Times' Best Crime novel of the year, Desmond Cory delivers yet again a near-perfect mystery novel, written with intelligence and laced with wit, mystery and suspense.

This is not a brand new book. Intrigue is the fourth espionage novel in the Johnny Fedora series. Also published as Trieste in the US, the book originally appeared in 1954. That Best Crime Novel line is referring to the 1954 winner. I believe that Richard is hoping to release as many of his father's books as he can in digital format. We exchanged emails several years ago when he released Cory's previously unpublished novel On the Gulf as an eBook. I've remained on his email contact list ever since.

The email ends with this paragraph:

You are also very welcome to post a review of what you think of the book on Amazon - all opinions about the book are very welcome.

Lastly, please feel free to visit the new Johnny Fedora website for more information about this series.

GUEST POST: Martin Edwards, The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books

In lieu of Friday's Forgotten Books this week I have a guest post by blogger, mystery novelist, genre historian and friend, Martin Edwards.  This is part of the blog tour to help promote his crime fiction survey The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books. Over to you, Martin --

 *  *  *

One of the joys of delving into the world of “forgotten books” is that there are so many hidden gems waiting to be discovered. Over the years, I’ve come across quite a few as a result of following Pretty Sinister Books –- examples that spring to mind include Q. Patrick’s The Grindle Nightmare, and Claude Houghton’s I Am Jonathan Scrivener.

In writing The Golden Age of Murder (Harper Collins), I tried to offer fellow enthusiasts a guide to a range of books produced by members of the Detection Club in the Thirties, as well as talking about the authors’ lives, the real life crimes that inspired many of their novels, and the way the times in which they lived influenced their work. My latest book, The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books (British Library) has a different angle. I’ve tried to offer a fresh look at the way in which the genre evolved over the first half of the twentieth century.

The approach is broadly chronological – from The Hound of the Baskervilles to Strangers on a Train (and wow, mention of those two very different books illustrates the remarkable scale of that evolution over fifty years!) – but along the way I examine a variety of themes. So there are chapters devoted to stories about impossible crimes, country house mysteries, and so on.

Conan Doyle’s novel, and Highsmith’s masterpiece, are exceptionally famous, but there are plenty of titles which I hope will come as a surprise to readers, however well-versed they are in the genre. The Medbury Fort Murder by George Limnelius and Death on the Down Beat by Sebastian Farr are just two examples. This is, after all, not a list of “the best” (supposedly) or even my own special favorites, but rather a book that focuses on an eclectic mix of novels (plus a smattering of short story collections) with a view to telling a story. Some of the choices may seem controversial, or even just idiosyncratic, but I hope that readers who come to the narrative with an open mind will find that the selections make sense – kind of! We will see.

I must just add that John Norris’s perceptive critiques have made Pretty Sinister Books one of my favorite blogs about forgotten mysteries. Thanks, John, for hosting this guest post. Over the course of the next few days, I’ll be travelling around the blogosphere, talking about different aspects of the book, and of classic crime. Here’s a list of the remaining stops on my blog tour:

Sat., Jul 1 – Confessions of a Mystery Novelist (interview)
Sun., Jul 2 – Eurocrime
Mon., Jul 3 – Tipping My Fedora
Tue., Jul 4 – Desperate Reader
Wed., Jul 5 – Clothes in Books
Thu., Jul 6 – Emma’s Bookish Corner
Fri., Jul 7 – Random Jottings

The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books will be published in the UK on July 7 by the British Library, and in the US on August 1 by Poisoned Pen Press.

The Story of Classic Crime Blog Tour

This Friday there will be no Friday's Forgotten Book.  Instead I'll be one of the ten participating bloggers in a promotional web tour for the upcoming release of Martin Edwards' The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books.  Similar to 1001 Midnights and the more recent Books to Die For Martin's survey of overlooked detective and crime fiction addresses decidedly obscure and utterly forgotten books in the genre which nevertheless helped shape the evolution of what we know as the modern crime novel.

Below is the full schedule with links to all the blogs. As the posts continue to appear over the next week and a half I'll update the links to take you to the specific post of n the tour (Right now they go to the blog home page).

All of the posts were written by Martin himself and are designed for each blog and its particular audience. The post for Pretty Sinister Books talks about our mutual obsession for obscure detective fiction and how my blog helped contribute to the creation of the book. Quite an honor, I think! One post will be written by the blog host -- Margot Kinberg ("Confessions of a Mystery Novelist") -- who will interview Martin. That one ought to be one of the more interesting pieces to read.

Hope you stop by to read each post and get some insight into why Martin wrote the book and how it came into being. The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books will be released on July 6 in the UK and August 1 in the US. Pre-orders via internet bookseller sites are, of course, available now.


The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books Blog Tour

Wed., June 28 – Lesa’s Book Critiques
Thurs., June 29 – The Rap Sheet
Fri., June 30 – Pretty Sinister Books
Sat., Jul 1 – Confessions of a Mystery Novelist (interview)
Sun., Jul 2 –Eurocrime
Mon., Jul 3 – Tipping My Fedora
Tue., Jul 4 – Desperate Reader
Wed., Jul 5 – Clothes in Books
Thu., Jul 6 – Emma’s Bookish Corner
Fri., Jul 7 - Random Jottings

The Hex Murder has been reprinted!

Back in October 2016 I wrote an enthusiastic review on an obscure mystery novel about the Amish and powwow men. It's called The Hex Murder by Forrester Hazard who in reality was Alexander Williams, Jr. Much to my surprise the book has been reprinted by Coachwhip Publications thanks in large part to my review. It's been reissued under Williams' real name rather than his pseudonym, something of a standard practice in vintage mystery reprinting these days.

Curt Evans had a hand in it all, of course. I give him yet another digital standing ovation for his great work in reissuing out of print books -- especially very rare titles -- for the readers and fans like you who crave them.

Go buy a copy now!  (I've been saying this a lot lately.)

And to make it all the easier for you just click on this link and you'll be taken to the page instantly.

What a Friend I Have in Sarah

While I was celebrating my anti-holiday last month Pretty Sinister Books was being recommended by Sarah Weinman at both her blog devoted to Domestic Suspense and her Tumblr page.

DomesticSuspense.com began as a way to promote her excellent anthology Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives (which of course I urge you to read.  Go and buy a copy now!). In her post dated December 23, 2013 she says the website will continue to focus on women crime writers who delved into that subgenre. She talks about Mildred Davis, her debut novel which won the Edgar in 1948 and points curious readers to my review of that book, The Room Upstairs. Though I know little of Davis' short fiction I suspect her work may appear in a second volume of domestic suspense if Sarah decides to do a sequel to Troubled Daughters.... I am hoping there will be one.

Many thanks also to Sarah (who confessed to me once she was a lurking fan of this blog for many months) who mentioned PSB along with Curt Evan's The Passing Tramp as two of the best blogs writing about vintage crime fiction.

Blog Bytes Follow-up

My thanks to Bill Crider for the free publicity in his "Blog Bytes" column of the July 2013 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.  Finally located a place (very close to where I live, in fact) that sells the magazine and will be able to pick it up regularly now.

Turns out there is an amazing newsstand in Evanston, the oldest newsstand in the area dating back to the turn of the century. The photo of the neon sign (at left) is from the original location for Chicago-Main Newsstand which was shuttered between 1993-2001 while it underwent a change in ownership and extensive rehabbing and restoration. This Evanston location is considerably smaller than the City Newsstand on Chicago's west side, but they had EQMM and AHMM among many, many other literary and fiction magazines.  I found a magazine called Book Source which I never heard of and had to buy. Book Source includes articles about the antiquarian book trade including lists of book fairs, sales, auctions and even a column about extremely rare books for sale.  I may even subscribe to that magazine.

For all those who haven't seen the bit about Pretty Sinister Books in EQMM, here it is:

All those posts appeared during the month of February this year, so that gives you some idea of the deadline schedule of the mystery magazine. Bill must've written the piece around February 10 when the latest of those articles "LEFT INSIDE: Ann's Library Card"  was posted.

Other blogs mentioned in the column are Yet Another Crime Fiction Blog, The Graveyard Shift, International Noir Fiction and Men Reading Books. They are all more interested in the present than I am, so if contemporary crime fiction is more your thing then head on over for opinions, reviews and interviews of the new stuff out there.  And keep on coming back here for the obscure, forgotten, and well worth reading.

Thanks again, Bill!

Queen's Recommendation

I received word from a blog reader who goes by the Salingeresque sobriquet Holden that Pretty Sinister Books has been mentioned as a recommended mystery blog in the latest issue (July 2013) of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. And this is apparently the second time the blog was mentioned! Why doesn't anyone tell me anything?  Thanks, Holden for the heads up.

I'm off to find a copy later today. There's a newstand on the corner of Michigan and Chicago and they might just have a copy. Or else I will have to take a subway ride to the nearest Barnes & Noble. When I find one I will be updating this post with a scan of the actual article. Yes, I need proof just like all the rest of you Doubting Thomases out there.