FRIDAY'S FORGOTTEN BOOKS, Friday, December 30, 2016

Black Is The Color – John Brunner (from archives: Randy Johnson)
As a young boy discovering a love of reading even as I was learning, John
Brunner was an early find, third I believe, behind Heinlein and Norton. The early stuff was mostly from the Ace Doubles. Black Is The Color is a little bit different. From 1969, part spy novel, it has a plot line that would fit in in things happening today.
Mark Hanwell, a disillusioned young man returns home to London after six months in Spain where he’d met and worked for The Big Famous Writer he only ever refers to as Hairy Harry. It didn’t take long for him to realize his hero had feet of clay, making the bulk of his money selling pornography and weed. In fact, the last four pieces of writing under his name had been written by Mark.
Home, he goes looking for a woman who’d sent him a few letters early on, then stopped. A singer, he traced the bank d she’d been with falling into as different a world as he’d ever run into.
Sadism was part of it, voodoo, a plan to start a race war in England, Mark finds his work an and the man she’d taken up with, a South Africaner.
I’d never heard of this book before I came across it. Good stuff

Yvette Banek, Favorite Books of 2016
Joe Barone, THE LABOURS OF HERCULES, Agatha Christie
Les Blatt, FAREWELL MY LOVELY, Raymond Chandler
Brian Busby, THE TEN BEST BOOK BUYS
Bill Crider, SHARP PRACTICE, John Farris
Martin Edwards
Charles Gramlich, TEN FAVORITE READS 
Richard Horton, THE PLANET STRAPPERS, Raymond Z Gallun
Jerry House, THE MUCKER, Edgar Rice Burroughs
Nick Jones, What I Read this Year
George Kelley, IF THIS GOES WRONG, ed. Hank Davis
Margot Kinberg,  The Masala Murder, Madhumita Bhattacharyya 
Rob Kitchin, THE CHOIRBOYS, Joseph Wambaugh
Kate Laity, BUILD MY GALLOWS HIGH, Geoffrey Homes
B.V. Lawson, MISS MADELEINE MACK, DETECTIVE, Hugh Cosgrove Weir
Steve Lewis/William Deeck, HOLIDAY HOMICIDE, Rufus King 
Todd Mason, ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, STORIES TO BE READ WITH YOUR DOOE LOCKED, ed. Harold Q, Masur
Neer, FIVE MYSTERIES, Rhode Rinehart, Jackson Vine
J.F. Norris, SING ME A MURDER, Helen Nielsen
Matt Paust, CONVERSATIONS WITH ROBERT SILVERBERG, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro
Reactions to Reading, 2016 Reading (Australian Women's Challenge)
James Reasoner, THE KNIFE SLIPPED, A.A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner) 
Richard Robinson, Favorite Books Read in 2016

Gerard Saylor, THE OUTLAW ALBUM, Daniel Woodrell 
Kevin Tipple, A ROOM FULL OF BONES, Elly Griffiths
TomCat, THE BEST AND WORST OF 2016
TracyK, THOU SHELL OF DEATH, Nicholas Blake