Short Story Wednesday: "Button, Button" Richard Matheson

"Button, Button", Richard Matheson 

A package arrives at Norma and Arthur Steward's house with a gadget inside with a button on it. Shortly after a man arrives and announces to the couple that if they push the button they will kill someone in the world, and receive $50, 000 in exchange. Norma is intrigued by this, insisting that they are part of an experiment, and nothing will happen if they push the button. Except maybe they would get paid and could do the many things she was longing for. Arthur is repulsed by the idea and by his wife. This is a very well -written story although you will probably guess the ending. This was, of course, on the Twilight Zone. You can watch it on you tube. It was also the plot of the 2009 movie THE BOX.

Steve Lewis 

George Kelley 

Martin Edwards 

Jerry House 

Kevin Tipple 

Monday, Monday

 

Off to see BAD SHABBOS. A comedy is what we need. Luckily the theater near me is still trying to have some alternative films. Because everything else is for kids or action movies. 

I broke down and ordered Peacock. Decided I wanted to see POKER FACE enough to be worth it. A few other shows too. 

The first three episodes of THE BEAR were not so hot but I liked 4 although I am betting most viewers don't.

Still wading through THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE. I am just not a fantasy reader to my detriment, I am sure. It's popular with many readers, I understand. 

What do people who live in Manhattan do for the fourth of July. I mean Central Park is huge but can you barbecue there?  Although it's been a long time since I had anything barbecued. 

What's up with you guys?  

 

Good Turnout for Megan-maybe 75.

Mama to the rescue although I don't like doing it. She can't do it herself because she's in the green room. I had to correct the date on their website, make them order more books, make them get enough chairs and prepare an introduction for a clerk to read who was about to say. "Here is Megan Abbott". She was impressed enough with what she read, she bought a book.Of course I can only step in when she is in Detroit. But Indy book stores do a much better job of it because they know their customers and do it all the time. Barnes and Noble has been very good to Megan though. They did a great interview online. This store doesn't do many live events. But there were as nice as could be to the panicked Mom. Even when we tried to steal chairs from the coffee bar. 

My Choices

 

THE 100 BEST MOVIES OF THE 21st CENTURY

Reader’s Choice: My Ballot

Perfect Days

2023

Tár

2022

The Great Beauty

2013

Before Sunset

2004

The Lives of Others

2006

No Country for Old Men

2007

Moonlight

2016

45 Years

2015

Calvary

2014

Phantom Thread

2017

FFB: THE DAMNED, Andrew Pyper

 

THE DAMNED, Andrew Pyper

I was attracted to this book in my search for a ghost story and because it is mostly set in the suburb next to mine: Royal Oak. MI. Although there is technically a ghost in it I would classify it as a horror story more than a ghost story.

In order for the story to work, you must embrace the idea of a child born bad. I was never quite able to do this so that somewhat impeded my enjoyment of the book.

Twins are born to a family. From the beginning the girl is trouble although just how is never much discussed until the ending. Both almost die at birth and are brought back. At age sixteen, both die again in a fire and this time only the boy is saved. He has always been haunted by his sister in life and now in death, things don't change much. His ability to have a normal life is stopped at every turn.

This was a very well-written book and the setting was interesting to me. Pyper made good use of both Royal Oak and Detroit. But his sister never came to life for me-either alive or dead. There were lots of good plot twists in it, lots of great detail. But I guess I needed someone who didn't slip though my fingers every time I tried to understand her. Her name was Ash and that about sums up her presence

Short Story Wednesday: "The Pilgrimage" William Maxwell

 

William Keepers Maxwell Jr. (August 16, 1908 – July 31, 2000) was an American editor, novelist, short story writer, essayist, children's author, and memoirist. He served as a fiction editor at The New Yorker from 1936 to 1975. An editor devoted to his writers, Maxwell became a legendary mentor and confidant to many of the most prominent authors of his day. Although best known as an editor, Maxwell was a highly respected and award-winning novelist and short story writer. His stature as a celebrated author has grown in the years following his death. 

"The Pilgrimage" almost certainly is a story based on something experienced or something heard by Maxwell. It gets so much right about tired tourists on the road. The Ormsby's are an American couple touring France. On the way to Paris, they make a detour to find a restaurant that friends have told them about, saying "it was the best dinner they had in their life" How can the couple not have dinner at a place that specialized in truffles and also " deserts made from little balls of various ice cream in a beautiful basket of spun sugar with a spun-sugar bow." 

They drive through village after village and finally come on a place that seems right except the menu has neither of the dishes they are seeking. And neither does another place on the town square. They are completely obsessed with having the things they were told about and act in the way Americans are always accused of acting. 

This is a satirical story, of course, meant to point out the problems with tourists in foreign settings. Maxwell is a master of this sort of story. And I can't say enough about the quality of his novels, especially TIME WILL DARKEN IT, THE FOLDED LEAF and THE CHATEAU.

 TracyK

George Kelley 

Casual Debris 

Todd Mason 

Monday, Monday

 Megan begins her book tour today. She gets in Detroit on Friday but just for a day. Hoping we get a decent turnout for her. 

Saw two movies this week. THE LIFE OF CHUCK, which I didn't think much of and it hit a little too close to home for comfort.The other was a restoration of THE ANNIHILATION OF FISH with James Earl Jones and Lynn Redgrave. The sound was poor and we struggled to hear it. But it seemed like a nice enough film about old age. 

Ate out way too much this week: Mexican, Turkish, Thai, Thai. I don't dare stand on the scale. 

Reading THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE for a book group. It is very thick. It certainly seems like people like it so maybe I will too.  

Watching DUSTER (Max) STICK (Apple) and OUTRAGEOUS (BritBox) but nothing that really thrills me. I find myself watching compilations of various themes on You tube a lot. FOr instance, the best dancing sequences, the best crime stories. They are inserting anti-abortion commercials in some of them.  

Very hot here. Hope it doesn't last long. 

What are you doing lately?  

FFB: A JUDGMENT IN STONE, RUTH RENDELL

 

I think I have probably read all of Rendell and seldom been let down. And that is quite a lot of books. This may be her best (imho). 

"Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write." That is the first line and the boiling center of this thoroughly frightening novel. Eunice and her religion fanatic friend, Joan, spur each other on and almost all of it stems from Eunice"s illiteracy. How even the sight of books terrifies her and fills her with hate. It's hard to imagine someone could finish even a few years of school without getting found out, but you still hear such stories from time to time. The cleverness of fooling people speaks to a certain kind of intelligence. So illiteracy must be partly something else. 

Short Story Wednesday 2 Wednesday's Child, Yiyun Li

 Incorporating her own story about the death of her two sons, this story is about a mother who loses her only child when the fifteen year old lies down on a train track. Traveling in the Netherlands, she recalls her mother's cruelty to her after that death and how her failure to form a relationship with her mother may have contributed to her daughter's death. 

Li has a new book out about her double death. It was reviewed last week in the NYT Book Review.  This collection was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. 

George Kelley 

Jerry House 

Short Story Wednesday

Lots of your favorite mystery writers on tee shirts at TEEPUBLIC. 

This is mine.  

I will collect your links.  

Monday, Monday

 

 The movie was not without interest, but the central character just couldn't hold my attention. And Pedro Pascal seemed much less interesting than on The Last of Us. Chris Evans was the best thing about it.

On TV, I watched the original The Four Seasons, and I remembered it as better although I admired the ordinariness of its cast. 

Finished Mornings Without Mii, that last third about the cat's death was tough. Reading Wild Dark Shore, Charlotte McConaghy-terrific writing although the whole book is about the earth dying. Getting a theme here? 

Jane Harper's The Survivors on Netflix is good enough over 6 episodes, but it sure seems like no one ever comes out of the water in Tasmania. 

Boy, I sure sound surly this morning. And the topper: 

We had a murder-suicide in our building but it's never been in the newspaper. I guess what's the point of a story like that when no court case will come out of it. Still..He lived next door to me when I first moved in and he was always slamming doors and shouting so it's not surprising. 

What about you?  

FFB: LABRAVA, Elmore Leonard

 

Although LaBrava certainly plays a major part in this Florida-based mystery, the story belongs to Jean, a former Hollywood B actress who LaBrava falls for. Some shady types are giving her a hard time and Jean and LaBrava and the third member of their triumvirate, Maurice, outsmart them. The crackling dialog never crackled better. This is one of his few books (OUT OF SIGHT, UP IN HONEY'S ROOM) where a woman so dominated the action. Leonard certainly gets pleasure out of describing Jean. I don't know if this is my favorite Leonard (maybe Freaky Deaky or Get Shorty) but it's a fine one. 

Short Story Wednesday "The Richest Babysitter in the World" Curtis Sittenfeld

 

Curtis Sittenfeld likes to write stories and novels that intersect with real people-celebrities that is-- and she is often good at it. In "The Richest Babysitter in the World" from SHOW DON'T TELL, a college student is hired by a couple to care for their young child in the hours that the wife is working on her dissertation. Very little happens in this story although the writing is lucid and we find out by the end that the couple are stand ins for the Bezos. Although I liked the story, I did not find any compelling reason to write it-unless perhaps Sittenfeld did babysit for the Bezos'. There is a brief examination of the problems of using a service like Amazon-and the realization that in society today it is hard not to. Also an examination of how he treats his employees as contrasted to how they treated her. (Bezos' wife is a philanthropist and you can see that tendency in how she treats the babysitter compared to him)  I don't mind stories where nothing happens, but this took that pretty far. The story originally appeared in THE ATLANTIC.

George Kelley 

Kevin Tipple 

TracyK 

Todd Mason 

Richard Horton 

Jerry House 

Casual Debris 

Monday, Monday

Not much to report. I am finally recovered from Covid. Went to a strange play about Jorge Borges today. But other than that I read (La Brava by Elmore Leonard and Mornings Without Mii (Mayumi Inaba) and watched "Oh, so much TV." 

DEPARTMENT Q, PERNILLA (Netflix) and rewatched ABSENCE of MALICE). I know there was a lot more TV but forgetting what. 

What about you?  

FFB MORNINGSTAR: GROWING UP WITH BOOKS, Ann Hood

 

                                    

MORNINGSTAR: GROWING UP WITH BOOKS is a favorite type of book for me. In it, novelist Ann Hood relates the details of her formative years through the books she chose to read at various ages. I am not going to tell you the books she chose because you will enjoy seeing what she read yourself  from her first books onward. We learn a lot about her middle-class family and the town of Warwick, RI. where she watched the decline of the town through her formative years. Mills and factories closed, better stores moved out of town or disappeared. A familiar story by now.

All of the books she talks about (and it's not all that many) were books that meant something to me too. And the thing that I liked best about it was her choices were original, realistic, different. Not the sort of books found on BY THE BOOK in the TIMES each week. But instead what a girl might stumble on herself when her family were not readers. This was also the case with me. No one ever guided my reading so I read inappropriate books often. No one told me to read books like FROM THE TERRACE or BABBITT or THE DEVIL IN BUCKS COUNTY or THE IDIOT, but I did.

This is a short book and Hood confines her discussion to about a dozen books, all which resonated with the times she lived in, her age at the time, and the country itself. . I would have like a list at the back of other books she read but did not include here. Especially childhood favorites.

I enjoyed this short book, almost more memoir than literary discussion but that is just fine. 

Short Story Wednesday: "The Terrapin" Patricia Highsmith

 

Several times, Patricia Highsmith named this as her favorite of her short stories. It appeared in the October 1962 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. 

Victor, at eleven, lives with his mother in New York City. She insists that he wear short pants, recite poetry for her friends, and in many ways humiliates him. One day she brings home a terrapin with the idea of making turtle soup. Victor, friendless himself, begins to play with the terrapin. But his mother quickly begins preparation for her soup. She mercilessly throws the animal in hot water and carves him up. That night...well, you can guess if you haven't read it yourself. 

Many claim the mother in this story bore a strong resemblance to Highsmith's mother. Mary Highsmith told everyone she had tried to abort Patricia using turpentine.  Patricia did not attend her mother's funeral. 

 George Kelley

Kevin Tipple 

Steve Lewis 

Jerry House 

Crimereads 

 

Monday, Monday

                                                                 COVID

                Missed Kevin's graduation, Megan's visit, yes, all of it. 

                Who gets Covid a week after recovering from the flu? That red line shot up in a                                                                             second.

                                                        But tell me about you.  

FFB: ORDINARY GRACE, William Kent Krueger

 (from the archives)

ORDINARY GRACE won just about all the awards the crime fiction community has to offer that year, and it is easy to see why. In this book, Krueger takes a break from his series detective and steps into a story that is timeless, and the crime, although not incidental, is not the primary attraction here.

The story takes place in a small Minnesota town in 1961. (The period detail is superb). Nathan Drum is a minister. He was set to be a lawyer until the war took any desire for courtroom combat out of him. This career change doesn't sit well with his wife, an atheist, who saw her life unfolding differently. But the family grows, with a daughter and two sons. Our narrator is Frank, a thirteen year old, who also serves as our detective when things begin to go awry. Much of the drama concerns the Drums' relationship with a family down the road that represents the life Mrs. Drum hoped to have.

This is book is about prejudice, the striving of ordinary men to do good, the misreadings that children make of adult situations, the conflict between the religious and the nonreligious, the rush to judgment both a town and its ill-prepared police force almost makes.

It is a deep and lovely written book that is worth your time. Highly recommended.

Short Story Wednesday, Ron Scheer looks at LIVIN' ON JACKS AND QUEENS,

 

Robert J. Randisi, ed., Livin’ on Jacks and Queens

This is an entertaining anthology of 14 stories about gamblers and gambling in the Old West. Editor Randisi has assembled a notable gathering of western writers, providing an array of storytelling styles and imaginative treatments of the subject. The names of several contributors will be quickly recognized: Johnny Boggs, John D. Nesbitt, Matthew P. Mayo, Nik Morton, and Chuck Tyrell.

To these he has added a story of his own, plus the yarns of two women writers who may be new to some readers: Christine Matthews and Lori Van Pelt.

My favorites of the bunch include Ms. Matthews’ “Odds on a Lawman,” which tells of a succession of sheriffs who each assumes a tenure of service to a frontier town, before dying or disappearing for various reasons, on which the townsmen place bets until the turn of events claims one of them the winner. It’s an amusing and well-written tale that brings its Dickensian cast of characters to entertaining life, while we wait to see the fate that befalls each of the town’s series of sheriffs.

For a colorful portrayal of the daily life and business of a riverboat gambler, Nik Morton brings that world vividly to life in his story, “Hazard.” In “Acey-Deucey,” John D. Nesbitt’s central character is hired by a woman to retrieve an emerald pendant once given to her by a paramour. Finally locating the current owner of the gem, he has to win a game of cards before he can take possession of it.

Robert Randisi

Randisi’s story, “Horseshoes and Pistols” is so quirky, I kept thinking that it qualified as Twilight Zone material. In it, two men are forced to bet their lives on a game of horseshoes. Matthew Mayo’s “Pay the Ferryman” veers off in another direction, as a man on the run escapes into what might well be called “the heart of darkness.”

My favorite story in the collection was penned by a favorite storyteller, Chuck Tyrell. His “Great Missouri River Steamship Race” evokes a period of river travel from the point of view of a youngster working as a fireman aboard a steamship with a regular route between St. Louis and Fort Benton. Tyrell brings his gifts for characterization, dialogue, and suspense to this story with its echoes of Huckleberry Finn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

George Kelley 

Jerry House 

Kevin Tipple 

TracyK

Monday, Monday

 Reading RIPLEY UNDERGROUND, which is enjoyable. Love the linear, single POV plot.

Just recovering from the flu and jetlag so a very quiet week. Watching YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS, MURDERBOT, THE STUDIO and a Danish thriller series, SECRETS THEY KEEP, which was pretty good if scary.  

Rewatched BEFORE SUNSET. Always enjoy that trilogy. 

There was a nice article about Megan in the Washington Post. If you can get by the paywall. "Megan Abbott and the lure of private worlds" Lots of cool photos.

Finally feels like Spring here.

How about you? 

How about you? 

FFB: MICHIGAN ROLL, Tom Kakonis

 
Forgotten Books for May 30, 2008

Ken Bruen’s Forgotten Book

Michigan Roll by Tom Kakonis

The great neglected forgotten writer in my opinion is Tom Kakonis.

He wrote a wondrous series of novels featuring an ex professor who'd served time and is now eking out a precarious existence in Las Vegas under the dubious mentorship of a very shady acquaintance.
The writing is dark dangerous poetry and the violence when it comes, is sharp and shocking, an air of doomed menace looms over the novels like a palpable cloud.
Michigan Roll, perhaps the very best in the series,, is a true forgotten classic.
Kakonis abandoned this stunning series and now writes under a different name.
The atmosphere of being damned, of no hope, of no redemption is noir like you rarely read.
The characterization is superb and the sheer agony of seeing a decent man who never caught a break and knows he is screwed is heart wrenching.

Short Story Wednesday: "The Piano Tuner"s Wives" William Trevor (The New Yorker)

 https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/fiction/yiyun-li-reads-william-trevor

 

The piano tuner is a blind man who marries Violet and later Belle. This is a ghost story as much as a love story. Belle's real interest is the now dead Violet and her competition with her.

It especially drives her crazy that Owen would have chosen the less attractive woman first. Although the less attractive woman was a devoted wife and companion. And what does a blind man know of beauty. Except that of the soul.

Above the story is read by Yiyun Li who chose the story. I am a great fan of William Trevor's stories and novels. The discussion after her reading of the story is good too if you have an hour and fifteen minutes to spare.   

George Kelley

Jerry House 

TracyK 

Todd Mason 

Kevin Tipple

Monday, Monday,

 

What's up?

Monday, Monday

What's Up?
 

Monday, Monday

 What's Up!

Short Story Wednesday

 George Kelley

Jerry House 

Kevin Tipple 

TracyK

Monday, Monday

                                                    

Claudia Schmidt at Trinity House

(hat tip Kathy Cunningham)

Saw PRIDE AND PREJUDICE on the big screen and it was sensational. Also saw a play, ECLIPSE about Ossem Sweet, a black doctor who moved into a white neighborhood in Detroit in 1925 and what happened. An earlier book, THE ARC OF JUSTICE, also told this story. Five women did it justice in ECLIPSE, women who largely went unknown in 1925. And one male actor was the best crier I ever witnessed,

Also went to hear a fabulous folk singer , Claudia Schmidt. Been singing for fifty years and her voice is as powerful and beautiful as a 25 year old.

Still looking for that perfect book for the airplane. No hardbacks.  

Jittery about the trip. Not the flying, it's losing or forgetting something that gnaws at me. Perhaps this will be my last trip overseas.

LOVED THE PITT, maybe the best show ever. And I swoon over all of the Aussie men in OFFSPRINGS in Prime. It was originally aired 2010-15.

I will post an empty post here for the next two weeks.

FFB: ON THE WRONG TRACK, Steve Hockensmith

 

originally published by Gerard Saylor on Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Listened: "On the Wrong Track" by Steve Hockensmith

Book two and another fun entry into the adventures of Big Red and Old Red Amlingmeyer.

1893 and Big and Old have been traveling west after adventures of book one.  They've been cow punching for money while trying to catch work as detectives.  Old has been deeply influenced by Sherlock Holmes and the Holmes method of 'deducifying'.  The Pinkertons won't hire them but at a Utah Pink office they meet famous range detective, Old Guy (I forgot his name) who sends them to see a guy at Southern Pacific Railroad.

Old and Red are hired on as railroad cops even though there Kansas farming roots left a deep hatred for railroads.  Old and Red are given badges and sent to San Francisco on the express train.  Told to stay undercover they are to act if there is trouble from the Give'em Hell Boys who have been robbing SP trains.

Old Red suffers acute motion sickness and while Old is puking off the back of the train both Reds see a bouncing human head.  The baggage car handler has been murdered.  Old and Big immediately clash with a blowhard and bossy conductor.  Old and Red meet the teenage news 'butch' who loves to talk.  Old and Red meet passenger named Diane.  Big swoons for Diane.

More things happen.  Old tries to 'deducify' the strange clues in the baggage car.  The train is robbed by the Give'Em Hell Boys.  Old continues 'deducifying'.  Big Red is thick when it comes to clues and deduction.  Big Red knows this.  Big Red talks a lot.  Old and Red suffer a surprise snake attack.  More things happen.  Big and Red solve the crimes.  The express train crashes. Big and Old take the blame from SP and get $5 each for three days wages.

Comments:
1.  I just read a review about the audio version and the reviewer was initially annoyed by the big voice of William Dufris.  Heck, Dufris performs these books.  Dufris gives plenty of character and voice to the boisterous, friendly, talkative, and sometimes naive Big Red.
2.  More history:  Train travel.  Pullman cars and staff.  Cultural mores and behavior.  "Long riders".  Farmers versus train companies.  Chicago Exposition (a trip there comes up in one of the following novels.
3.  The crime has an inside guy and I figured him out early but I really enjoyed the path to his reveal.
4.  Diane reappears in book three but I do not know if she is in the others.
5.  Theme of Big and Old Red fighting against established people who do not believe they are capable.  Big and Old are assumed to be stupid cow punchers.  The established authorities are usually hiding something.
6.  Theme of young and enthusiastic sidekick.  Book one had the Englishman pining to be a six-gun shooting cowboy.  Book two has the news butch and his love for dime novel westerns and crime stories.  Book three has the Chinese translator who escorts Big and Old around Chinatown.
7.  I presume the Give'Em Hell Boys are a riff off Cassidy and Sundance's Hole in the Wall Gang.
8.  Reminder, Sherlock Holmes is real person in these stories.

Short Story Wednesday: THE HARDBOILED DICKS, An Anthology by Ron Goulart, (reveiwed by James Reasoner)

 

originally reviewed on Friday, April 30, 2010

Forgotten Books: The Hardboiled Dicks - Ron Goulart, ed.

Like it was yesterday, I remember it: a very foggy December evening in 1967. I was 14 years old, and when my mother went to Seminary South with my older brother and my sister-in-law, I tagged along. Seminary South was the first major shopping center in Fort Worth, built in the mid-Sixties as an open-air mall much like the various outlet malls that now sit beside many of the Interstate highways. It was on Seminary Drive in south Fort Worth, hence the name. The main attraction it held for me at that time was a small bookstore called The Book Oasis. I was able to stop in there for a little while that night, and while I was there I found a book I knew I had to have. It had a bright, pop-art style cover that showed a strong-jawed guy in a fedora socking a thug. The title?

THE HARDBOILED DICKS, of course.

By this time I was fairly familiar with the concept of the pulps from reading Doc Savage novels and the Lancer editions of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories. I even owned a pulp, a 1931 issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY that I had picked up in Thompson’s Bookstore in downtown Fort Worth a year or so earlier. (In those days you could still buy tons of Gold Medals and Dell mapbacks from Thompson’s for ten cents each – and I did.) THE HARDBOILED DICKS was my introduction to the sort of fiction to be found in BLACK MASK, DIME DETECTIVE, and other hardboiled detective pulps. Originally published in hardcover a couple of years earlier, it was reprinted in paperback by Pocket Books and had a great introduction by Ron Goulart.

But it was the stories themselves that grabbed me immediately and wouldn’t let me go. What a line-up of stories, authors, and characters:

“Don’t Give Your Right Name” by Norbert Davis (Max Latin)
“The Saint in Silver” by John K. Butler (Steve Midnight)
“Winter Kill” by Frederick Nebel (Kennedy and MacBride)
“China Man” by Raoul Whitfield (Jo Gar)
“Death on Eagle’s Crag” by Frank Gruber (Oliver Quade)
“A Nose for News” by Richard Sale (Daffy Dill)
“Angelfish” by Lester Dent (Oscar Sail)
“Bird in the Hand” by Erle Stanley Gardner (Lester Leith)

I knew that Lester Dent was really “Kenneth Robeson”, the author of many of the Doc Savage novels I was reading and loving every month, and of course I’d heard of Erle Stanley Gardner, having read some Perry Mason and Donald Lam/Bertha Cool novels already. Frank Gruber’s name was vaguely familiar to me. But the rest of those guys were brand-new, as far as I was concerned. When I read the stories, I loved them and wanted more. As much as I could get my hands on, in fact. Oddly enough, the stuff wasn’t as easy to come by then as it is now, at least not to a kid in a small town in Texas.

That copy I bought at The Book Oasis in 1967 was lost in the fire a couple of years ago, of course, but I knew that THE HARDBOILED DICKS was one of the books I had to replace. And having a week for Forgotten Short Story Collections was the perfect excuse to sit down and reread it (although, technically, most of the stories in this book are novelettes, not short stories). I was interested to see whether or not they would hold up after all these years.

The answer is simple: Boy, do they.

I recall that on reading them the first time, I didn’t like Gardner’s Lester Leith story or Whitfield’s Jo Gar story as much as the others. They’re good, just not as good as the others, plus the Gardner story isn’t particularly hardboiled. Rereading them confirmed that, but they’re still great fun. The stories by Norbert Davis, John K. Butler, and Richard Sale are all fast-paced and very funny in places. I’m always amazed by how much plot pulp authors could pack into a story. Frederick Nebel’s “Winter Kill” impressed me even more this time around. A lot of people say Nebel was almost as good as Dashiell Hammett, and I agree with that. Frank Gruber’s story about Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia, is so good that I’ve already ordered a replacement copy of BRASS KNUCKLES, a collection of Quade stories that came out a year or so after THE HARDBOILED DICKS. It’s another old favorite of mine that contains a long introduction about writing for the pulps that Gruber expanded into his book THE PULP JUNGLE. And then of course there’s Dent’s “Angelfish”, one of two stories he wrote for BLACK MASK about private detective Oscar Sail. These are classics and deservedly so, and in rereading “Angelfish” I was more impressed than ever with Dent’s use of language. It’s just a great yarn. As a matter of fact, that description could be applied to any of the stories in this book.

Seminary South existed much like it was then until sometime in the early Eighties, although The Book Oasis went out of business years earlier. I remember going to Seminary South with Livia several times during the first few years of our marriage. Then somebody got the idea of enclosing it and making a regular mall out of it, and the place lost most of its charm as far as I’m concerned. Now it’s been at least twenty years since I’ve been there, probably longer. I think it still exists in some form, although it’s gone through numerous remodelings and name-changes, but I’m not sure about that.

I know, though, that it still exists vividly in my memory, along with The Book Oasis. I bought other books there over the years, but THE HARDBOILED DICKS was the best. If you like pulp detective yarns, it gets my highest recommendation. You can find copies fairly inexpensively on-line.

Of course, that won’t be like picking it up brand-new and flipping through those red-edged pages and knowing that you’d found something really wonderful. You had to be there for that, and I was. Yesterday, it seems. 

 

 George Kelley

Jerry House 

Kevin Tipple 

TracyK 

Steve Lewis

Todd Mason 

Monday, Monday

 

TELL ME EVERYTHING is Strout's most unusual book yet. In it she combines all of her characters from her other series and throws in a mystery. I love her books but I can see why other readers find them puzzling. Also saw the charming, lovable if not up to the predecessor THE WEDDING BANQUET. Lilly Gladstone steals every scene she is in as do the two elder ladies: Joan Chen and Youn Yuh-jung

Also loving THE PITT, OFFSPRINGS, HACKS, THE STUDIO.

Trying to get ready for Italy. This is not a good time of year for my knees and allergies.

Did you hear Megan and Laura Lippman are writing a TV series based on the Tess Monaghan books? Always loved them. Both also have new novels out in June. They will appear together at BOOKS ARE MAGIC in late June.

                                            

 From the archives (Randy Johnson)

FFB: Due Or Die – Frank Kane

Author Frank Kane created P.I. Johnny Littell in a short story for the pulps in 1944 and went on to write twenty-nine novels featuring him, plus an unknown number of short stories. According to his granddaughter, he claimed four hundred, though she believes that an exaggeration. And Bill Crider said in 2000, if it’s a Frank Kane book, chances are “it’ll be a competent straightforward P.I. story.” DUE OR DIE certainly was all that. I quite enjoyed my first Kane book.

P.I. Johnny Liddell got the job offer from a most agreeable source. Beautiful redheaded singer Lee Loomis. Mobster “Fat Mike” Klein, who Johnny knew from the old days, needed help in Las Palmas, a small Nevada city where the gambling joints were controlled by aging mobsters, no longer the hard men they’d once been. The deal was $10,000 to find the killer, half now, half when the job was done.

They didn’t dare let New York know what had happened. The remaining five knew the vultures were already out there and they didn’t dare let anyone know that a hit had gone down without their knowledge.

But Johnny arrived too late. Fat Mike had been murdered as well, shot down in his car on the side of the road. The remaining four showed Johnny the note all had received promising each would be killed unless they ponied up a million dollars. With each death, the share went up for the others.

They wanted Johnny to simply deliver the money. The two deaths had been covered up, the first a heart attack, the body quickly cremated, and Fat Mike had committed suicide, the body to be buried as soon as possible.

Johnny didn’t like that. Fat Mike had not been a particular friend, but he’d accepted the job and he was loathe to quit before he got it done.

Tom Regan, the police chief, was as crooked as the mobsters, in their pocket, and was no help. Despite his bosses agreement, he seemed determined to impede the investigation.

Johnny plugs away, avoiding beatings, dodging frame-ups, and questioning anyone and everyone.

He thinks he has it figured out. Now all he has to do is prove it before being killed.

Enjoyed this one. Johnny Liddell appeared in 29 novels and numerous short stories(Kane claimed four hundred in a letter, though his granddaughter thought that an exaggeration)

Short Story Wednesday: Jenny, Annie, Fanny,Addie, by Adam Levin

 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/21/jenny-annie-fanny-addie-fiction-adam-levin

Two things about this struck me. Although I have written from the male POV many times, I always assume the protagonist is the same sex as the author. Not here though.  Also,  I often mishear the lyrics of songs as what happens in this tale. In this song, by THE BAND, I misheard it too.And I assumed two words were running together.

A 13 year old girl is groped by a boy, which leads to his banishment from the camp they are attending. Also there is a long discussion of who deserves humiliation in these circumstances.

George Kelley 

Jerry House  

Tracy K

Steve Lewis

Monday, Monday

 THE FRIEND (Sigrid Nunez) was a favorite novel a few years ago and now it is a terrific movie. Bing, the dog who plays Apollo will steal your heart. Also reading TELL ME EVERYTHING by Elizabeth Strout, which is enjoyable. She has an unusual style, which is probably not for everyone.

So much on TV right now: OUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS (Apple), THE PITT (MAX), HACKS (MAX,), BLACK MIRROR, etc. Started a Netflix show called THE CLUBHOUSe about the Boston Red Sox, and NORTH UP NORTH, a comedy, about an Inuit community at the Arctic Circle. 

Bulbs finally coming up although it is still pretty cold here. I am way out of shape from my trip to Florence in three weeks. I ordered a walking cane, just in case.

What about you?