INCOMING

New books are beginning to overwhelm me.  Abibliophobia -- the fear of running out of books to read -- will never be a part of my life.  

Incoming:

• Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged.  Epic Fantasy; Book Two of The First Law.   Superior Glokta has a problem.  How do you defend a city surrounded by enemies an8d riddled with traitors when your allies can by no means be trusted and your predecessor vanished without a trace?  It's enough to make a torturer want to run -- if he could even walk without a stick.  Northmen have spilled over the border of Angland and are spreading fire and death across the frozen country.  Crown Prince Ladisla is poised to drive them back and win undying glory.  There is only one problem -- he commands the worst-armed, worst-led army in the world.  And Bayaz, the Frist of the Magi, is leading a party of bold adventurers on a perilous mission through the ruins of the past.  The most hated woman in the South, the most feared man in the North, and the most selfish  boy in the Union make a strange alliance, bit a deadly one.  They might even stand a chance of saving mankind from the Eaters.  If they didn't hate each other quite so much."
• Joseph Chadwick, A Town to Tame.  Western.  "Palisade /city was a wide open town when Madigan= took over as the law.  He had been on=e of the toughest of a tough crew -- the Texas Rangers, and their reputation had rubbed off on him.  But had the magic of his gunhand left him?  It was only a matter of time until some hardcase took it on himself to find out..."
• Joan Aiken, Bridle the Wind.  Young adult fantasy, the second book in the Felix trilogy.  "Shipwrecked, knocked unconscious, and imprisoned!  To some this may seem like a streak of mighty bad luck, but Felix Brooke can't help but believe there is a reason for all his suffering.  When Felix finds an injured boy on the grounds of the remote monastery where he is being held captive, it seems his premonition may be right.  Felix rescues the strange boy, Juan, from certain death, and together they escape the monastery and head for Spain.  In their hazardous journey across the Pyrenees, Felix and Juan share many adventures.  But there is a shadow over their happy times:  Someone -- or something -- utterly terrifying is following their every move.  Will they escape the evil that pursue them?"  Aiken, who died in 2004, is rapidly becoming a "forgotten" author; in a just world that would never happen.
• Piers Anthony, Double Exposure.   Omnibus volume of the first three volumes in the "Apprentice Adept" series:  Split Infinity, Blue Adept, and Juxtaposition.   Stile and his beautiful robot protector escape an unknown assailant and enter the fantastical world of Phaze, where magic works and science is powerless.  Also, Triple Detente.  Science fiction.  "Conqueror Richard Henrys leads the human forces controlling the planet Kazo.  Overlord Bitool is the chief Kazo managing the occupation of earth [sic].  Henrys' son, Richard. Jr., is involved in a plot to overthrow Bitool.  Fomina, Bitool's beloved mate, is conqueror Henrys' trusted house-servant.  And nothing is really complicated until humans and Kazo discover a third intelligent race in the galaxy, and try to  bring them into the newly developing peace."
• Piers Anthony & Robert E. Margroff, The Adventures of Kelvin of Rud:  Final Magic.  Omnibus of the final two volumes in the series:  Orc's Opal and Mouvar's Magic.  Though Kelvin Knig6ht Hackleberry had gone far toward fulfilling the Prophecy of Mouvar, he and his allies had yet to face the gratest threat fo the peace of all the worlds."
• S. A. Cosby, King of Ashes.  Crime novel.  "Roman Carruthers left the smoke and fire of his family's crematory business behind him in his hometown of Jefferson Run, Virginia,  He is enjoying a life of shallow excess as a financial advisor in Atlanta until he gets a call from his sister, Nevaeh, telling him their father is in a coma after a hit-and-run accident.  When Roman goes home, he learns the accident may not be what it seems.  His brother, Dante, is deeply in debt to dangerous, ruthless criminals.  And Roman is willing to do anything to protect his family.  Anything.  A financial whiz with a head for  numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, Roman must use all his skills to try to save his family while dealing with a shadow that has haunted them all for twenty years:  the disappearance of their mother when Roman and his siblings were teenagers.  It's a  mystery that Neveah, who has sacrificed so much of her life to hold her family together, is determined to solve once and for all.  As fate and chance and heartache ignite their lives, the Carruthers family must pull together to survive or see their lives turn to ash.  Because, as their father counseled them from birth, nothing lasts forever.  Everything burns."
• John Creasey writing as Kyle Hunt,  The Man Who Not Himself.  Mystery.  "He awoke in a strange bed and made love to a wife he had never seen before.   She responded warmly, made him breakfast, and sent him off to catch the 9:27 to town where he found he was employed as a minor civil servant.  Not so surprising -- except that yesterday Hugh Buckingh8am had been a globe-trotting millionaire with a mistress in every city he visited regularly.  Why did he suddenly find himself/ in the shoes of a man named Neil Powell?   The answer came with a bullet that narrowly missed Buckingham's head:  somebody wanted Neil Powell dead.  It was suddenly much more than a case of mistaken identity."
• Jere Cunningham, Hunter's Blood.  Suspense.  "They were excited, filled with the anticipation of the hunt.  Shooting the prized white-tail deer would be no simple task.  It would take all their skill and cunning.  But something else was waiting for them deep in that Arkansas wilderness.  Strange, savage men, primitive and brutal creatures who seemed to come from the past.  The sheriff's men called them poachers.  They hid themselves in the dark forest shadows and waited until the five men made their camp.   Then in the dead of night they struck..."  A first novel, filmed in 1986 featuring Sam Bottoms, Joey Travolta, and Kim Delany; co-star Clu Gulager received a Saturn nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
• Mignon G. Eberhart, Escape the Night.  Suspense novel.  "Before she came home, Serena had been warned to expect surprises.  Something strange had happened to the people she had k own so well, something monstrous was haunting their lives.  Firs the feeling was vague, then it was definite -- as definite as a woman thrown from a cliff, and a brutally strangle\d corpse.  But the most grisly surprise was yet to come, as Serena turned in terror to the one person she thought she could trust..."  Eberhart was the author of 59 mystery novels and three story collections; she was a MWA Grand Master and also received an Anthony Lifetime Achievement Award-
• Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad.  Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.  "Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive.  Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs.  Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs.  With music pulsing on every page, A Visit from the Goon Squad is a startling exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption."
• Loren D. Estleman, The Branch and the Scaffold.  Western historical novel about Judge Parker.  "When Judge Isaac Parker arrived in Fort Smith, Arkansas, the town had thirty saloons and one bank.  As the sole law on the untamed frontier, Parker's severe judgments scandalized Washington and the Eastern press.  Never flinching from his duty, Parker, along with his marshals, dubbed 'Parker's Men,' ran up against some of the most colorful and dangerous outlaws the West had to offer, including the notorious Dalton Gang, Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen, the murderous Cherokee Bill, and Ned Christie, who carried on a private was against the U.S. government for seven years."
• John Farris, Catacombs.  Horror novel.  "Blood red diamonds.  The world's rarest gemstones...worth countless millions on the market and far more to those who can decipher the message etched on their flaming surface...a message that offers the key to global mastery and bears witness to a vanished civilization far superior to -- and more technicologically advanced than -- our own.  They come to the catacombs -- crystaline burial caves of unparalleled splendor hidden in the volcanic depths of Mt. Kilimanjaro.  Their discovery sets the stage for a duel of superpowers that will be fought with a terrible vengeance...a race against time -- and morality -- for a terrifying, earth-shattering prize."
• Alan Dean Foster, Flinx in Flux.  Science fiction, the sixth in the Pip & Flinx series, a sunset of Foster's Humanx Commonwealth Universe series.  "Flinx and his amazing minidrag Pip were always finding themselves in the middle of danger and galactic intrigue, so when they found an unconscious young woman on a riverbank deep in the jungles of Alaspin, Flinx wasn't surprised.  nor was he shocked to learn that the woman, Clarity Held, was a brilliant scientist, abducted from a remote outpost on inhospitable Longtunnel by a group of fanatic assassins.  Flinx could see no harm in returning Clarity to her home base before continuing on his way, but he was tired of solving other people's problems.  He had his own life to get back to.  So he was unprepared for the emotional effect the beautiful Clarity had on him.  But while Flinx fought to del with his unexpected dilemma, the assassins were still at work.  They would do anything to stop the research on Longtunnel and would kill anyone or anything that got in their way..."  Also, Greenthieves.  A futuristic whodunnit.  "The Grandest Theft in the Galaxy!  No one could get in.  The shipments of high-tech pharmaceuticals were locked inside an impenetrable metal shed -- guarded by three security teams and dozens of alarms.  No one could stay in.  Cameras and motion detectors monitored the shed around the clock.  And an airtight vacuum sealed off the room.  No one could get lout.  Anyone leaving the area was scanned for stolen goods.  Automatic doors ensured that no one could escape without notice.  But someone did.  Not just once,  bug three times.  And they had to be brought to justice.  That's why the case was turned lover to Detective Manz.  And his two robot assistants..."  And, Mad Amos.  A collection of ten folk fantasy tales with dragons, jackalopes, snake-oil salesmen, iron horses, and more.  "Strange things lurk up in the  mountains and out in the plains and deserts of the West, but few are as strange as the giant mountain man named Amos Malone, the man some call Mad Amos, though not to his face.  But when the world gets weird, there's no one better to have on your side.  Is a renegade dragon harassing the men laying the =rails of the great railroad?  Are heartless Indian spirits driving you from your land?  Is that volcano threatening to destroy your settlement?  Then Mad Amos is the man for you."  Not to be confused with the much later Mad Amos Malone:  The Complete Stories, which added a further eight stories.
• Craig Shaw Gardner, The Wanderings of Wuntvor.  Fantasy, an omnibus of the three novels in the series, a subset of the Ebenezum series:  A Difficulty with Dwarves, An Excess of Enchantment, and A Disagreement with Death.  Wuntvor, an apprentice to the magician Ebenezum, is sent by his master to seek an alliance with Mother Duck to forestall the demons of the Netherhells and their new tactic, Conquest by Committee.  Along the way he encounters Death (who tries to reach for him), an army of devoted pet ferrets, a relentlessly cheerful Brownie, Brax the Salesdemon, the rhyming demon Guxx Unfufadoo, the vaudeville tem of Damsel and Dragon and Henrix the warrior with the enchanted club, and the Seven Other Dwarves (Nasty, Touchy, Snooty, Spacey, Dumpy, Noisy, Sickly and Smarmy -- yeah, I know that's right).Perhaps things will work out in the end.  Perhaps.
• Simon R. Green, Agents of Light and Darkness.  Urban fantasy, the second book in the Nightside series.  "I'm John Tyler.  I work in the Nightside -- the gaudy, neon noir, secret heart of London, where it's always three in the morning, where gods and monsters make deals and seek pleasures they won't find anywhere else.  I have a gift for finding things.  And sometimes what I'm hired to locate can be very, very dangerous indeed.  Right now, for example, I'm searching for the Unholy Grail, the cup that Judas drank from at the Last Supper.  It corrupts all who touch it --  but it also gives enormous power.  So I'm not the only one hunting.  Angels, devils, sinners and saints -- they're all out there, tearing apart the Nightside, seeking the dark goblet.  And it's only a matter of time until they realize that the famous John Taylor, the man with the gift for finding things, can lead them straight to it..."  Also, The Man with the Golden Torc.  The first book in the Eddie Drood/Secret Histories series.  "The name's Bond.  Shaman Bond.  Actually, that's just my cover.  I'm Eddie Drood.  But when your job includes a license to kick supernatural arse on a regular basis, you find your laughs where you can.  For centuries, my family has been the secret guardian of humanity, all that  stands between all of you and all of the many really nasty things that go bump in the night.  As a Drood field agent I wore the golden torc.  I killed monsters, and I protected the world.  I loved my job.  Right up to the point when my own family declared me rogue for no reason, and I was forced to go on my own.  Now the only people who can help me prove my innocence are the people I used to consider my enemies.  I'm Shaman bond, very secret agent.  And I'm going to prove to everyone that no one does it better than me."
• Elly Griffiths, The House at Sea's End.  A Ruth Galloway mystery.  "Just back from maternity leave, forensic pathologist Ruth Galloway is struggling to juggle motherhood and work when she is called in to investigate human  bones that have surfaced on a remote Norfolk beach.  The presence of DCI Harry Nelson, th9e married father of her daughter, does not help.  The bones, six men with their arms bound, date back to World War II, a desperate time in this stretch of coastline.  As Ruth and Nelson investigate, Home Guard veteran Archie Whitcliffe reveals a secret the old soldiers had vowed to protect with their lives.  But then Archie is killed and a German journalist arrives, asking questions about Operation Lucifer, a plan to stop a German invasion, and a possible British war crime.  What was Operation Lucifer?  And who is prepared to kill to keep its secret?"  
• "Cyril Hare" (Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark), Death Is No Sportsman.   A Golden Age mystery featuring Inspector Mallett.  "The setting:  a small resort hotel in rural England.  The cast:  a group of dedicated fly fishermen.  The crime:  murder.  Inspector Mallett's shrewd resolution of the case includes the clever use of fishing lure and practice.  Vintage detection from a master."  Gordon Clark was an English barrister and County Court judge who published several classic mysteries, including Tragedy-at-Law, Suicide Excepted, and Untimely Death.
• L. Ron Hubbard, The Headhunters.  Adventure novelette first published in Five-Novels Monthly, August 1936; packaged here with the typical Hubbard fluff to pad out this Galaxy Press book; Galaxy Press is an arm of the Church of Scientology.
• Shari Lapena, The Couple Next Door.  Suspense.   "Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all -- a loving relationship, a wonderful home, and their beautiful baby, Cora.  But one  night when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed.  suspicion immediately falls on the parents.  But the truth is much more complicated.  what follows is the nerve-racking unraveling of a family.  Detective Rasbach knows that the panicked couple is hiding something inside their curtained house.  Anna and Marco both soon discover that thee other is keeping secrets, secrets they've kept for years.  The shocking truth will leave you breathless."
• Richard Laymon, four horror novels.  The Beast House.  The second in the Beast House Chronicles.  "The Beast House has become a museum of the  most twisted and macabre kind.  On display inside are the wax figures of the victims, their bodies mangled and chewed, mutilated beyond recognition.  The tourists who come to Beast House can only wonder what sort of terrifying creature could be responsible for such atrocities.  But some people are convinced Beast House is a hoax.  Nora and her friends are determined to learn the truth for themselves.  They will dare to enter the house at night.  When the tourists have gone.  When the beast is rumored to come out.  They will learn, all right."  The Midnight Tour.  The third novel in the Beast House chronicles.  "For years  morbid tourists have flocked to the Beast Hose, eager to see the infamous site of so many unspeakable atrocities, to hear tales of the beast said to prowl the hallways.  they can listen to the audio tour on their headphones as they stroll from room to room, looking= at the realistic recreations of the blood-drenched corpses...  But the audio tour only gives the sanitized version of the horrors of the Beast House.  there are some facts too gruesome for the average thrill seekers.  If you want the full story, you have to take the Midnight Tour, a very special event strictly limited to =]thirteen brave visitors.  It begins at the stroke of midnight.  You may never live to see the end..."  Friday Night in Beast House.  The forth and final book in the series.  "The legendary Beast House, once home to unspeakable acts of agony and murder, is now a decrepit tourist attraction where the curious go for cheap thrills and daily tours.  These days few actually believe the stories of slaughter and sexual torture are true, or that the beast rally exists.  But in the silence of the night, the cellar door of the Beast House opens once again... Mark and Alison snuck into Beast House after the tours were over for a midnight rendezvous.  Mark hopes to get lucky but Alison seems more interested in the gruesome legends.  But if the beast is only a legend, who's responsible for the mutilated carcass of a dog outside?  And why is the padlock missing from the cellar door?  Will this be the date of a lifetime or a date with death?"  Midnight's Lair.  Originally published as by "Richard Kelly."  "Murdock's Cave is one of the spectacular wonders of the world, a place where thousands of sightseers every year take an awe-inspiring boat trip on a lake beneath the earth's surfaces to marvel at Nature's handiwork.  Bu the darkness is also the home of things Nature never intended -- things violent, bestial, and obscenely evil.  When a sudden power failure incapacitates the elevator to the surface, a group of tourists is tapped in the underground depths.  Cold and scared, without lights or food, their only hope is to find an escape route through the sealed-off end of the cavern.  But their explorations uncover a nest of horrors that has lain hidden for generations, and their idyllic underground journey becomes a nightmare trip through hell, as the find themselves banding for survival against the creatures of the abyss..."  The Midnight Tour.
• Iain McIntyre & Andrew Nette, editors, Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats:  Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, 1950 to 1980.  For those who just couldn't get enough of the popular juvenile delinquent paperback novels of that era, stretching back to the The Amboy Dukes and The Blackboard Jungle to the novels of Hall Ellson and Edward DeRoo and beyond.  "Girl Gangs features approximately 400 full-color covers, many of them never reprinted before.  With 70 in-depth author interviews, illustrated biographies, and previously unpublished articles from more than 20 popular culture critics and scholars from the US, UK, and Australia, the book goes behind the scenes to look a the authors and publishers, how they worked, where they drew their inspirations and -- often overlooked -- the actual words they wrote.  Books by well-known authors such as Harlan Ellison and Lawrence Block are discussed alongside neglected obscurities and former bestsellers ripe for rediscovery.  It is a must read for anyone interested in pulp fiction, lost literary history, retro and subcultural style, and the history of postwar youth culture."  It's as if they heard me salivating among the shelves of second-hand bookstores and created this volume just for me.
• John James Minster, The Undertaker's Daughter.  YA horror novel.  "Anna Dingel is an introverted, socially inept 18-year-old raised in the family funeral home.  And for some reason, her classmate Timmy -- the one with the band -- likes her too.  After a makeover from her best friend Naomi, Anna breaks away to see him perform live,  but a leader of a bad school clique attempts to assault Anna in the parking lot.  Once the leader is released from jail, so begins an ever-widening maelstrom of cruel retribution, turning Anna and Timmy's summer of love into a nightmare.  In an attempt to frighten the bullies into peace, Anna and Nami experiment with recently revealed old Jewish magic.  But this ancient Abrahamic ritual doesn't go as planned=.  The eldritch power Anna has unleashed takes dark and unexpected turns, endangering those she love and forcing her to decide who% she is and who she wants to be."
• Andre Norton, The Gate of the Cat.  A Witch World novel.  "Come.  Step through an ancient arch in the Scottish highlands -- and into a world beyond all earthly possibilities...Where fearsome creatures abound and witches reign supreme.  Where a sparkling jewel carries a strange and awesome poser.  Where the terrifying forces of the Dark ravage the countryside.  And where a young earth woman named Kelsie McBlair holds the key to Witch World's future.  Trapped in a bizarre web of science and sorcery, she alone can pierce the savage heart of evil...by confronting the lord of the Dark himself!"
• Andre Norton & Martin H. Greenberg, editors, Catfantastic IV.  This penultimate volume in the fantasy series of anthologies has eighteen stories by authors such as Norton, Mercedes Lackey, Jayge Carr, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, and Charles L. Fontenay.  For the feline lover in all of us.
• Seabury Quinn, Black,White and Ivory.  Collection of seventeen adventure stories about Hiji (Captain Sir Haddingway Ingraham Jameson Ingraham) of His Majesty's Royal Frontier Houssa Police, the enforcer of law and justice in the Congo.  The tales appeared in Short Stories, a companion magazine to Weird Tales (where Quinn published his better-known Jules de Grandin stories) from 1940 to 1947, and contain some off-putting racial and social stereotypes typical of the period.  Hiji himself began as an occasional supporting character in the de Grandin stories beginning in 1932 before graduating to his own series.
• Kathy Reichs, Fatal Voyage.  The fourth (of thus far twenty-five) novel featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan; the character was the basis of the television series Bones.  "A commercial airline disaster has  brought Tempe Brennan to the North Carolina mountians as a member of the investigating agency DMORT.  As bomb theories abound, Tempe soon discovers a jarring piece of evidence that raises dangerous questions -- and gets her thrown from the DMORT team.  Relentless in her pursuit of its significance, Tempe uncovers a shocking, mutlilayered tale of deceit and depravity as she probes her way into frightening territory -- where someone wants her stopped in her tracks."  
• Jack Ritchie, Cardula and the Locked Rooms.  Collection of 15 mystery stories, nine featuring Ritchie's vampire private detective Cardula, plus six locked room mysteries.  For my money, Ritchie was one of the greatest writer of crime and mystery stories, second only to Edward D. Hoch.  It's estimated that Ritchie wrote about 500 short stories; this is only the fifth collection of Ritchie short stories ever published -- there's plenty of worthwhile material out there for additional collections.
• James Sallis, Salt River.  A John Turner mystery.  John Turner is an ex-policeman, ex-con, war veteran, and former therapist, now serving as a deputy sheriff in a small town somewhere near Memphis.  "Two years have passed since Turner's amour, Val Bjorn, was shot as they sat together on the porch of his cabin. 'Sometimes you just have to see how much music you can make with what you have left,' Val had told him, and that becomes Turner's mantra.  Then the sheriff's long-lost son comes plowing down Main street into City Hall in what appears to be a stolen car.  And waiting at Turner's cabin is his good friend, Eldon Brown, Val's banjo on the back of his motorcycle. 'They think I killed someone,' he says.  Turner asks, 'Did you?'  And Eldon responds, 'I don't know.' "  Sallis, who died last month at age 81, was one of the great writers of our time.
• Olaf Stapledon, Odd John and Sirius.  Omnibus of two classic science fiction novels.  "Odd John is the definitive fictionalization of the mutated superman.  After a strange birth and childhood, John  is suddenly compelled to accept the fact that he is different.  What is more, he has to decide what to do with his gifts.  Sirius, although the logical successor to Odd John, deals with quite another being -- an alien intelligence, artificially produced, a dog with superhuman mentality, who is not only superior to his own kind, but rejected by those with whom he has the most in common.  Stapledon uses his powers -- intellectual, imaginative, and observant -- to detail the conflict in its very 'human' form."
• Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Time.  Science fiction, the first book in his eponymous continuing series.  "The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home.  Following  their ancestors' star maps, they discovered the greatest treasure of the past age -- a world terraformed and prepared for human life.  But all is not right in this new Eden.  The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied.  New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare.  Now two civilizations are on a collision course and must fight to survive.  As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?"  Winner of the 2016 Arthur C. Clarke Award.
• Anthony Trollope, Marion Fay.  A lesser-known novel from Trollip[e, published six months before his death.  "[O]ne of Trollope's most cynical novels, making a biting attack on% the snobbery  of the titled class and the immorality of the church.  Lord Hampstead and his sister Frances both intend to marry beneath their rank.  Frances is betrothed to a Post Office clerk, George Roden, and her brother has fallen in love with% Marion, a Quaker.  As their stepmother, the Marchioness, schemes with the Reverend Mr. Greenwood to remove Lord Hampstead from his father's affections -- even if it means his death -- Trollope depicts a ruthless aristocracy and a hypocritical clergy."
• Robert van Gulik, Murder in Canton.  A Judge Dee mystery.  "At the height of his professional career, the master detective of ancient China is called to Canton to secretly investigate a mysterious disappearance, and finds himself entangled in a baffling web of political intrigue and vicious murder."  
• "Barbara Vine"  (Ruth Rendell), The House of Stairs.  Mystery.  "The beautiful, elusive Christobel Sanger is a murderer just released from prison.  But whom has she killed?  Elizabeth Vetch will never forget what happened fourteen years ago in the grand old house on Notting Hill called the House of Stairs,  in that large, oddly built residence, Elizabeth was living with her recently widowed cousin, Cosette, and with a long, unending party of fascinating people and hangers-on who came in and out of their lives.  And in that dwelling, a terrible, cruel plot would unfold and climax in betrayal and murder.  But who was killed...and what is the mystery in this  chilling novel of psychological suspense -- which twists and turns with the deadly desires of the human heart...?"  For some reason I prefer Rendell's work under her own name over her Barbara Vine novels.  Time will tell if that holds true for this book also.

HYMN TIME, CAJUN STYLE

 Jo-El Sonnier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y9H3kKWkeM

SHEENA, QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE #2 (CANADIAN EDITION) (MAY 1938; BUT DON'T BELIEVE IT)

This one gets a bit confusing, and not just because the contents description at the link is for an entirely different comic book.  And, although the link says the issue is from May 1938, this actually seems to b=e a reprint of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle #6 from Spring 1950.

Sheena was basically a female version of Tarzan.  Sheena is the young daughter of Cardwell Rivington, an African explorer who died after accidentally drinking a magic potion.  she was then raised by the witch doctor Kobo, who taught her the ways of the jungle and several African languages.  Sheena is skilled with knives, bows, and spears, and is able to communicate with animals.  As an adult, she becomes the Queen of the Jungle and acquires a pet monkey named Chim.  Sheena's "mate" is white safari guide Bob Reynolds (his last name changes over the years).  According to comics historian Jess Nevins, over the years Sheena has battled "hostile natives, hostile animals, giants, a super-ape, the 
Green Terror, saber-tooth tigers, voodoo cultists, gorilla-men, devil-apes,  blood cults, devil queens, dinosaurs, army ants, lion men, lost races, leopard-birds, cavemen, serpent gods, vampire-apes, etc."  Suffice it to say, Sheena is one tough lady.

Sheena is modeled in part on Rima, the Jungle Girl, from William Henry Hudson's 1904 novel Green Mansions.  According to Will Einsner, who has been credited with creating the character with Jerry Iger, Sheen=a's name was derived in part from H. Rider Haggard's novel She; Iger disputed this, saying that Eisner was not involved in the character's and that he got the idea from the word "sheenie," a derogatory term for Jews.  (Eisner and Iger had a sometimes contentious relationship.)  Iger's Universal Phoenix Features, which created various comics for syndication, came up with the character (drawn by Mort Mesklin) for Editors Press Service, which sold the first Sheena story to the British comic book Wags, where it appeared in issue #46, January 1938.  To disguise the fact that Universal Phoenix Features consisted only of Iger and Eisner, the pseudonym "W. Morgan Thomas."

In America, Sheena first appeared in Jumbo Comics #1, September 1938, from Fiction House.  the feature appeared in every issue of Jumbo Comics, ending with the April 1953 issue.  She gained her own title in 1941 with the first issue (of eighteen) of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, dated Spring 1942 -- making her the first female comic book character with her own title -- edging out Wonder Woman, who first appeared in a Summer 1942 issue.

Later on, Sheena would be rebooted and reimagined and given supernatural powers, as well as the iconic two-piece leopard outfit many associated with her.  But, for now, she is still wearing the one-piece skimpy leopard skin dress that has served her well for many adventures (I should note that in  the original story, the character wore a red dress, but a red dress does not a jungle queen make).

This issue gives us three adventures of Sheena, two apparently original and one reprinted from Jumbo Comics #63.  In the first, Sheena rescues Kazembe, the chief of the peaceful Basuto tribe.  An evil white man, Kessler, and the fierce Dango tribe have overpowered the Basuto.  Kessler is not afraid of sheena because his magic fire spear (rifle) never  misses.  silly man.

In the second episode, Bobtail, the king of f6ang and claw and a tawny terror, has been terrorizing the territory so Sheena has set a trap for the killer lion.  In the meantime, an Egyptian prince has started a hunt for a lion, unaware that several of his servants plan to kill him so a rival can come to power.  Sheena puts a halt to that plan -- actually bobtail does, by killing the man bad guy who was about to kill Sheena.  Then, simply because there are more pages to go in the story, Sheena stumbles upon a safari under attack by normally peaceful Cheetahs.  Turns out the great white hunter of the safari had killed a cheetah just for fun and that peeved off the other cheetahs.  Turns out the bad hunter is in search of a pygmy tribe that can magically change the size of animals, either larger or smaller -- power like that could be worth a fortune in the right unscrupulous hands.  Sheena and Bob are captured, left to die, escape, fight a giant warthog, chase the bad guys down the river, capture all but the bad hunter, who escapes and then is caught in a bear trap that Bob set for Bobtail.  Bobtail lives to fight another day.  this is the story that was a reprint.

In a two-page text story, Lady Beddington-Smythe, a noted sports huntress tries to shoot Chim.  Sheena warns the huntress off, but as an Englishwoman, Lady Beddington-Smythe does not take orders from a...a savage!  Sheena has to call in Simba the lion to convince her otherwise.

The final story sheen=a comes across a wounded man who is under attack by a pack of gorillas.  The man, who had been shot, mutters something about the lost city of the Portuguese before he slips into unconsciousness.  The evil Taluki has captured Bob and will kill him unless Sheena leads him through the swamps to the lost city.  The lost city is actually an ancient castle with a treasure room of gold along with the long-dead bodies of ancient Portuguese soldiers.  Bob reappears and he and Sheena defeat Taluki's men.  Taluki escapes with some gold, but without Sheena to lead him back through the swamp, he falls into quicksand and gets sucked up.  Once again there is peace in the jungle.

Better than many of the other comic books of its time.  BTW, the cover has absolutely nothing to do with any of the stories within,

Enjoy.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=97636&comicpage=&b=i

FORGOTTEN BOOK: THE MOUSE ON THE MOON

The Mouse on the Moon by Leonard Wibberly (1962; filmed in 1963 and directed  by Richard Lester)

I seldom re-read books, but, by coincidence, I recently read several science fiction books about the early days of the Space Race and I felt an overwhelming urge to revisit one of my favorites.

If you ask me what country, aside from my own, I most respect, the answer, hands down, would be thee Duchy of Grand Fenwick.  I say this merely because I am a rational man and have a great love for humanity,

For over six centuries, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick lay nestled in the northern Alps, snugly located between France and Switzerland.  It is the smallest country in the world with a population of  just over five thousand people.  Proud of its ancient heritage, Grand Fenwick disdains almost all modern appurtenances -- there no phones, no cars, no telegraph, and -- to the ire of the Count of Mountjoy, the country's prime minister -- no indoor plumbing.  (The count really wished he could take a warm bath.)  It's army carries only longbows as weapons, through both tradition and inclination; the only other weapon in its arsenal is a dusty, unused Q-bomb -- a powerful device invited by the Grand Fenwick's sole scientist, the absent-minded Dr. Kokintz, whose experiments are often interrupted by bird watching excursions   Grand Fenwick's feeble economy is supplied by sheep and wine (specifically, Pinot Grand Fenwick, a superb wine).  The country is ruled by the regnant Duchess, Gloriana XII, "a somewhat young willful lady of twenty-three," but nonetheless truly loved by all.

The trouble began when Gloriana decided she wanted a full-length Russian ermine coat, one more suitable for her position than her regular cloth coat.  The coat Gloriana wanted would cost $50,000, equal to or perhaps more than the country's entire budget.  She tasked Mountejoy with the problem of getting her the coat.  Mountejoy had for years been unable to convince the Council to provide funds for indoor plumbing; how can he convince them the spring for such an expensive coat?  At the same time, two bobolinks were spotted in the Duchy's national forest, which was about twenty acres smaller than Winnie-the-Pooh's hundred acre wood...

In the first book in the series, The Mouse That Roared, Mountejpy had devised a plan to increase the Duchy's coffers.  He declared war on America and invaded the country with Grand Fenwick's standing army (all twelve of them, armed with long bows).  The plan:  invade on Monday, lose on Tuesday, and America will provide funding to rebuild Grand Fenwick's war-torn economy by Friday.  That plan did not work out because Grand Fenwick somehow won the war.  Still, Mountjoy -- who had been hearing of th space race between America and Russia to be the first to reach the moon -- decided to try again.  He wrote a letter to the Secretary of State requesting a loan of $5,050,000 -- five  million for the Duchy's non-existent space program and $50,000 for a fur coat.  The State Department rightly believed that the five million would actually be spent on plumbing (and were a little confused on the fur coat part), but decided a gesture would make for good publicity over the Russians.  But five million was an embarrassing sum, so they upped to fifty million for the supposed space program, and made the entire amount a gift, rather than a loan.

Mounntejoy was a politician and believed in deception rather than honesty.  The people of Gran Fenwick, however, were not politicians and believed in honesty.  If the money was not used for a rocket to the moon, they would return it.  After much haggling it was agreed that the original five million would be spent on plumbing and the rest on the as yet non-existent space program.  

About those bobolinks, which are native to northeastern North America and have never been seen in Europe...  Dr. Kokintz went out and took some photographs to show to the Audubon Society  but, when developed, the photographs were blurred, which led to the discovery of the startling properties of Pinot Grand Fenwick.  In short, the wine was the key to atomic rocket power.  There was now no reason Gran Fenwick could not start its own moon landing project.

The problem was the rest of the world did not believe Grand Fenwick was serious.  Not, that is, until the rocket launched carrying Dr. Kokintz and Vincent Mountjoy to the moon at a leisurely pace of a thousand miles an hour.  Russia and American scramble to launch their own rockets to get to the moon first and declare it in the name of their own countries...

A truly funny, truly biting satire on world politics.  Like me, you'll be rooting for little Grand Fenwick.  And, yes, the bobolinks filled their nest with four eggs, and four tiny bobolinks were added to the world at the book's end.  Yay!

Here's a clip from the 1963 film.  (Sorry, the full movie is behind a paywall.)  The film stars Margaret Rutherford, Ron Moody, Bernard Cribbins, David Kossof, Terry-Thomas, and June Ritchie. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yqZzPV5V7k

THE ADVENTURES OF SAM SPADE: SAM AND THE PSYCHE (THE CASE OF DR. DENOFF) (AUGUST 2, 1946)

Currently reading The Return of the Maltese Falcon by Max Allan Collins, so I thought it would be fun to check out Sam from radio's Golden Age, with Howard Duff as Spade and Lurene Tuttle as Effie.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbeDuJKqeHo&t=3s+

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: KID CARDULA

"Kid Cardula" by Jack Ritchie (first published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, June 1976; reprinted in Alfred Hitchock's Anthology #2, Spring/Summer 1978, also published in hardcover as Alfred Hitchcock's Tales to Take Your Breath Way, 1977; in Fantastic Creatures, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, & Charles G. Waugh, 1981; in Alfred Hitchcock Tales of Terror, edited by Eleanor Sullivan, 1986; in Fantasy Stories, edited by Andrew Goodwyn, 1991; and in Ritchie's collection Cardula and the Locked Rooms, 2026.

Okay, so the guy's a vampire but neither he nor the author nor Cardula's loyal servant Josef ever mention it directly; neither, it seems do any of Cardula's clients -- and no mention= was ever made about any possible anagrams of Cardula's name.  Ritchie wrote nine stories about Cardula, who becme a private investigator in the second story, with office hours from 8 PM to 4 AM, depending on the solstice.

"Kid Cardula" was the first story in the series.  Cardula is broke and needs rent money.  (Later in the series we learn that he was once very rich but most of his monies were invested in extensive holdings in such countries as Cuba, the Belgian Congo, Lebanon, Angola, and Bangladesh...areas that turned nout to be very poor investments at the time.)  Through reading the sports pages, he learned that there was a great deal of money to bade in boxing for very little (for him) effort.  Cardula, pale skinned, of an uncertain age, and dressed all in black, went to Manny, a local gym owner and boxing manager and offered his services.  

The easiest way to get rid of this guy was to put Cardula in the ring against a professional boxer who would make short work of him.  The boxer hit Cardula with a couple of powerful punches to no effect.  Then Cardula struck out with a left  that was so fast one could hardly see it, and with  that one punch knocked his opponent unconscious.  Manny began to see dollar signs.  Cardula had one condition, however:  he would only fight at night, claiming he suffered from a case of photophobia.  

Cardula's first professional fight was against a rising fighter named McCardle.  McCardle was just a few matches shy of the big time and his scheduled opponent was scratched due to illness.  McCardle needed an easy opponent at the last minute and Cardula appeared to fir the bill.  When the fight weas held, however, Cardula knocked McCardle out.  The fight lasted nineteen seconds, including the count.

After that, Manny convinced Cardula to stretch his matches out and not to go for the knockout so early ion the game.  He even talked Cardula into faking being knocked down a couple of times before wining a match.  Things were going good.  Cardula's rent was paid, he kept winning matches, began to get  a local reputation, and even attracted the interest of a  number of curious women -- none of whom he paid much attention to.  Until...

Cardula told Manny he was quitting the ring and was marrying a very rich lady who had expressed more than an interest in him.  Since she had money, he no longer needed to earn money boxing.  What really happened, though, was that Cardula's distant overseas relatives learned of his boxing career and his growing reputation and advised him to stop.  It was always best for Cardula to "fly" under the radar.

Poor Manny.  His dream of riches managing Cardula had vanished.  But in leaving, Cardula left Manny one final gift in appreciation...

Jack Richie was a master of the criminous short story with never an extraneous word or a word lout of place.  His stories often have a slight humorous bent and an unexpected ending.  I have mentioned before that I feel he was second only to Edward D. Hoch in ingenuity, plot, and originality.  Cardula and the Locked Rooms -- which contains all nine Cardula stories, plus six additional "impossible" crime stories -- is only the sixth Ritchie collection to appear; he wrote over 500 stories so there are still a lot of gold nuggets to be mined.  As you go through life, a simple rule of thumb is never pass up a Jack Ritchie story.

Th June 1976 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (also including stories by Lawrence Block, Nelson DeMille, Kay Nolte Smith, Joyce Harrington, and others) can be found here:

https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/luminist/PU/AHMM_1976_06.pdf

ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: BAD ACTOR (JANUARY 9, 1962)

We lost one of America's greatest actors this week.  Even before his noted portrayal of Boo Radley in his first film, To Kill a Mockingbird, Robert Duvall was giving some great performances on television, as in this 1962 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.  Directed  by John Newland from a "Max Franklin" (Richard Deming) story adapted by Robert Bloch, Duvall plays Bart Collins, a struggling actor who accidently kills a rival for a part.  Now what can he do with the body -- especially that pesky head?  Charles Robinson plays the unlucky victim; Carole Eastman plays Duvall's girlfriend; and William Schallert is the cop who investigates.

Enjoy.

https://archive.org/details/alfred-hitchcock-presents-s-7e-1-colorized-sd/alfred+hitchcock+presents-s7e14shrt-colorized-sd.mkv