INCOMING

Let's start June off with a pile of books.

Incoming:

• Poul Anderson, All One Universe.  Retrospective collection of 18 science fiction stories and articles.  Also, The Fleet of Stars.  Science fiction, the fourth novel in the Harvest of Stars series and a sequel to 1995's Harvest the Fire.  Anderson  "brings  back the wildly colorful Anson Guthrie, the iconoclastic hero of Harvest the Stars.  The staid, somber people of Earth are not only dependent on technology, they are all but ruled by machine intelligence.  suspecting a conspiracy to suppress the last vestiges of freedom known to humankind, Guthrie sets out on a dangerous and hair-raising journey encompassing the realm of the comets, the asteroids, and the stars themselves.  Among the many exciting characters he meets along the way are the brave, beautiful Kinna Ronay and her courageous friend Finn, who against the advice of the wise and cautious Chuan, will join Guthrie in his attempt to stop the Terrans.  Guthrie and his friends are determined that humankind will travel to the stars and roam the galaxies, even the universe itself, or die trying."
• Isaac Asimov, Understanding Physics, Volume II:  Light Magnetism, and Electricity.  Part of a 1966 tome that, while outdated, is still as relevant today as it was then.  Asimov's prose is clear and a pleasure to read and explains why he has been called America's Explainer.
• Katie Bernet, Beth Is Dead.  Mystery, an updated riff on Little Women.  "When Beth March is found dead, her sisters vow to uncover her murderer -- until they begin to suspect one another.  Jo, an aspiring author, with a huge social media following, would do anything to hook readers.  Did she kill her sister for the story?   Amy is desperate to study art in Europe, but she needs money from her aunt -- money that's always been earmarked for Beth.  Meg wouldn't dream of hurting her sister,  but her boyfriend might have done it -- and she'll protect him at all costs.  And the March sisters aren't the only ones with a story to tell.  There's Theodore Laurence, the neighbor who has feelings for not one but two sisters. Meg's manipulative best friend, Amy's flirtatious mentor, and Beth's lionhearted first ,love.  But the suspect pool stretches far outside family and friends. Months ago, the March sisters were dragged into the spotlight when their father published a controversial bestseller about his own neighbors, so anyone could have wanted Beth dead..."  I'm looking forward to this one, but I have to admit that I have never read Little Women and ;probably never will.
• David Brin, Existence.  Science fiction.  "Gerald Livingston is an orbital garbage collector.  For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up.  But there's something spinning a little higher than he expects, something that isn't on the decades-old orbital maps.  An hour after he grabs it and brings it in, rumors fill Earth's infomesh about an 'alien artifact.'  Thrown into the maelstrom of worldwide shared experience, the Artifact is a game changer.  A message in a bottle: an alien capsule that wants to communicate.  The world reacts as hun]mans always do:  with fear and hope and selfishness and love and violence.  And incredible curiosity."
• Algis Budrys, editor, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Volume XXII.  Annual volume presenting the winners of the Writer of the Future and the Illustrator of the Future contests of 2006.  Basically a contest for unpublished authors, most of the winners -- as expected -- are not that good, and most do not go on to greater things.  But there are some who make it; the inaugural class of 1985 included Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Leonard Carpenter, David Zindell, Dean Wesley smith, and Karen Joy Fowler; 1986 had Robert Reed and Howard Hendrix; bugt over the years, most of the authors and their stories vanished in the dust.  The WOTF contest is a big deal, however, drawing a lot of support from the writing and publishing community, but -- at tis heart -- it's just a promotional gimmick for scientology and its founder, the sometimes talented and often erratic L. Ron Hubbard.  Authors included in this volume are Blake Hutchins, Judith Tabron, Michael Velichansky, Lee Beevington, David Sakmyser, Diana Rowland, David John Baker, Brandon Sigrist, Joseph Jordan, Richard Kirslake, Sarah Totton, and Brian Rappatta -- the only name I recognize here is Diana Rowland, who has published six novels in the Angel Crawford/White Trash Zombie series and nine novels in the Kara Gillian/Demon series, but whose name I recognized only because she published in just one of G.R.R. Martin's Wild Cards series of "mosaic novels."  How many of these names did you recognize?  Also included are four article from Hubbard, Bob Eggleton, Robert J. Sawyer, and Orson Scott Card.  B ot, I'm afraid, a very worthwhile anthology.
• Gwendoline Butler, Coffin's Game.  The 29th (of 34) mysteries featuring John /Coffin.  "A series of random terrorist acts have struck the heart of Commander John Coffin's Docklands area.  The  body of a dead woman, rendered unidentifiable by her killer, is at first believed to be Stella Pinero, Coffin's wife.  While Coffin confirms it is not, he cannot explain the disappearance of Stella, or the treachery that is poised to shatter his personal and professional world.  A second body, obscenely costumed in theater clippings, implicates Stella in a double murder.  Coffin's deepest motivations and loyalties are put to the test as a puzzle of evil and deceit unfolds.  Only a third murder will tip the killer's hand, revealing a twisted, tragic mystery of blackmail, revenge, and madness unlike any other that /Coffin has faced."  Butler also wrote the Charmian Daniels series as "Jennie Melville."
• Michael Connelly, Lost Light.  A Harry Bosch novel, the ninth in the series.  "Only the money was real.  Four years ago, LAPD detective Harry Bosxh was on a movie set asking questions about the murder of a young production assistant when an armored car arrived with two million dollars cash for use in a heist scene.  In a life-imitates-art firestorm, a gang of masked men converged on the delivery and robbed the armored car with guns blazing.  Bosch got off a shot that struck one of the robbers as their van sped away, but the money was never recovered.  And the young woman's murder was in the stack of unsolved-case files Bosch carried home the night he left the LAPD.  Now Bosch moves back full bore into that case, determined to find justice for thee young woman.  Without a badge to open doors and strike fear into the guilty, he learns afresh how brutally indifferent the world can be.  But something draws him on, past humiliation and harassment.  It's not just that the dead woman had no discernable link to the robbery.  Nor is it his sympathy for the cops who took over the case, one of them killed on duty and the other paralyzed from the same attack.  With every conversation and every shred of evidence, Bosch senses a larger presence, an organization bigger than the movie studios and more ruthless than even the LAPD." 
• John Darton, Neanderthal.  Suspense thriller.  "In the  mountains of northern Asia, a guerilla fighter vanishes, a schoolgirl is  murdered, and an eminent Harvard paleontologist disappears.  To a shadowy government agency in Maryland, these are all signs that something has gone terribly wrong with the  most extraordinary expedition ever mounted.  Matt Mattison and Susan Arnot, who were once lovers and are now academic rivals, are dispatched to find the secret their Harvard mentor was seeking:  a species linked to the origins of mankind.  They have existed for over forty thousand years.  They possess powers man cannot even imagine.  And in a world dominated by humans, they are about to alter the face of civilization forever."
• Joe Gores, Glass Tiger.  Thriller.  "Brendan Thorne, ex-ranger in Panama, ex-sniper for a CIA front in Cambodia, has foresworn violence and is living in Kenya when FBI agent Terrill Hatfield arranges for Thorne's deportation back to the United States.  In a top secret meeting. Thorne is told that Halden Corwin, legendary Vietnam sniper and mercenary, has vowed to assassin ate the recently elected president of the United States.  The government's computers have picked Thorne as the most likely person to find Corwin and stop him.  Thorne won't have to kill anyone:  Hatfield's crack FBI tam will take care of that.  But when the plan doesn't go as described, Thonre discovers he can't trust anyone of anything he's been told.  Drawn into a wed of lies, ambitions, and double-crosses, Thorne must run for his life and, ultimately, stand and fight."
• Donald Hamilton, The Retaliators.  A Matt Helm spy-guy novel, the 17th (of 27) in the series.  "Matt Helm was unexpectedly rich and he didn't like it.  The $20,000 that had been deposited in his account was a complete surprise.  Very nice.  Except Matt knew that someone was setting him up, making it look as though he was a traitor and getting a payoff.  Someone who wanted Matt out of  business.  Suddenly, another secret agent with an unexplained surplus in his bank account was murdered.  Matt figured he'd better track down the 'benefactors' before they retired him for good."
• Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders.  Mystery, the first novel in the Susan Ryeland series.  "Alan Conway is a bestselling crime writer.  His editor, Susan Ryeland, has worked with him for years, and she's intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pund, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages.  Alan's traditional formula pays homage to queens of classic Briitish crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.  It's proved hugely successful.  So successful that Susan must continue to pout up with his troubling behavior if she wants to keep her job.  When Susan receives Alan's latest manuscript, in which Atticus Pund investigates a murder in an English manor house, Pye Hall, she has no reason to think it will be any different from the others.  there will be dead bodies, a cast of intriguing suspects, plenty of red herrings and clues.  but the more Susan reads, the  more she realizes that there's another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript -- one of ruthless ambition, jealousy, and greed -- and that it will soon lead to murder."
• Joan Kahn, editor, The Edge of the Chair.  Suspense anthology with 35 stories and essays.  Kahn (1914-1994) was the legendary mystery/suspense editor at Harper & Row for nearly thirty-five years (which included the launch of her own imprint, Joan Kahn books); among her signing were John Creasey, Patricia Highsmith, Julian Symons, Dick Francis, and Tony Hillerman.  she has long been considered one of the premiere editors in the field.  The Edge of the Chair was the first of at least ten highly respected anthologies published over a twenty-year period, blending the usual suspects with writers from mainstream litersature, past and present.  An excellent anthology on every level.
• Elmer Kelton, Many a River.  Western.  "The Barfield family, Arkansas sharecroppers, are headed west with their sons, Jeffrey and Todd. to find good farmland they can call their own.  In far West Texas their camp is attacked by Comanche raiders, and the elder Barfields are savagely killed.  Todd, the younger son, is taken captive by the Indians.  Jeffrey manages to hide and is rescued by white militiamen.  While his older brother is given in the care of a homesteading family, Todd is sold -- for a rifle and gunpowder -- to a Comanchero trader named January.  Years later, after escaping from near-slavery with the trader, Todd, now fluent in the Spanish language, serves and an interpreter for Confederate troops marching to Santa Fe.  Jeffrey and his adopted family are forced to flee their North Texas farm and head south for the Mexican border to escape the turbulent battles between Unionists and Confederates.  Brothers Jeffrey and Todd, separated by violence, have crossed many rivers, but are determined to be reunited and discover hoe their separate lives have changed them."  Kelton was a seven-time Spur winner.  
• "Freida McFadden" (Sara Cohen), The Widow's Husband's Secret Lie.  Satirical novella.  "My husband is dead.  I attended his funeral.  I watched his casket be lowered six feet into the ground.  (Actually, it may have been only five feet, but that still seems like more than enough.)  And then we ate an array of finger sandwiches and deviled eggs and miniature beef wellingtons that cost more than my first car.  My pint is, Grant is gone.  And so are all his many, many deep, dark secrets which I never really bothered to ask him about.  He is never coming back.  So why do I still see his face everywhere I  go?"  The acclaimed author of thirty novels was named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people of the year, so i thought I'd see what all the hubbub was about  and am staring with this novella.
• Jo Nesbo, Cockroaches.  The second Inspector Harry Hole novel.  "When Norway's ambassador to Thailand is found dead in a Bangkok brothel, Inspector Harry Hole is dispatched from Oslo to help with the case.  Once he arrives Harry discovers that this case is about much more thana random murder.  Something else. something more pervasive, is scrabbling around behind the scenes:  for every cockroach you see, there are hundreds behind the walls.  Assaulted round-the-clock by traffic noise, Harry wanders the streets of Bangkok -- lined with go-go bars, temples, tourist traps, and opium dens -- trying to peace together the truth behind the ambassador's death even though no one asked him to, and no one wants him to -- not even Harry himself."
• Kim Newman, The Man from the Diogenes Club.  The first collection of mystery/fantasy/horror stories about the Diogenes Club, with eight stories.  "Introducing Richard Jeperson...in the 1970s the  most valued member of the Diogenes Club -- the least publicized of Britain's law enforcement and intelligence agencies.  his cases involved haunted trains and seaside resorts, murder in utopian communities and London's vice district, voodoo and mind-altering therapists.  His fashion sense is gaudy, his enemies deadly,  and his associates glamourous."  The Diogenes Club may ring a bell with long-time mystery fans.
• Warren Norwood (& Mel Odom, uncredited), Time Police, Volume 2:  Trapped!  The second of four science fiction novels in a series created buy Byron Preuss.  "Jackson Dubcheck's family  has vanished!  As if they never existed, Jackson's sister-in-law, mom, and nephew have disappeared.  Even their names had been erased from public records.  He must find them and knows where to look -- in the past.  The Second Republic, the dictators of 2249 and inventors of time travel, preserve their future by changing the past.  Jackson, an ordinary citizen, was no threat to the Republic until he discovered their secret.  Now Jackson is on the run.  With the Time Police hot non his track, can he help overthrow the Republic?  Can he rescue his future by fixing his past?"
• "Ellis Peters" (Edith Pargeter), The Confession of Brother Haluin.  The fifteenth chronicle of Brother Cadfael.  "After a mild autumn, December of 1142 brings a smothering, silent blanket of snow.  Thus it comes about that the great hall of the Bendictine Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul is damaged, and the brothers must repair its roof before the damage worsens.  The treacherous icy conditions are to prove near-fatal for Brother Haluin.  He slips from the roof in a terrible fall., sustaining such grave injuries that he makes his deathbed confession to the Abbot and Brother Cadfael.  A startling story of trespasses hard for God or man to forgive emerges.  But Haluin does not die.  On his recovery, he sets out on a journey of expiation, with Cadfael as his sole companion.  An arduous trip, it leads to some shocking discoveries, and to murder."  Also, The Summer of the Danes.  The eighteenth chronicle of Brother Cadfael.  "In the summer of 1144, a strange calm has settled over England.  The armies of King Stephen and Empress Maud have temporarily exhausted each other.   Brother Cadfael considers peace a blessing, but a little excitement never comes amiss to a former soldier and Cadfael is delighted to accompany his young friend, Brother Mark, not expecting to be caught up in yet another royal feud.  The Welsh prince Owain Gwynedd has banished his brother Cadwaladr, accusing him of the treacherous murder of an ally.  The reckless Cadwaladr has retaliated by leading an army of Danish mercenaries, poised to invade Wales and retake his Just lands.  As the two armies teeter on the brink of bloody civil war, Cadfael is captured by the Danes, together with a headstrong young woman fleeing an arranged marriage, but before he can untangle such domestic passions, Cadfael has to survive the brotherly quarrel that could plunge an entire kingdom into deadly chaos."  I had a signed copy of this book years ago that went walkabout before I had a chance to read it, so I'm grateful for this copy.
• John Saul, Three Complete Novels.  Horror omnibus containing Hellfire (1986), The Unwanted (1987), and Sleepwalk (1990).  Hellfire:  "Westover's old mill hides a horrifying act behind the doors that slammed shut a century before.  The eleven youngsters caught within those doors faced a fierce inferno.  Just as the secretive townspeople must face a long-overdue vengeance."  The Unwanted:  "When her mother dies in a violent accident, sixteen-year-old Cassie Winslow goes to live with her father's new family.  Her increasingly bizarre dreams leave her to discover the frightening psychic forces of The Unwanted."  Sleepwalk:  "A sleepy New Mexico Town becomes the scene of nightmares that appear deathly real to the victims.  but what -- or who -- is the sources of these psychic attacks?"  Saul (b. 1944) made his bones with more than three dozen best-selling suspense and horror novels beginning in 1977, many of them dealing with children either in peril or causing peril.  his books readable, but because of his emphasis on putting kids through the wringer, I have to space reading them far apart.  He should not be confused with Canadian author and political philosopher John Ralston Saul (b. 1947).
• Mark Schorr, Diamond Rock.  The third, and thus far final, adventure of Red Diamond. Private Eye.  Simon Jaffe, New York cabbie, believes himself to be a tough 1940''s PI named Red Diamond in this series of hard-boiled detective novels.  Simon Jaffe, aka Red Diamond, has a .38 in his pocket and steel in his fists, and he's right on the money when it comes to cracking a case, catching a killer, or cuddling up to the doll of his dreams, Fifi La Roche.  This time out Red's looking for a mob boss named Becker who hustles all the angles.  But the angle that sends Red north on the West Side Highway and into a sharp left over the George is a fast lane straight to L.A. where an  eighties' scene of rock stars and dirty deals introduces Red Diamond to a deadly world of soft porn, hard drugs, and heavy metal -- heavy like the lead that's got his name and address on it."  I read the first book in  the series when it came out in 1983 and was impressed by the writing and the introduction of a delusional detective; for some reason I never followed up with the sequels.
• Jack Seabrook, Sources of Suspense:  Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the Stories That Shaped It.  Reference.  Covers all 268 episodes from the seven seasons of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1962) in chronological order.  Included is information about the source material, plots of both the episodes and the source material, details on the filming (including innovative camera angles), and details about the cast, directors, script writers, and authors of the source material, plus a plethora of interesting tidbits that Seabrook throw in gratis.  It is based on the long-running The Hitchcock project that Seabrook penned for the bare*bones website.  This is a heft oversized book with small, two-column type, one that is best reading in small doses to avoid being overwhelmed.  An essential book for fans of Hitchcock, his program, television history, and the suspense field in general.  Seabrook is now working on a companion volume detailing The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.
• Dan Simmons, Flashback.  Dystopian science fiction thriller.  "Some twenty years from now, the United States is near total collapse.  But 85 percent of the population doesn't care.  They're addicted to Flashback, a drug that allows its users to experience the best moments of their lives.  After former detective Nick Bottom's wife dies in a car accident, he started going under the flash to be with her; now an addict, he's lost his job and is estranged from his teenage son.  Nick may be a tortured soul, but he's still a good cop, so he's hired by a top government advisor to investigate the murder of the advisor's son.  Soon Nick becomes the one man who can change the course of an entire nation turning away from tomorrow to live in the past."
• Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysics for People in Hurry.  Non-fiction.  Popularized description of our essential universe by one of the great explainers in the field.  Black holes, quarks, quantum mechanics, the search for planets and the search for extraterrestrial life, and more...  A  nifty book to read when I want to appear smart.
• Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards.  Suspense novel, the May pick for Erin's Family Book Club.  "Austin's Zilker Park neighborhood is a wonderland of greenbelt trails, live music, and moms who drink a few too many margaritas.  Whitney. Annette, and Liza have grown thick as thieves as they have raised their children together for fifteen years, believing they can shelter their children from an increasingly dangerous world.  Their friendship is unbreakable -- as safe as the neighborhood where they have raised their sweet little boys.  Or so they think.  One night, the three women have been enjoying happy hour when their boys, lifeguards for the summer, come back on bicycles from a late-night dip in their favorite swimming hole.  The boys share a secret -- news that will shatter the perfect world their mothers have so painstakingly created."  This one got a lot of good revues and I zipped through it quickly; I enjoyed the book despite some glaring plot holes.
• David Weber, Worlds of Honor #3:  Changer of Worlds.  Military science fiction collection in the Honor Harrington universe, including a novel, a short story, and a novella  by Weber, plus a novella by Eric Flint.  "Lady Dame Honor Harrington -- starship captain, admiral, Steadholder, and Duchess -- has spent decades defending the Star Kingdom of Manticore.   But it's a big universe, and Honor's actions affect a lot of lives, not all of them human."
• Dave Wolverton, editor, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Volume 30.  Annual collection of winning stories from the Writers of the Future Contest, along with illustrations from winners of the Illustrators of the Future Contest.  I find these compilations to be a mixed bag:  some previous winners have gone to have distinguished careers, while others sink into obscurity with tales that are IMHO pure dreck.  I am prejudiced because, despite the support of the project from many professionals I admire, I still consider this contest to be pure Scientology PR, and= part of their continuous effort to deify Hubbard  This volume covers  the year 2014 and also includes short stories from Orson Scott Card, Mike Resnick, and the long-dead Hubbard, as well as essays from Robert Silverberg, Val Lakey Lindahn, and the still-dead Hubbard.  For what it's worth, I do not recognize any of the names of that year's winners presented here.

HYMN TIME

The story of Noah told through country music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hucLYuYvL8

DELL FOUR COLOR (1939 SERIES) #6: DICK TRACY

This issue collects 64 Sunday strips featuring Chester Gould's famous detective.

It starts when Tracy arrests a gang of female perfume thieves and he meets spoiled Johnny Mintworth, who is sweet on one of the crooks.  Johnny is being blackmailed by racketeer "Collie" Vinsso, but the picture that Vinsso is blackmailing him for is a fake, showing Collie with the wife of a man willing to kill out of jealousy; fearing for his life, Collie pays the up.  Again, Tracy puts the kibosh on that.  But Johnny isn't through acting dumb' he attempts to break his girlfriend out of jail, is caught, and then escapes.  Now a fugitive, he is targeted by underworld lawyer Danny Supeena, who knows he comes from a very wealthy family.  Supeena takes out accident insurance policies on Johnny and the proceeds to break his arm.  Supeena kills Johhny's mother, making it look like suicide, but that does not fool Tracy.  In the meantime Supeena talks Johnny into faking a drowning for the insurance money; Johnny tries to drown himself but is rescues by swimmers.  Supeena shoots at Johnny, wounding him,  but johnny makes his way to the police where he is arrested for his mother's murder.  Things just don't seem to be going well for Johnny Mintworth...but there's worse to come.

In typical dick Tracy fashion, one crime leads to another:  "Little crimes lead to big ones.  Crime not only doesn't pay --  but it can't pay -- It has the world against it.  Remember that, boys."  Tracy not only uses his intuition and displays bravery, but he also has the latest crime solving techniques at his fingertips.  Tracy (of course) also enters a death traps, as usual, and comes out unscathed -- not that the same can be said foe a progressive lit of bad guys.  Pat Patton is here, and Junior, bot not Tess Trueheart.  Nor are there Gould's patented, deformed super villains.  Still, all in all, it's not a bad look at Dick Tracy in the Thirties.

Enjoy.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=95726

FORGOTTEN BOOK: THE LOST CITY

 The Lost City by "John Blaine" (Harold L. Goodwin & Peter J. Harkins)  (1947)

Book Two in a series of twenty-four, with the first three written by Goodwin & Harkins, and the remaining twenty-one by Goodwin alone.  This was a boy's series, inaugurated before the young adult genre came into it's own, but it was aimed at a slightly older audience than the typical Grosset & Dunlop juvenile series; it combined science fiction, mystery, and adventure tropes.  The first few books books were termed "Electronic Adventures," then "Science-Adventure Stories," and finally "SCIENCE Adventures."  the first twenty-three books were published from 1947 and 1968, with a previously unpublished book ending the series in 1990.

Under his own name, Goodwin wrote popular science books, many about space exploration.  Goodwin had a strong technological background.  It is interesting to note that The Lost City was published only two years after Arthur C. Clarke first proposed satellite communication via geostationary orbits -- an idea which was modified to provide the scientific background for this book.

Rick Brant is the teenaged sone of Hartson Brant, a world-famous electronics scient who heads the Spindrift Foundation, a group of scientists headquartered on Spindrift Island off the coast of New Jersey.  In addition to being a good athlete and a private pilot, Rick invents various electronic devices.  He often accompanies his father on scientific expeditions.

Rick's best friend is Donald "Scotty" Scott, a boy of his own age, an ex-marine who lied about his age to join in World War II.  Scotty is strong, tough, fiercely loyal, and is enamored with weaponry.  Originally hire as an employee of the Spindrift Foundation, Scotty is now a firm part of the Brant family.

The other member of the brant family are Rick's mother, who serves merely as a placeholder -- over the course of twenty-four books we never learn her first name, and Rick's younger (by one year) sister Barby, a pretty and extremely spunky girl, who appears only briefly in this book.

When we open, Rick is feeling verklempt, he is about go on an expedition with Scotty that will take him from his home and his father for a full year.  They will accompanying noted mathematician Julius Weiss and Hobert Zircon, who is almost as famous an electronics scientist as Hartson Brant, on a journey to a desolate region of Tibet to perform one leg of an important scientific experiment.  the theory is to establish the beginnings of a world-wide communications network by shooting a signal to the moon, which would then beam back to a distant corner of the Earth.  (Clarke's proposal was to one day use artificial satellites for this purpose, but the first artificial satellite would not be launched until ten years into the future, so for the novel's purpose, the moon would have to do.)  As you can imagine, this was a majorly big deal for the time and had the potential to be a game-changer.  The remote regions of Tibet were about as far as one could get from Spindrift Island and an ideal location for Rick's end of the experiment.  The experiment also required a number of uniquely designed and manufactured pieces of  equipment, all of which had been carefully crated for the journey to Tibet.

The first leg of the trip was by freighter to Bombay, where the expedition would wend their way to Tibet.  There appeared to be no logical reason for anyone to want to throw a monkey wrench into the experiment, but several attempts were made to destroy the vital equipment on the voyage to Bombay.  Rick and Scotty managed to catch the saboteur  but all they could learn was that he was paid by a mysterious "Mr. Conway"; why remained a mystery.  Then, the equipment was stolen from the Bombay docks by a vicious gang.. Again, Rick and Scotty manage to recover everything, with the help of a young young beggar named Chahda -- who would soon become a regular character in the series.

The thing to understand is that all the troubles could have been avoided had not Weiss and Zircon -- as brilliant as each is -- not been absolute idiots.  Their every decision sets off warning flags with the reader.  But let's be kind and assume that they are just naive, trusting, and gullible.  Another obvious bad guy, the oleaginous Hendrick Van Groot, supplies Weiss and Zircon with a wrong map for the trek from Bombay to Tibet, and they blithely go on their merry mistaken way.  Speaking of idiots, Rick and Scotty do not show much initiative in the smarts department, either; only Chahda appears to have any common sense, perhaps because the has read only one book in his short life -- The World Book Almanac.

Despite all their travails, our heroes finally cross into Tiber at the half-way point of the book.  And now they are on the road to Lhasa, "the holy city of the Tibetans, where sits the boy ruler...the Dalai Lama."  Their ultimate destination is the city of Tengi-Bu.  But the man they hired to lead their group turns out to be in the pay of Conway, and is  leading them down the false trail from the map provided by Van Groot.  But, fear not campers!  Chahda, who had been left behind at the Bombay railway station, has managed to follow them into Tibet with the correct map.  But our ragged little  group is being followed and watched...by who?  Could it be ancient Mongols, not seen in this area for six hundred years?

Our expedition of four woke up one morning to find that their not-very-trustworthy guide and all the bearers had absconded, along with most of their supplies and animals.  The scientific equipment remained but there was no way to transport it, and the nearest village was a two-week walk way.  Worse, Chahda was among the missing, but Rick felt that he had gone to get help. 

By now the reader is wondering, where the heck is the "Lost City" of the book's title, and what does that have to do with geosynchronic satellite transmissions?

As Rick climbs a cliff to scout the area, Scotty, Weiss, and Zircon are taken captive  by strange warriors from a distant age.  Rick goes through a cave tunnel and emerges at a lost city of ancient Mongols!  Finally! And on page 153, to boot!

Can Rick save his friends and solve the mystery of the lost city?  Will they be able to foil Conway and Van Groot and complete the experiment?  And why were they so determined to stop the experiment?   And who the heck was Conway, anyway? And will loyal Chahda be able to rescue Rick and his friends?  And what was the gift that Barby gave the boys before their journey, telling them not to open it until the Fourth of July?  (Well, the answer to that question is pretty obvious, don't you think?)

The Rick Brant series of scientific adventures was surprisingly popular, and the books are still highly sought after.  But, for reasons I can't understand, they did not transcend beyond the actual series...no spin-offs, and no media media offshoots (although, if you squint real heard, you might believe they influenced the Johnny Quest franchise).  Grosset & Dunlap began transferring the rights to the series to Goodwin in the 1980s.  The Goodwin family is currently working to bring the books back in print.

A personal confession:  Prior to reading this book, I had only read one other Rick Brant adventure, number 15 in the series, The Blue Ghost Mystery (1960).  I was not impressed.  It turns out that the publisher refused to have any supernatural element in the books, and the original novel was modified to reflect that, and I suspect they did a poor job of it, which goes a long to explaining why I did not care for the book.  (They also rejected an entire novel for that reason; The Magic Talisman had elements of ESP in it, and remained unpublished until it was released in 1990 as the final book in the series.)   The Rick Brant series based its science fictional background as close as possible to real science, unlike, say, the many novels in the Tom Swift and Tom Swift Junior series, both of which went far afield in scientific extrapolation.  As flawed as they were, the Rick Brant stories were exciting reading for their time, and their original magic still remains for those wishing to recapture those days.

And, yes, I am planning to read many more entries in the series.  I may carp and bitch, but I can be amazingly enthusiastic and uncritical in my reading.

MERCURY THEATER ON THE AIR: THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY (SEPTEMBER 5, 1938)

 Perhaps, G. K. Chesterton's most famous novel, The Man Who Was Thursday has been tagged as a "metaphysical thriller."  I suppose that's a good a description as any.  But it's also a classic mystery and a classic fantasy and a classic spy novel and a classic whatever you wish to call it.

First published in 1908, the book follows Gabriel Syme, who is recruited by an anti-anarchist squad from Scotland Yard.  Syme meets anarchist poet Lucien Gregory, who takes him to a local meeting of anarchists, whose leadership consists of seven men, each going by a day of the week.  The local group is about to elect a person top fill the role of Thursday and somehow the choice falls on Syme.  It turns out that at least five of the seven are in reality police informants out to expose each other and the group.

A surrealistic work, heavy on Christian allegory (Chesterton was a noted Christian apologist), but also embued with a great sense of pessimism; the novel has left many readers scratching their heads for well over a century.  Novelist and critic Kingsley Amis did not scratch his head; pointing to the book's many twists and turns, he called it "the most thrilling book I have ever read."

Orson Wells wrote and starred in the Mercury Theater on the Air adaptation. In abridging the book for the radio, Wells dropped most of the metaphysical references that appeared in Chapter 14 of the novel, to make the story more palatable for his audience.  The episode appeared toe month before the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast.

A brilliant and influential novel and an equally brilliant adaptation.  

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH-32M_WoaY&t=5s

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: DRY SEPTEMBER

"Dry September" by William Faulkner (first published in Scribner's Magazine, January 1931; reprinted in Faulkner's collection These 13, 1931, and in The Collected Stories of William Faulkner, 1950; reprinted many times, including in Squire:  A Man's Magazine, February 1955; Strange Barriers, edited by J. Vernon Shea, 1955; The Edge of the Chair, 1967, and The Graveyard Shift, 1970,  both edited by Joan Kahn; Fiction 100, 1974 [and Fiction 100:  Second Edition, 1978, Fourth Edition, 1985, Fifth Edition, 1988], edited by James H. Pickering; Twice-Told Tales:  An Anthology of Short Fiction, edited by Gerard A. Barker, 1979;  The Penguin Book of Horror Stories, edited by J. A. Cudden, 1984; Classic American Short Stories, edited by Douglas Grant, 1990; Stories, edited by Eric S. Rabjin, 1990; The Riverside Anthology of Short Fiction:  Convention and Innovation, unknown editors, 1997;  Short Fiction, edited by Charles H. Bohner & Dean Dougherty, 1999; now in the public domain and available in many places online, including at the link listed at the end of this post)   

The story opens:  "Through the bloody September twilight, aftermath of sixty-two rainless days, it had gone like a fire in dry grass:  the rumor, the story, whatever it was.  Something about Miss Minnie Cooper and a Negro.  Attacked, insulted, frightened, none of them, gathered in the barber shop that Saturday evening where the ceiling fan stirred, without freshening it, the violated air, sending back upon them, in recurrent surges of male pomade and lotion, their own stale breath and odors, knew exactly what happened."

And that, with its exquisitely chosen words, tells you the entire story.  But don't stop reading after the first paragraph; you need to read the full story, especially in today's charged climate.

Told ambiguously, so the reader has to do the heavy lifting.

There are rumors, vague and unsubstantiated, that Miss Minnie Cooper, a white woman, has been attacked (or, perhaps, merely insulted) has been attacked by a Black man.  Something needs to be done to protect white women, and a group of men gather at the barber shop to discuss the matter.  they decide without any proof that the guilty man must be Will Mayes.  An objection to this logic was of the "will take the word of a Black man over a white woman" defense.  More people arrive at the barber shop, adding fuel to an already hot fire.  Something has to be done, if only to prove the white man's supremacy over the Black.  The mob heads out to find Will.

Miss Minnie was a pleasant enough woman, not very attractive and not of any importance to the townspeople.  a single woman taking care of her mother, many of the men in town assume that she could not attract a single man, so she must be guilty of adultery or of some other moral failure.  Minnie enters a movie theater and begins to laugh hysterically, the laughter soon turning to screams.  A doctor is called.  Minnie's friends begin to wonder if the story. has any truth at all to it.

The barber, Hawkshaw (who later appeared in Faulkner's story "Hair"), goes along with the mob in an attempt to dissuade them.  The mob finds Will, beats him, and pushed him into a car.  Hawkshaw wants nothing to do with this and is pushed out the car.  By the side of the road, he sees Will in the car...

The leader of the mob eventually returns home, yells at his wife for staying up, washes his hands, and goes to bed. 

Twenty-four years after the story was published, Emmett Till was murdered.  Thirty-two years after this story was published, four young girls were killed in a Sunday School bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama,  Thirty-three years after this story was published, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were murdered.; while dragging a river in search of the bodies, authorities came across the beaten and tortured bodies of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, both nineteen and both dropped in the Mississippi while still alive, as well as the body of 14-year-old Herbert Oarsby and five other unidentified African-Americans.   Sixty-seven years after this story was published, 21-year-old gay student Matthew Shepard was dragged behind a car and killed in Laramie, Wyoming, and James Byrd, an African-American man, was dragged behind a car and killed in Jasper, Texas.  In 2026, many Southern states are gleefully gerrymandering their districts to deny Black people representation with the blessing of corrupt government yahoos and an out of control Supreme Court.

I weep for my country.  I weep for the victims.  And Phil Och's 1964 protest song "Here's to the State of Mississippi" keeps ringing in my head.

Read "Dry September" here:

https://southinblackandwhite.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/william-faulkner-dry-september.pdf

OVERLOOKED FILM: ONE FRIGHTENED NIGHT (1935)

Elderly multimillionaire Jasper White (character actor Charlie Grapewin (The Wizard of Oz, The Grapes of Wrath, The Petrified Forest, and seven Ellery Queen mysteries as Inspector Richard Queen) has called his greedy relatives and associates to his mansion on (what else?) a dark and stormy night to announce that he is giving them each one million dollars in his will.  But wait.  What's this?    A long-lost granddaughter show up -- Doris Waverley (Evalyn Knapp, His Private Secretary, The Perils of Pauline, The Lone Wolf Takes a Chance) -- and white then decides to leave his entire fortune to her.  But wait.  What's this?  A second Doris Waverley appears (Mary Carlisle, one of the fifteen WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1932, Grand Hotel, The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi, Dance, Girl, Dance -- she died at the age of 104, the last surviving WAMPAS Baby).  Which one is the real Doiris?

A wealthy old man, a will about to be changed, greedy relatives, an imposter, and a lonely mansion on (what else?) a dark and stormy night.  What could go wrong?  Except murder, that is.  Add to this romance and a madcap mystery, and you  have the ingredients for an entertaining flick.

Also featuring Lucien Littlefield (The Cat and the Canary, The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Ruggles of Red Gap), Regis Toomey (Meet John Doe, Guys and Dolls, The Night of the Grizzly, and featured  roles in television's Burke's Law and Petticoat Junction), Arthur Hohl (Island of Lost Souls, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Hunchback of Notre Dame), Fred Kelsey (who directed 37 films from 1914 and 1920 and acted in more than 400 films from 1911 to 1958, including three "Lone Wolf" movies and uncredited roles in Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell, and Auntie Mame), Wallace Ford (The Mysterious Mr. Wong, The Mummy's Hand, Shadow of a Doubt), and actress and budding gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Seven Keys to Baldpate, Harold Teen, Dracula's Daughter; she became one of them most powerful and feared gossip columnists of her age). 

Directed by Christy Carbanne (A Girl of the Limberlost, The Outcasts of Poker Flat, Scattergood Baines).  The film was written by Wellyn Tolman (14 of the 15 episodes of the Tom Mix serial The Miracle Rider, The Man from Arizona, Ghost City), from a story by mystery novelist (the Hildegard Withers mysteries) and screenwriter Stuart Palmer (Bulldog Drummond's Peril, Seventeen, Passport to Suez)

This one is worth sixty-five minutes of your time.   enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y47A9bk4T-I

MEMORIAL DAY

 It's a day for reflection, so I'm reflecting.

Too often I hear people saying to veterans and service men and women, "I'm grateful for your service."  Not me.  I just can't.

Our servicemen have my solemn respect and admiration, but gratitude is taking things just too far -- especially on a day when we honor our war dead.  I will never be grateful that they died.

Thing is most of our service men and women are kids, many joining up because they have nowhere else to go, or because they are fired up because of gung-ho patriotism.  Those who are career military are a different kettle of fish; most of those have joined because of a sincere desire to serve.

I think my basic problem comes from war.  I don't like it.  It's started and run by career politicians who don't really give a damn about our soldiers.  Wars are about which politician has the biggest genitalia, or about how much profit can be made, or who can amass the largest amount of brownie points from their base.  If you think the politicians care about young schoolgirls being slaughter in Iran, or about the thirteen service members who have been killed there or the more than 380 that have been wounded (both  n umbers, I believe have been greatly underestimated), or about the families that have been displaced in Gaza, or about the Ukrainians bombed out of their homes, or about the more than 1.2 million Russian casualties tossed callously into the furnace of war by Vladimir Putin, or about the victims of Boko Haram, Al-Quida, ISIS, drug cartels, the KKK and other homegrown racist organizations, the Taliban, MS-13, or any of the hundreds of other organizations that derive their power by invoking misery upon the innocent.  All of these groups, and many of the countries of the world, are led by small-minded men whose only purpose is power, often who managed to gull a group of useful idiots to support them.  When I rule the world, all of these leaders, and the quislings who support them either actively or by their silence, will be given guns and sent lot the front lines with orders to "Have at 'em. boys!"

The people who serve, the ;people who fight -- and I don't give a damn      what country they are from or what their religion is or what their sexual preferences are -- almost always just want to live in peace and provide for their families in safety and harmony.

So I don't like war and I don't like the people who start them.  I think serving your country is a noble thing, but to serve your country you should be serving its people and too often our service men and women are asked to do the opposite.  Our standing army should be ready to defend the country, but it also should be ready to provide logistics and aid when the people need it.  War should not be fought by blowing the enemy off the face of the Earth because by doing that you are harming many, many innocent people.  Wars need to be settled by diplomacy and reasoning.  There are times admittedly, that that is not possible, but that should be the primary goal.

I grew up in a fairly small town.  Only one member in my class was killed in Vietnam.  His name was Kenny Hughes.  i never hung out with him and did not know him very well although we worked together on a summer job.  Kenny was bright, popular, funny, and had a great future ahead of him.  That all of this was taken away in a foreign country during a war that he could not understand was, to me, the ultimate in evil.  Add to that a bit of guilt on my part because I never served despite having a low draft number -- an accident when I was three damaged my vision and I damaged my right hand in an accident  when I was seventeen and from then on would drop things without warning were the two things that kept me from the Army.  Those I knew who did serve were not fighting for their country or for any noble purpose other than to protect their brother in arms who was fighting right next to them.

The people we honor today do not expect my gratitude.  They are dead and far beyond expecting a anything.  They certainly are not expecting a long and peaceful life, or a family, or a chance to make their way in the world -- all of that has been denied them.  The people we honor today  deserve and receive my admiration, my respect, my thanks, and == sadly -- my pity, because the life that should have been theirs is not.

One of my favorite songs is "The Green Fields of France," in which a wanderer comes across the grace of Willie McBride who died at the age of 19 in the battle fields of France during the Great War.  At one pint in the song, Willie is asked:

"Did you leave 'ere a wife or a sweetheart behind?

In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?

Although  you died back in 1916

In that faithful heart are you ever nineteen?

Or are you a stranger without even a name

Enclosed in forever, behind a glass frame?

In an old photograph, torn, battered, and stained

And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame."

And every year at this time, I am reminded of my namesake.  My legal name is Ralph Harold House.  The Ralph is for my father, who did not want a Big Ralph and a Little Ralph in the family.  the Harold is for Harold Speed, a friend of my parents who died in World War II at Guadalcanal.  Harold Speed was always called Jerry -- I don't know why,  but Jerry was not his middle name -- and since birth I have been called Jerry in honor of him.  My parents never talked about their childhood or their life before marriage, so I know absolutely nothing about Harold Speed.  It may sound corny, but in honor of him, I have always tried to be the very best Jerry I could be.  I hope that is enough for him because that is all that I can offer, that somehow his name lives on -- honorably -- through me.

So, Harold -- Jerry -- although we never met, I am not grateful for your service.  I not grateful that you died.  I am. however, honored to share your name and that, somehow, the better parts of you continue on through me.  It is a privilege to bear your name and I do so with honor, respect, pride, and sincerity.  I just wish that you and so many others had been allowed to live your own lives.

A POEM FOR MEMORIAL DAY: BREAK OF DAY

 BREAK OF DAY

There seemed a smell of autumn in the air

At the bleak end of  night; he shivered there

In a dank, musty dug out where he lay

Legs wrapped in sand bags, -- lumps of chalk and clay

Splattering his face.  Dry mouthed, he thought, "To-day

We start the damned attack; and, Lord knows why,

Zero's at nine; how bloody if I'm done in

Under the freedom of that morning sky!"

And then he coughed and dozed, cursing the din.

Was it the ghost of autumn in that smell

Of underground, or God's blank heart grown kind,

That sent a happy dream to him in Hell? --

Where men are crushed like clods, and crawl to find

Some crater for their wretchedness; who he

In outcast immolation, doomed to die

Far from clean things or any hope of cheer,

Cowed anger in their eyes, till darkness brins

And roars into their heads, and they can hear

Old childish talk, and tags of foolish hymns.

He sniffs the chilly air; (his dreaming starts).

He's riding in a dusty Sussex lane

In quiet September; slowly night departs;

And he's a living soul, absolved from pain.

Beyond the brambled fences where he goes

Are glimmering fields with harvest piled in sheaves,

And tree-tops dark against the stars grown pale;

Then, clear and shrill, a distant farm-cock crows;

And there's a wall of mist along the vale

Where willows shake their watery sounding leaves.

He gazes on it all, and scarce believes

That earth is telling its old peaceful tale;

He thanks the blessed world that he was born...

Then, far away, a lonely note of the horn.

They're drawing the Big Wood!  Unlatch the gate,

And set Golumpus going on the grass:

He knows the corner where it's best to wait

And hear the crashing woodland chorus pass;

The corner where old foxes make their track

To the Long Spinney; that's the place to be.

The bracken shakes below an ivied tree,

And then a cub looks out; and "Tally-0-back!"

He bawls, and swings his thong with volleying crack, --

All the clean thrill of autumn in his blood,

And hunting surging through him like a flood

In joyous welcome from the untroubled past;

While war drifts away, forgotten at last.

Now a red, sleepy sun above the rim

Of twilight stares along the quiet weald,

And the kind, simple country shines revealed

In solitudes of peace, no longer dim.

The old horse lifts his face and thanks the light,

And stretches down his head to crop the green.

All things that he has loved are in his sight;

The places where his happiness has been

Are in his eyes, his heart, and they are good.

****

Hark!  there's the horn; they're drawing the Big Wood.

-- Siegfried Sassoon, from Counter-Attack and Other Poems, 1918

HYMN TIME

Rev. Dan Smith.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPOygfr_bkk

ACES HIGH #4 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1955)

For some reason, aviation war titles were a rare breed in comic books, unlike in the pulp fiction magazines.  The heyday of the aviation pulps was in the 30's and 40s with titles such as Aces, Air Action, Air Adventures, Air Stories, Air Trails, Air War, American Eagle, American Sky Devils, Army Navy Flying Stories, Battle Aces [G-8], Battle Birds [Dusty Ayres], Bill Barnes, Air Adventurer, Dare-Devil Aces, Fighting Aces...and so on, all the way down to Zeppelin Stories, many of which features World War I adventure stories.  In the pulps, there seemed to be a paucity of other war titles, giving preference to aviation war titles, while in the comics, war titles flourished, while aviation was titles were few and far between.  (To be fair, war titles were a small niche in both markets, with the bulk of titles being in the mystery/crime/detective, science fiction, western, horror, and romance genres.)

In 1955, EC Comics were struggling due to the anti-comic book frenzy of the Frederick Wertham era; they shifted to a more realistic approach with their comic book titles, calling them their "New Directions" line;  by this time the company was down to just one science fiction title, while introducing six titles and renaming one: Impact, Valor, Extra!, Aces High, Psychoanalysis, M.D., and Incredible Science Fiction (the renamed title).  The New Directions line did not carry the newly established Comic code and newsstand dealers were reluctant to carry them.  With the second issues of the New Directions line, publisher William Gaines begrudgingly submitted the titles to the Comics Code.  Nevertheless, the new line was a commercial failure and the entire line was cancelled after the fifth issues.  EC then switched to a "Picto-Fiction" line in 1956, four titles illustrated with alternating blocks of typeset text.  This line failed even more spectacularly than the New Directions line, and all titles were cancelled after the second or third issue.  Gaines's distributor went bankrupt and Gaines cancelled all titles except for Mad.

The penultimate issue of Aces High carried four stories:

• :"The Green Kids" -- George Evans, artist
• "The Good Luck Piece" -- Bernard Krigstein, artist
• "The Novice and the Ace" -- Wally Wood, artist
• "Home Again" -- Jack Davis, artist

Probably the most interesting question with these stories was, how many bi-planes in battle action can fit into one comic panel?

Check it out.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RTviz2A6XaigNxu_dRvgcsMNru9xG885/view

FORGOTTEN BOOK: FULLY DRESSED AND IN HIS RIGHT MIND

Fully Dressed and in His Right Mind by Michael Fessier  (first published n 1935, and based on the short story "The Man in the Black Hat [Esquire, February1934]. which was later reprinted in Philip Stong's noted anthology The Other Worlds, 1941; paperback edition [Lion Books #214], with a cover featuring a fully dressed Trelia in the lake, published in 1954; paperback edition published by Staccato Crime in 2022, including an additional three short stories)

A brief note by Anthony Boucher in his Recommended Reading column in the November 1954 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction noted the Lipon paperback reprint:  "a captivating 1935 fantasy long out of print and overdue for revival."  It has been sixty-eight years since that reprint but now the good folks at Staccato Crime -- an imprint from Stark House Press specializing in "Jazz Age Noir Classics," both fiction and nonfiction -- have brought this strange, wondrous, and quirky novel back to life.

Two things should be noted.  First, I truly do not know what to make of this book.  Second, it is fitting that this was published by Staccato because that describes the pacing of the novel.  As David Rachels explains in his introduction, "Michael Fessier launches Fully Dressed and in His Right Mind like a hardboiled rocket with 12 sentences totaling 269 words and only lone comma while the word and appears 25 times so the prose flies and flies with an occasional period allowing a quick breath but real rest not coming until clipped dialogue begins with sentence 13."  You are not sure if you are reading something from a drug-addled junkie or from an overly excited eight-year-old explaining something tremendously exciting that happened to him.  No matter.  What you know is that you are in for a wild ride.

Johnny Price is a man with little ambition.  He has enough family money so  the he does not have to work and spends his days reading, drinking and roaming San Francisco.  While standing in front of the Herald building he hears a shot and was one of a crowd who saw publisher Albert E. Bagley shot and killed.  As he makes his way away from the crowd he is joined by an innocuous little old man who informs him the he -- the old man -- is the one who killed Bagley.  No reason is given.  johnny feels the old man is a looney and heads home.  When he gets there, the old man is in his apartment with  no explanation of how he entered through the locked door.  The old man is cryptic but seemingly friendly, although non-talkative.  Over the coming days, the man keeps appearing without warning or explanation.  There is something very disturbing about him.  At times he seems to have some sort of mental control over Johnny; his eyes mysteriusly turn green and begin flashing.

The old man begins to appear with some of Johnny's friends:  Dorgan, a painter who destroys what he paints, George, a bartender who feels threatened simply because the old man looks at him, and Pete, the superintendent at Johnny's apartment building; when one of Pete's children becomes deathly sick, the old man enters the boy's room and simply stares at the boy until he passes away.  Whoever -- whatever -- the old man is, there is not question that he is evil.

One evening Johnny wanders into Golden Gate Park where there is a small lake.  He hears splashing and sees a naked woman swimming in the lake.  She is beautiful and unabashed.  He keeps returning to the lake and often sees her.  Her name is Trelia and she appears to ne a nymph, but, of course, that is not possible.  Eventually she comes closer and they talk.  When he reaches out to touch her she swims away under the water and is not seen again.  Johnny does not want to frighten her and slowly realizes that he is in love with her.  He admires her beauty but somehow her nakedness does not excite him.  Eventually she returns to him.  He asks her for a kiss, and it is a chaste, dispassionate kiss.  Johnny realizes that under the womanly beauty is just an innocent child.  He still loves her  but cannot desire her.  H also learns that recently the strange old man has been coming to the lake and watching Trelia and occasionally talking with her; in her innocence she believes he is harmless.

The old man is in Johnny's apartment etching Pete wash windows, hanging on the pane from the outside.  Johnny and Dorgan are in the kitchen getting a drink when Pete falls to his death.  The old man was on the opposite side of the room but both are convinced that he was responsible for the fall.

Dorgan wants to paint Trelia's portrait and Johnny convinces her to come to his apartment.  She arrives wearing a soft green dress -- the first time he had seen her clothed.  Over several days, Dorgan tries to capture on canvas but fails miserably.  He also has an unreasoning need to paint the old man's portrait, which comes out much better -- it captures the old man's innocent physical appearance, but, underneath, there appears to be an essence of pure evil.

Johnny confesses his love to Trelia, something she is unable to reciprocate.  she like him but does not love him; her love is limited to  the lake and the natural world of the park.  Johnny and Brogan decided to leave town to escape the old man,  but Johnny changes his mind.  Just then, two cops come in with a warrant for Johnny for the murder of George the bartender, who had been shot in the back.  the old man has made a reliable claim that he saw Johnny shoot George; he also said that Johnny had told George that he had shot Bagley, the publisher.  Johnny is beaten, arrested, and thrown in jail, and the entire city and the press are crucifying him.  Considering the police and civic corruption of the time, it appears to be a given that Johnny will be convicted and hung.  The old man -- still unnamed -- visited Johnny in his cell and indicates that Trelia will be his next victim.

Also visiting Johnny in his cell is a very excited Dorgan.  Trelia had come to the apartment worried about Johnny, but this was a very different Trelia, a Trelia who realized that she was in love with Johnny.  Suddenly Trelia was no longer a child in a  woman's body, but was a complete woman in love.  She is determined to save Johnny, but is it too late?  And how?

A wild and surrealistic ride.  A short novel, with 43 rapid-fire chapters crammed into 120 pages of text.  i am not the only one who did not know what to make of this book.  Reviewers at the time were at a loss to describe or to categorize it.  So let's just leave it by saying that it is sui generis, a thoroughly enjoyable and thoroughly unpredicable literary masterpiece.

One other thing that should be mentioned, and one that I would not have noticed had not Rachels pointed it out in his introduction.  the use of the color green in the novel dates back to the Middle Ages, where green had two opposing natures:  vert gai and vert perdu, one positive (the color of Trelia's dress that seemed to reflect the water of her lake) and one negative (the flashing green of the old man's eyes when he was irritated or angry) -- both of which add a bit of a mythic quality to the tale'

Fully Dressed and in His Right Mind had been on my "Want to Read If I Ever Came Across a Copy " list for over fifty years.  I'm glad I finally got a chance.  The Staccato Crime edition adds the three short stories Fessier wrote that were published in 1953 in the crime magazine Manhunt, and which I refuse at present to read because I am afraid it would lessen the impact of the novel.  I'll get to them later.

Michael Fessier (1905-1988) was a film and television writer who also churned out some remarkable stories between assignments.  Among his films were You'll Never Get Rich, You Were Never Lovelier, Wings Over the Navy, and several Fred Astaire/Rita Hayworth musicals; his television credits included Have Gun Will Travel, Bonanza, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.  He published one other novel, Clovis (1948), about a highly educated and highly opinionated parrot; I'd be interested in reading that one, as well.

SUSPENSE: SUSPICION (AUGUST 12, 1942)

"Suspicion" is one of the most reprinted short stories by author and   scholar Dorothy L. Sayers, who was perhaps best known for the Lor Peter Wimsey mysteries.  It was first published in the premiere issue of Mystery League magazine (October 1933), edited by Ellery Queen and an ill-fated precursor to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and was reprinted in Sayers' 1939 collection In the Teeth of Evidence.  Since then, it has been reprinted at least thirty times, including in anthologies edited by the likes of Queen, Will Cuppy, Herbert A. Wise & Phyllis Fraser, Bennett Cerf, Raymond T. Bond, Lee Wright, John Welcome, Mary Danby, and Marcia Muller & Bill Pronzini -- more than any other story penned by Sayers.  The story has been adapted at least four time for television, and aired twice on the Suspense, first in 1949 featuring Charles Ruggles, and again on April 3, 1948 with Sam Jaffee in the lead role; in 1949 the story also transitioned to the Suspense television program as the second ever offering in that series.

Real estate agent Harold Mummery (Ruggles) fears for his ailing wife as police are searching for a cook suspected of poisoning several of her employers.  It happened that, as the suspected poisoner disappear, Mummery had hired a new cook...and now Mummery himself has been suffering from stomach problems and begins to suspect their cook of plotting to do them in.  He then discovered that someone has been tampering with a bottle of arsenic-based weed killer in his shed.  He managed to get a sample of some hot chocolate the cook had prepared and brought it to be analyzed.  When the results came back that the sample contained arsenic, he hurried home in a panic...

A tale of misdirection with a not-so-ambiguous ending as the poisoner appears to be revealed.

Enjoy this tale calculated to keep you in...SUSPENSE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXNUqfEf5vI

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: THE RETURN OF THE SPECKLED BAND

"The Return of the Speckled Band" by Edward D. Hoch  (from the New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, edited  by Martin H. Greenberg & Carol-Lynn Rossel Waugh, 1987 [the expanded edition of 1999 adds Jon L. Lellenberg as an editor]; reprinted in The Sherlock Holmes Stories of Edward D. Hoch, 2008)

Five months after the strange events involving "the speckled band", Holmes and Watson ae once again called to Stoke Morton in Surrey.  Henry Dade 'recently gave up the wandering life of a gypsy to become a blacksmith" in Stoke Morton and to marry Sarah Tinsley, a young village girl.  This did not sit well with his younger brother Ramon, who has been urging Henry to leave the village and his wife and go back to the gypsy tribe.  (The fact that Henry, the elder son, spent his inheritance to buy the smithery and marry Sarah might have something to with it.)  The gypsy are encamped on the property of the late Grimsby Roylett, now owned   by his niece, Helen Stoner.  The property holds bad memories for Helen who has placed the estate up for sale and is now traveling Europe; once the property is sold, the gypsy tribe will be force to move out of the county and Ramon wants his brother to join them; Ramon feels the tribe -- the family -- is more important than Henry's marriage to an outsider.  Besides having kept the deadly swamp adder that was the speckled band of the previous story, he also kept several wild animals, including a baboon and a cheetah, which Helen sold to Ramon, telling him he could also have any other animals he found on the estate.  What Ramon did find, in an old shed and in a wire cage, was another swamp adder, identical to the first.  Ramon took the snake and, for unknown reasons, regularly milked the snake's venom, because (I guess) that's what gypsies did back in 1883.   Now Ramon has been taking the caged snake and using it to threaten Sarah and Henry wants Ramon stopped.  Sherlock takes the case because he wants to protect Helen Stoner and because he realizes that, if there actually were another serpent, it would be the even more deadly than its close cousin the krait.

Ramon declares that he has used the snake to threaten Sarah, only to scare her.  He feels that she only married his brother because of his inheritance.  Sherlock tries to convince Ramon to leave Henry and Sarah alone, but is not sure if his words have any effect.  He has a private word with Sarah later that evening, while Henry is resting upstairs after a hard day at the forge.  Before he leaves, Henry is found dead with a snake bite on his neck.  The room is locked and the windows are shut and there is no way the snake could have escaped the room.  A through search shows no sign of the snake.  There is some talk about Aaron's Rod, a biblical tale about a staff that became a serpent; there was an umbrella stand in the room containing a number of walking sticks about the same length as the missing snake.  And there is a mentally deficient gypsy who keeps popping up.

Holmes has to solve the who and how and why of the murder in order for Watson and him to leave Stoke Morton, hopefully never to return to that accursed village.

Not the greatest locked room murder Hoch has ever given us  but it is always interesting to read one of Hoch's stories about the world's first consulting detective.

Read it if you ever have the chance.

OVERLOOKED FILM: BEHIND THAT CURTAIN (1929)

 Charlie Chan was a fictional Honolulu detective created by Earl Derr Bigger in a series of six novels beginning with 1924's The House Without a Key -- a work he had been planning since 1919.  Chan, based loosely on real-life Honolulu detectives Chang Arpana and Lee Fook, was an instant success, spawning a movie franchise that eventually totaled 50 English language films; additional Charlie Chan films were produced in Cuba, Mexico, and China (with six films).  Chan was also featured on the radio with several different adaptations and on NBC's The Adventures of Charlie Chan; on Broadway in 1933 with an adaptation of Keeper of the Keys (written by Valentine Davies of Miracle on 34th Street fame); on television with The New Adventures of Charlie Chan (1956-57, starring J. Carrol Naish), the made for television movie The Return of Charlie Chan (shot in 1971  but not aired until 1977, with Ross Martin in the title role), and the animated series The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan (featuring former Number 1 Son Keye Luke as Charlie Chan -- making him not-quite the first actual Chinese actor to portray Charlie Chan [see below]).  A Charlie Chan comic strip, running from October 24, 1938 to May 30, 1942, and at least seven different Charlie Chan comic books have been issued  by various publishers over the years.  A Charlie Chan board game came our in 1937, followed two years later by a Charlie Chan card game.  A Charlie Chan Mystery Magazine lasted for four issue in 1973-74; each issue featured a novella about the detective signed under the house pseudonym "Robert Hart Davis," a pseudonym also used for the lead novellas in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine); the four Chan stories were written by Bill Pronzini & Jeffrey Wallman, and Dennis Lynds -- it has not been confirmed who penned the remaining two stories.  Lynds also published a paperback original novel, Charlie Chan Returns 1980).  Michael Avallone novelized the Chan film  Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen in 1981.  Recently, John L. Swann has published two novels about Chan -- Death, I Said (2023) and A Tangles String (2024).  Charlie was also featured in pulp writer Edward Churchill's "Charlie Chan on Broadway" (Popular Detective, November 1937), and in Jon L. Breen's more recent "The Fortune Cookie" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May 1971).

Almost without exception, Charlie Chan has been played by white actors, the exceptions being Keye Luke in the animated series and the first two films featuring Chan, The House Without a Key, a 1926 silent serial in which Chan appeared as a minor character portrayed by Japanese actor George Kuwa, and 1927's silent film The Chinese Parrot, with Chan being portrayed by a different Japanese actor, billed as Sojin -- both films are lost to the dust of history, and the tbird film.  The third English language film, Behind That Curtain, was released in 1929 and was the first sound Charlie Chan film; it featured E. L. Park (an actual Chinese actor) as Chan; Park's role (and Chan's was very brief -- one mention early in the film and several short appearances beginning about 75 minutes into the 90-minute movie.

The heavy lifting in the film fell to Warner Baxter, who played Col. John Beetham, a family friend of Sir George Mannering (Claude King), who asks for Beetham's help after a solicitor hired to investigate fortune hunter Eric Durant (Philip Strange) is  murdered.  Beetham takes Mannering's niece and the object of Durant's plan, Eve (Lois Moran) to British India.  Eve later leaves Mannering and travels to San Francisco, where she is followed  by Scotland Yard Inspector Sir Frederick Bruce (Gilbert Emery), who is on the trail of Durant.  Boris Karloff plays Beetham's manservant.  

And where does Charlie Chan fit into all of this?  Good question.  Let's see if you can answer it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqvlJQhlTkg

WHERE'S AIMEE?

One hundred years ago today, evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson vanished.  Sister Aimee (1890-1944) was a Pentecostal preacher, evangelist, and founder of the Foursquare Church who pioneered the use of radio to broaden her reach (and her donations) through her weekly sermons from Angelus Temple, an early megachurch.  She was the most publicized Protestant evangelist of her time, surpassing even Billy Sunday; her faith healing demonstrations drew tens of thousands.  "McPherson's preaching style, extensive charity work, and ecumenical contributions were major influences on 20th century Charismatic Christianity."  She promulgated the idea that the United States was a nation was a nation guided and sustained by divine intervention.

Her vanishing after a swim at Venice Beach caused a media frenzy, fueled in part by William Randolph Hearst's Los Angeles Examiner.  Many assumed she had drowned, and, in fact, two people actually drowned trying to locate her body.  Aimee's mother, who preached in her stead that day, told the congregation that "Sister is with Jesus."  Others were not so quick to judge.  Kenneth Ormiston, a radio station engineer, had left his job with Aimee's temple six months before, and there were stories that Ormiston and Aimee were seen driving up the coast, and some people thought that the two had run off together.  On just one day, Aimee was reported seen in sixteen different cities.  Because no body had been found, some believed her to have been kidnapped.  Her mother offered a $25,000 reward for her safe return.  Reports that she had been found in a cabin in Canada on June 5 turned out to be a case of mistaken identity.  A number of fraudulent ransom demands were received.  The whole country wondered, where was Aimee?  What had happened to her?

Then on June 23, Aimee stumbled out of the desert in Sonora, Mexico, collapsing in front of a Mexican couple who had approached her.  She appeared emaciated; her shoes were covered with desert and, her hands were filthy, there were cactus spines in her legs, and her toe was blistered.  She claimed to have been kidnapped, tortured, drugged, and held for ransom  by three people -- "Steve", "Rose", and an unnamed man.  She said her kidnappers also had plans to kidnap Mary Pickford and other prominent people.  When Aimee finally returned to Los Angeles after her ordeal, an estimated 30-50,000 people were on hand to greet her.

But not everyone believed Aimee's story.  A Grand Jury was convened but could not determine whether Aimee's story was true.  A second Grand Jury inquiry, relying on newly developed evidence suggested that Aimee was in fact in a love tryst with Kenneth Ormiston in a cottage at Carmel-by-the-Sea, but this investigation stalled.  Then a co-conspirator came forward and a third Grand Jury was convened.  This led to criminal charges being files against Aimee, Ormiston, and several others, with a trial scheduled for January 1927.  But then the prosecution decided that their star witness was not as credible as they had once thought.  Despite much circumstantial evidence against Aimee and Ormiston, the trial went nowhere.  The damage to Aimee's reputation was done, however; Aimee had spent over $100,000 trying to defend herself.

Re-examining the case in 1990, the presiding judge of the San Francisco Municipal Court found that "there was never any substantial evidence to show that [Aimee's] story was untrue."

Whatever the truth, Aimee's escapade lives on in this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZS5aN6s_2c

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CHRISTINA!

I am constantly amazed at the woman my daughter Christina has grown up to be, yet I am forever remembering her as a child -- all giggles, all caring, all kindness, all determination, sharp as a tack and (sometimes) pricky as a pear, and a never-ending fount of hugs and kisses.  I remember my father -- a great judge of character -- turning to me when Christina was three, and saying, "Don't ever bet against her."   She was Christy until the first grade; then she came home and informed us that her name was Christina...and so it was.  As she got older, she developed the nickname Bink, for reasons that still elude me.  And so it came to be:  she was Christina to the world and Bink to the family.

Christina is somewhat shy.  She took piano lessons for a year and had to play at an annual recital with her teacher.  As she left the stage, she turned to Kitty and said in a loud and disdaining voice, "Don't you ever do that to me gain!"  So we didn't.  Yet music stayed with her.  She played clarinet in her high school and college bands.  She played the fife in what we have been told was the only all-girl's fife and drum corps in the country.  Kitty gave her my 60-year old banjo and Christina had it refurbished and will begin learning to play it as soon as she finds the time.

Finding the time to do things has always been difficult because she has always had a lot on her plate.  When she married Walt, he had only a high school degree.  She urged him to get a college degree and also to get computer train, which led him to ever-increasing positions of responsibility and management.  The majority of her efforts, though, went to raising Mark and Erin, who have become two of the most accomplished human beings I have ever known; Christina always stepped up to give them every possible opportunity to reach their full natural potential.  Fourteen years ago, she and Walt fostered Jack when he was just six weeks old, who was born to a drug-addicted mother and spent the first six weeks of his life in rehab at Washington Children's.  It took nearly two years for the state of Maryland to sever the legal ties of Jack's mother, who had many arrests for various charges, came from a criminal family, and had three other children from three other (sometimes unknown) fathers, allowing Christina and Walt to adopt him and for us to officially welcome him into the family.  Patience and love and more patience were needed to raise Jack:  he was on a feeding tube for more than eight years, had a number of emotional problems, and is still a few years socially behind his peers.  But Jack has become a loving, kind soul with a quick wit and vivid imagination, and while there are still difficulties, Jack has become an amazing human being and we could not be any prouder of him or love him any more.

Christina's determination has always been one of her main strengths.  While attending George Washington University as a freshman, she accompanied a friend who was interested to a meeting of the university's Tae Kwon Do club, and became interested herself.  As she studies and practiced the art, she would often hit plateaus, which would often last for months until she overcame them and advanced to the next step.  In this manner of advancing through fits and jerks, she eventually became a Black Belt and was elected president of the club -- the first non-graduate student to hold that office.  After graduation, she got a job driving for an ambulance company, which led to becoming first an emergency medical technician, then a paramedic, running rescue for the county for a decade.  She doesn't brag about the lives she saved, nor the extreme danger she occasionally faced in that job.  She started working as an emergency room technician at Fairfax Hospital in Virginia; the ER doctors there were happy when Christina was working their shifts because they knew that with Christina there, things would wok smoothly (other ER techs were evidently no where near as organized as she was).  she was on duty on 9-11 when every hospital and emergency room in the greater-DC area was placed on high alert; it was only when the day went on and no victims appeared that the staff realized how devastating the attack on the Pentagon was.  One day we got a call and Christina asked us calmly to watch her kids because her ER was now in quarantine.  A passenger who spoke no English was admitted after arriving on an international flight; the only words she could speak in English were "hemorhagic fever";  this was at a time when Ebola was wiping out African villages, and many other hemorhagic fevers (Lassa, Marburg, Yellow Fever) could be just as bad.  Christina and the rest of the staff continued working calmly, trying not to let this affect them adversely, while Kitty's hair grew gray from worry.  After twelve hours, it was determined to be Denge Fever and a shout of joy went out throughout the ER -- still dangerous, but far less serious and less communicable than many of the other options.  Christina is our duck -- floating gently and gracefully on the water while below the surface, the feet are paddling like crazy.

She switched careers and qualified to be an echocardiogram technician for many years, lugging a five hundred pound machine through hospital corridors.  This was another job she was amazingly good at, often discovering abnormalities that some doctors overlooked.  (But some doctors are poopy-heads, something that Christina learned early on and the one thing that made decide not pursue that as a career.)  During this time, she also taught classes in cardio stenography at George Washington University.  She made a complete switch about a dozen years ago when she trained to become a sign language interpreter; for the past decade she worked at local schools one-on-one with deaf students and being an extra hand assisting the classroom teachers.  Budget cuts earlier this year found her out of a job,  but she rebounded quickly and is now a newly-minted police dispatcher for a local community.  Throughout her adult life, Christina has work in positions that have helped people in ways large and small.

Christina's sense of responsibility also extends to her animals.  when she married Walt, she never expected to house and care for so many animals -- at one time eighteen, from dogs and cats to pigmy goats, a Russian tortoise, several bearded dragons, a south american tegu, and various snakes and a black widow spider.  With the passage of time, some of these have moved on to animal heaven and some have moved out with Mark and Erin, but she still has two dogs, two cats, the tortoise, and a bearded dragon.  Earlier this hear, she and Walt trained for and were qualified as official Animal Rescuers; thus far they have only been called to rescue a baby armadillo but they stand ever-ready for the next call.

All in all, Christina is one of the most amazing persons it has been my privilege to know.  I wear my pride for her as a badge of honor.

Oh, and she really likes kimchi and Thai food.

As I look back, I cannot help but remember her as a child, full of wonder and promise.  I guess that's why this song always brings a tear to my eye.  And I know that Kitty and I did a good job.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urq8m_XBxzA

\

Happy Birthday, Pretty One.

HYMN TIME (AND A BIRTHDAY NOD TO CHRISTINA)

 Martina McBride.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45kyH1ABy-8

MIKE STRONG -- ACE PRIVATE EYE (COMIC BOOK COMPILATION)

"Mike Strong is a renamed version of the Saint (Simon Templat), used by Avon Comics in the early 1950s to republish stories after their Saint series (1947-1952) went on hiatus."

This compilation collects stories from:

• Police Line-Up #1 & 2
• Prison Break! #1 & 2
• Captain Steve Savage #2
• Hooded Menace [no number]
• Gangsters and Gunmolls #2
• The Unknown Man [no number]
• Parole Breakers #2
• Famous Gangsters #2; and 
• Boy Detective #4

Included in this hodge-podge is a two-page text story, signed by Mike Strong himself.

Enjoy.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=98219&comicpage=&b=i

FORGOTTEN BOOK: FOUR LIVES AT THE CROSSROADS

Four Lives at the Crossroads by Lawrence Block  (first published as Crossroads of Lust, Midnight Reader #427, 1962, as by "Andrew Shaw"; by Block in his LB Books imprint under the current title as part of his 'Classic Erotica' line in 2016; moved by Block to his 'Classic Crime Library' line in 2019)

This was Block's 49th published book and he would soon move out of the softcore novel market.  Block had already begun publishing crime novels and a few ghost-written works when the Scott Meredith agency cut him loose as a client; most of his softcore novels were published by Larry Hamling's Greenleaf Press, which was a closed shop working exclusively with Scott Meredith.  This allowed block to move on to bigger and better markets, including temporary stops with mainstream lesbian novels as "Jill Emerson" and "nonfiction" sexual case studies as by "John Warren Wells."  Soon he would be publishing stories about Evan Tanner, Chip Harrison, Matthew Scudder. and Bernie Rhodenbarr -- characters forever linked to Block's name.  But in the early adult softcore novels, one can trace the development of Lawrence Block as writer -- it is no accident that, from his eleventh published novel, many of his softcore books fit easily into his Classic Crime Library.

In Four Lives at the Crossroads, we have Block experimenting with plot, style, and structure.  Going by the title alone, one would expect the book to concentrate on four main characters, but there is a fifth main character in the novel -- the small Indiana town of Cedar Corners, which Block approaches as an entity of its own, much like Ed McBain/Even Hunter did with Isola kin the Eighty-Seventh precinct novels.   Nothing much happens in Cedar Corners, but behind some doors...

The four human protagonists in the book are Betty Marie James, Luke Penner, Joyce Ramsdell, and Martin McLeod.

Betty Marie is a beautiful girl -- a smart, talented, and popular high school student.  She has been dating Luke Penner for about a year.  She likes him but is not excited by him.  What Betty Marie wants more than anything is to lose her virginity.

Luke Penner, is an earnest but dull high school student who is madly in love with Betty Marie.  Luke plans on marrying Betty Marie after they graduate.  He will then go to work at his father's gas station, eventually taking over the business, while Betty Marie keeps popping out babies.  Luke is not aware enough to ask Betty Marie is she want to be popping out babies; she doesn't.  Luke is also chivalrous and wants to wait until marriage before having sex with Betty Marie, whom he considers a pure and pristine goddess.  One evening they were this close to making love before Luke thought better and stopped, leaving Betty Marie angry and extremely frustrated.  Luke was also frustrated and, after dropping Betty Marie off, he found a prostitute to take his virginity for ten dollars, not realizing that he was paying twice her normal fee. 

Joyce Ramsdell is the town tramp and proud of it.  If she accepted money she would just be a whore, so she is a tramp but not a whore -- a distinction she is proud of.  For the past few weeks she has been giving her favors solely to Martin McLeod, and has decided that she is in love with him.

McLeod is an ex-lawyer and ex-con who drifted into town a few months ago and remained.  He is a counter clerk at the local diner.  His troubles began when he came home one evening unexpectedly and found his wife making love with another man.  In a rage, he grabbed a knife and stabbed the man multiple (actually thirty-seven) times, killing him.  Killing a man who has cuckolded you may be forgivable, but it is still aginst the law.  McLeod received a light sentence in McAllister Penitentiary.  When he came out he had lost his wife, his home, his career, and his law license.  H has lost all ambition and is just drifting through life.  His low-paying job at the diner givers him enough money for rent, food, booze, and cigarettes, with just a little left over.  He has been seeing Joyce only because he has nothing better to do; he is afraid to have any real feelings for her.

So those are the characters.  What will Block do with them?

Burl, a local low-level bootlegger, approaches McLeod, asking him to go in with him on a planned armored car heist.  McLeod hesitates but eventually agrees solely because he needs something in his life.  Betty Marie is still upset that Luke refuses to take her virginity so she turns to local bad boy Jimmy Kell, who was more than happy to oblige; Betty Marie discovers that she really, really, really likes sex and continues to see Jimmy, who really, really, really likes the benefits of dating Betty Marie.  Jimmy, who is a talented drive and has a fast car, has also been delivering illegal liquor for Burl and has agreed to drive the getaway car for the planned heist.  McLeod has been preoccupied with Burl's offer and has not been attention to Joyce, who decides to get even.  She picks up Luke and begins teaching him kin the art of love.  It turned out that Luke did not need many lessons -- sex, it turns out, is his talent and he has become a sex machine; Luke plans to soon abandon Joyce and head out for greener pastures.  McLeod see Joyce and Luke making love and has a flashback to his former wife and her lover -- this time he does not grab a knife, but vomits in the yard in disgust.  Eventually, McLeod ends up with Betty Marie, who was half his age, because in these books and at this time in America nobody thought must about that sort of thing. 

All the players are in place, setting the stage for an explosive, violent, and bloody finale in which many of the characters are significantly altered and/or destroyed.

Dark and brooding, it turns out that crime really does not pay.

Recommended for what it is, although it may not be everyone's cup of moonshine.