Two Envelopes And A Phone > Recent Status Updates

Gripping. I'll get the final stretch stretched this evening, and see if anyone involved has a chance at a normal life again. Hard to say. Then, back to The Covenant, and John Dickson Carr. I've assigned most of the other Horror books I own to a Fall reading plan...but something will have to give, because even with my summer project, I'll need Horror before late Sept., I would assume...

Ha, I just left vineyards behind, in taking a break from The Covenant, and now, another vineyard. Two books that are going to make me want an expensive bottle of wine before I'm through with them. Or I'll live vicariously, or with beer. Anyway, Diavola is great, so far - haunted house? personal demons for Anna, or someone? We gonna get in the Tower....? Probably!

I’ve got issue #s 108-114 left, plus the Jack of Hearts story originally in an issue of Marvel Premiere. 108-112 make, if I recall, a great otherworldly adventure, perhaps the highlight of this Collection. These were the first Iron Man comics I ever collected and read. Many of the covers of the individual issues are terrific. And I still can’t explain my Madame Masque crush…

Quite immersed in it now, with pleasure - but I’m still gonna take breaks between sections. The closest things I’ve read to this are Kalimantaan by C. S. Godshalk, and The Sundowners by Jon Cleary…but I’m not in Borneo or Australia, this time. And everything’s…longer.

Co-worker liked it a lot...and I take the occasional recommendation from her or face intermittent guilt-tripping and haranguing. Well, not haranguing as such - besides, it gives us something in common to talk about.

Marvellous! I don’t know if she can top Young Man, I Think You’re Dying, but she’s giving it a good try. I also knew this book would not really fit in with the rest of the novels I’ve selected for my ‘John Dickson Carr and Friends Summer’, but that’s okay, because I did need a Crime novel that didn’t read like the Golden Age, or read anything like a Carr book of any sort. This, is that!

The style actually reminds me of Jack Williamson, of all writers. But everything's...longer.

South Africa. As a kid, I was supposed to read Cry the Beloved Country, but didn’t get far with it (odd; even then, I finished almost every book). I had a William Orbit music cassette, but only learned later that The Mighty Limpopo was about a river. Around 1983, I had a high school teacher who idolized Winnie Mandela. These days, I usually ‘visit’ SA via Crime & Mystery novels set there, and that is usually fun.

I’m past the point of pairing off the 14 John Dickson Carr novels I’m reading this summer with ‘rival’ books that have some similarity - otherwise I would likely have linked this book to one of the later Carr’s from the 1960s too. But it is why I am certainly willing to pick some competition for Carr that is so late; his career went that long! Meanwhile, Fleming has usually been good to me. 1960s Carr for me, soon.

The rumors are true - this is a riveting, superior effort (barring a late collapse), despite not being an Impossible Crime scenario like we are used to with JDC. It is weird that the whole clock mechanism thing has occurred with a bit of similarity to Death-Watch, but Carr would not know I was going to read them within weeks. Annnd even there, things are different enough. I love this one!

A bit of a nostalgia pick - this is where I came in, when it comes to the Iron man series. Scattered issues, like 111, 103, 96…then when I was old enough to go downtown to the comic-book specialty shops, I would fill in the gaps, get story arcs completed. Mantlo was nurturing characters I liked - Guardsman, Wraith, Jack of Hearts - but they never totally took off. These comics take me back to my childhood.

Even after I knock this one off, I still have enough books around by this author to make her my next author focus, like what I’m doing now with John Dickson Carr. Autumn…but we got a long way to go for that.

Wow. A Marjorie Bowen tale followed by an Angela Carter tale - that was a powerful combo. I need to get that Bowen book, Black Magic, that a “100 Best Horror Books” list has been telling me to get, for ages!

Oh, we're going to get some prestidigitation theatricals with an ulterior motive...revealing something to do with the crime! I hope it's a success, on all counts. Meanwhile - this one reminds me a bit of The Clock Strikes Twelve by Wentworth, and Murder After Christmas by Latimer, in that it takes place between Christmas, and into New Year...and is just about as fun as those two books.

The specifics of this case aren’t as outlandish as others by the author, except for one mystifying aspect. My favourite Mystery novel ever, Black Water Lilies by Michel Bussi, focused on artwork by a famous painter, so I do like when another whodunit - like this one - has another painter and painting at the heart of the matter. Annulet of Gilt next, and then Michener’s The Covenant!

Fairly well along into it, now. I like the alternate name for Waldemere, Masque House. Flavia Venner has already been established as a sort of legend, almost haunting the place. Meanwhile, we have our murder - and an early unmasking, but not in the usual way. Small pool of suspects, but I'm sure I'll still fail as detective. I have the old hardcover without what, again, was obviously a cool dust-jacket.