Two Envelopes And A Phone > Recent Status Updates

I love the cover of this one, the colours, the scene depicted. It’s a tricky thing, deciding which books to end the year with; I have fought off the urge to just go with books with average ratings of, oh, say 3.99 stars and up. This Mystery seems a bit divisive - people not buying into certain aspects, or something. We’ll see. I’m ready for another ‘bibliomystery’.

All the wondrous visions of Mars, that turned out not to be true...

Loved the opening chapters. I am aware that Radium Age SF can usually mean: Mars; Socialism; maybe some aether; possibly some radium; science that cannot be relied on in any way, shape, or form; dubious depictions of women, or other cringe-worthy facets. Now this is 1920s Soviet SF, so some of that is almost guaranteed. But I’ll see what I get; I’m already emotional about Los’s grief, so I’m all in for the Mars trip.

I think this is gonna be fun! First two stories were, anyway. The stories are grouped in little sub-sections; I just read ‘William Wilson’s Racket’, and ‘The Empty Flat’, which takes care of what made up the opening section called “Department of Queer Complaints”. Next are 2 Dr. Fell tales, which could be the highlight of the book if JDC keeps to the high standard Dr. Fell usually inhabits…

I’ve developed some issues with it, as it has gone along. We’ll see if the finale can liven things up a bit…

A third of the way in, and I’m quite happy with this. I was worried that this would be, well, just a bunch of egghead puzzles that the author felt like showing off, but we’re doing an actual story here, and the puzzles are more of an adornment. Good - because I don’t do crossword puzzles, Sudoku, codes, or any of that. My favourite puzzles are, wait for it, novels with a mystery. So, I’m happy.

I did enjoy re-reading ‘Discord in Scarlet’ by van Vogt, this time detached from the rest of Voyage of the Space Beagle. It must have influenced the movie Alien, and it even has a bit of the feel of that film - how could it not? - even though van Vogt is not quite the writer to make this material as scary as it ultimately could be. Anyway, this has been a fun anthology, and I’ve got three stories left.

The Ancestor - 3.5 stars, and I tentatively chose to round up - was interesting enough that I want to try something else by the author.

I like it. A lot. It’s not really a novel; even though it’s formatted like a novel, it’s more like a series of novellas showing the adventures of a spy duo. So it’s more like reading Ashenden, or a A Drink to Yesterday, or Mr Calder and Mr Behrens, than reading, say, Helen MacInnes or any 300 page novel. I don’t know if this can impress me more than Drink to Yesterday, but he’s going for it.

It almost seems like all the average rating scores for Peter Cheyney books are higher than for the one I took a chance on years ago: You’d Be Surprised. And yet I liked You’d Be Surprised! Are you surprised? Anyway, back to Cheyney, decades later…as I said, this one and others seem to be the ones with all the love.

Should wrap this one up tonight. A quiet, simmering sort of Crime novel, but I like it.

Unique.

This will be my first Doc Savage experience, and I’m quite happy to do a marine-themed one. Anyway - years ago, when I would scour the city’s Used Book stores, buying up Perry Rhodan books, finally one bookseller did the “Y’know, if you like Perry Rhodan, you might want to check out those Doc Savage books near them, as well.” speech. I never did, back then - spending on a budget - but the day is here!

Stories have generally been pretty cool, so far. I was actually considering skipping ‘Discord in Scarlet’ because I have read it before as part of van Vogt’s Voyage of the Space Beagle. But I have reconsidered this shocking idea; (a) to re-acquaint myself with the story that is now understood to have inspired the film Alien is never a bad move, and (b) it seems this is a slightly different version to what I read.

Five Roundabouts to Heaven was terrific - meaning I probably should have gone back to this author sooner...but other books intervened, until now. Anyway, this one also seems to be well-liked.

It reminds me a bit of The Album by Mary Roberts Rinehart - in part because of the details of the mystery, plus general structure, but also because it takes work to keep all the members of the various families straight. In both books, I looked at the Map a lot, to keep track of where everyone lives. Just reading the story helps get the characters sorted too; everyone's place in things becomes very clear.

It’s very good, but I did go through a rough patch where I found myself having to flip back to the beginning of the book over and over again either to grapple with the map of the Village, or the list of all the Characters. I have finally got all the Japanese names sorted by family pretty straight in my head, without getting things mixed up. As for the map, I get the feeling short-cuts vs. long routes are important…