Two Envelopes And A Phone > Recent Status Updates

This is a true forgotten gem, and a delight - sort of Amber runs into Nifft the Lean, with a smidge of Retief. I will finish it today, because there is nothing arduous about that!

Fifty percent Science Fiction, fifty percent Fantasy. So I guess I’m labeling it both. I like what I’ve read so far.

Sigh. So far, I have not enjoyed any of the stories in this book. It seems like time has passed by whatever Brunner was up to here.

It certainly looks intriguing.

This is off to a fabulous start - and I love that I’ve been transported to 1940s Mexico City. Thought we’d be in San Francisco again (Puzzle for Fools; that was fun too).

Wow, as soon as Part II started, everything changed, and became more sophisticated, more grown up in tone. Set-up is over!

Really for kids - but I’m having fun.

Pride Month continues - and hey, we've got the word 'Pilgrims' in the title, so it almost tenuously connects to my intermittent Western focus this month (but not really). I will say ' A Fast Crowd, a Violent Death, and a Touch of Incest to Liven the Party' is not a teaser line that thrills me. But, the novel is from 1947, so I don't think things are going to get too extreme on any front. We'll see.

Apparently I've latched onto an abridged edition, but I'm gonna read it anyway. It's definitely YA, it reads like Hardy Boys book. I had never heard of this, but it was part of a book haul assembled while scoring a bookstore's basement. I left it, then on second thought decided to get it - it turns out I'm right in the mood for a marine adventure of the weird variety.

It’s fab.

Okay, that was frightening. Things getting just a little bit Saw. Getting a little afraid...

A lot of layers - when so many people are receiving poison-pen letters there are going to be many backstories - but I'm keepin' up, and quite enjoying. My favourite by this author, so far, is Minute for Murder, with The Beast Must Die being close (but memories are dimmer). I did like The Private Wound, in its special way. This one is challenging for a high ranking.

A perfect first chapter. I want to read all four of the Mysteries I have left by Patrick Quentin (aka Q. Patrick), because (a) A Puzzle for Puppets - my intro to Quentin a few weeks ago - was very entertaining; and (b) Patrick Quentin novels are all I have handy for doing any kind of Pride Month reading. Just before each Quentin will be one Mystery by someone else, and probably something outside the genre.

Carroll John Daly is an intriguing writer to me, because I had dove pretty deep into hard-boiled and noir fiction - thought I knew all the key writers - and then suddenly a few books about the genre started mentioning this Daly name, and his era. I guess everything I knew didn't go back quite far enough, until I read about the earliest hard-boiled - pre-Hammett, etc. 'The False Burton Combs' was a fun story.

As soon as I noticed that one of the tales in here is ‘Angelfish’ by Lester Dent, and realized that I just read that story last year in an anthology called Hard-Boiled Dicks, I worried that there might be more duplications. But that’s the only story the two similar books have in common. That cleared up, I am super-excited to be getting to whatever’s in here. Took care of the Intro - first story tomorrow!

I thought this was fiction; it’s not (it was in plastic, and looked cool, and rare, and good to mix in with a lot of Westerns in June). But that’s okay. I think the main essay in this is Upfield discussing a real murder case, wherein in corpse disposal was based on an idea he used in a novel. And I believe I know which novel…one I’ve read. We’ll see if I’ve got all this straight.

I…love this. I was nervous about a 1972 adventure romp with a Mexican setting being…horrid, let’s say? So, read it and educate me on how misguided I am, but IMHO, this is a wonderful ride through Mexico - starring, mind you, an American of Apache descent, and some Israeli characters. I think all this is being handled with respect - especially locale descriptions, food and drink, etc. Espionage plot is also great!

It’s perfect, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. No, that’s extreme - I would have it other ways, but I prefer perfect. If this was were less than perfect, there would be a ten minute period there where I be inconsolable, before going on to my next book. I hope the second half is as good as I hope it is.

I'm reading 'The Tattooed Eye' by Arthur P. Hankins at this point, and it's 75 pages, so I think of it as a novella. I've just come from two short novels starring the pulp hero The Shadow, and this is actually very similar; Tyler Lake has unwittingly fallen into what seems like a harrowing Shadow adventure. I also keep ending up in San Francisco - Puzzle for Puppets, The Shadow, and this - and that's fine with me!

It quacks just the teeniest bit like a Western, so again, this makes the cut for June. I suspect what I’ve really got here is some kind of gonzo Spy actioner, set in Mexico - and I love Espionage fiction, so away we go. I think this fits in with watching The Wild Wild West, Season 1, this month, which has been a lot of fun.

This month, if I’m not reading an actual Western, I a lot of the time I want to be reading something vaguely Western, at least. Some kind of tenuous link to Westerns - a close cousin, as it were, or a distant cousin. I would be going to Revelator fairly quickly after acquiring it, regardless - but…Southern Gothic, Tennessee backwoods of 1933, I’m up for it. More Pride Month picks will be more Patrick Quentin.

Back on track with The Shadow - the second novel in this hardcover, House of Ghosts, has started strong, and creepily. The front of this book features a list of Shadow novels by Gibson/Grant that seems to go on forever. I have been having fun, so I will keep that in mind.