Two Envelopes And A Phone > Recent Status Updates

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.

I like it. Lively, fast pace with great characters (for Pulp).

Looking forward to this. My attention to Westerns this month has extended to watching Season 1 of the 1960s show The Wild Wild West - not the most traditional, archetypal Western experience one could have, but a great time. I’ve watched one Western movie for every two episodes of the show, and thus have watched Tombstone Canyon (1932), Man in the Saddle (1951), and The Vanishing Riders (1935).

I enjoyed the first short novel in this book - Jade Dragon - much more than I thought it would, while dealing with what has not aged well (this is a 1940s novel set in San Francisco’s Chinatown). I loved the twist ending, which I was not expecting - though I had a slight feeling now and then that all was not quite so obvious. I need a short break from The Shadow, so I’ll side-step to Luke Short.

Another Western, for June. I debated picking this as what I'll read just after The Shadow - more action, more Pulp, not very deep - but it's so, uh, Short short, that even if it feels like I barely left The Shadow behind, after I read it I can easily pick something with some weight and depth to it.

So, my only contact with The Shadow before this was one movie from the 1990s, and one 6-part comics mini-series that modernized things, and was a bit confusing. Already I like the first four chapters of this, more than anything else Shadow-related. I mean, we shall see - not-aged-well bits will likely leap out of the shadows. Meanwhile, it seems I have #6, of 300 specially printed hardcovers of this book.

So, I did my second trip down into the basement of a local Mystery-centric bookstore that has been around for 40 years, but likely will shut down for good in the near future. This particular hardcover is the priciest purchase I made this time around, and they have several other books from this series in storage (which I left behind for now). Mostly I bought cheaper mass market books that are out of print.

Alright...well! I did finish it this morning. It was a clever whodunit as well as being a fun thriller wth a lot of comedy. I was onto something, then I got tricked, and at the end I realized I had been bamboozled off the right track. A lot of fun!

I'll finish this tonight. it will be tricky to rate, though of course the last forty or so pages will be a factor. It started as a rowdy whodunit, but did sort of morph into a zany Comedy Thriller. I like it, but I'm not sure how much, until it ends.

This will likely be the most famous Western I get to this month - something from right down the centre-line of the genre. That said, Prairie Edge - a modern Canadian Western - which kicked off my month, has set the bar high, traditional or not. I have not seen either True Grit film version, and right now I’m glad about this foolishness. I want to get my first experience from the novel.

I love this. No matter where the mystery goes, I am thrilled with the experience of 1944 San Francisco. But the whodunit is cool, so far; sort of North by Northwest meets the Lockridges.

I knew from hints earlier that this book was going to have great section for Pride Month - a look at gay and lesbian Blues lyrics, and a look at New Orleans, let’s say 1890-1920, in terms of anything documented regarding gay or lesbian representation (especially among musicians, or in the Red Light district). So I just wrapped that chapter, and will finish up this terrific book tomorrow.

Yes, I would say to do this specific topic justice - topic of explicit lyrics in early Blues songs, and how everything got cleaned up for the record market - it needs its own book. You can’t have some history of Blues, and then segue over to all these dirty lyrics for a section of the book; people who want to deep-dive these lyrics needed a separate book, and the choice to tackle it separately. I’m loving it.

So, this is a good pick for Pride Month, since Webb & Wheeler (aka ‘Patrick Quentin’) were gay men who collaborated together on Mystery novels, and also were a couple until a break-up. Given the times, I imagine the romantic relationship was ‘subtle’, let’s say. I am excited to finally get to a novel by ‘Patrick Quentin’.

Once I got this book home, I thought “oh, I wanna check if Speckled Red gets mentioned”, and I checked the Index. It was surprising; I thought “hmm, I would have thought Speckled would show up in a book with this subject matter. But, okay.”. I get to page 30, and suddenly not only does Speckled Red get mentioned in the context I would expect, but a few lines later, a Memphis Jug Band reference! I love this book!

I think this is going to be fascinating. A book about music - but also about censorship. Whatever your own thoughts on censorship, just remember that censorship is someone or some group deciding that by the time you experience something, it should be changed or modified from how it actually happened or was recorded. Someone decided for you how a piece of the world should be taken in.