Two Envelopes And A Phone > Recent Status Updates

Another fine impossible-crime product from a trusted manufacturer of many years’ experience.

Matt/Science Fiction Reads reminded me of this author during a book haul video, when he held up this book with an appeal for any info on it, or Anthony herself. I mentioned that I not read these short stories, but had done well with her novel Happy Policeman. I ordered this, and Conscience of the Beagle, and now that I’m ready for a new short-story book, I’m going right to this!

Great fun - it seems I’ve inadvertently skipped the first book in a series, but that’s okay, I’m not lost. Weird Westerns are usually able to lure me in, and a browse at a Horror bookstore I had never been to got me to buy this, another Western Horror, and a few other goodies.

Loving this - seems like top-tier Goodis. As for something on page 117…uh, even knowing this author from other books, that was NOT a sentence where you expect to see the word “zebra”. Just sayin’. Just brayin’.

Wow. An almost perfect opening 40 pages. Vicious mugging (with a bit of kindness mixed in), some relaxing chat in a bar (amid a smidge of tension), over to a card game, transition to an attempted kidnapping. I'm in for the long haul!...

I’ll finish it later tonight.

About what I expected - which means I love it. The plot is ‘Madcap Espionage’, but it’s the devices, inventions, and strange technology being used in this workers’ noble struggle to save Mother Russia from an evil Fascist organization and its sinister plot, that add the SF touches. It’s all quite fun, lots going on, technology indistinguishable from magic, and I have not met the reptilian fellow on the cover, yet…

Off and running. This is a long book, compared to others put out as part of the publisher's "Radium Age SF" revival series. I seem to have got into 1900-1935-ish SF right around a time a lot of it has been getting re-issued. Anyway, this seems like it's going to be a cross between The Wandering Jew, or Mysteries of Paris, by Eugene Sue, and one of Charteris's Saint novels turned upside-down. Or not.

Okay! I reserve the right to: (a) go to my “JDC and Friends” summer project TBR list, (b) take out one Golden Age whodunit, and (c) replace it with a recently-acquired David Goodis novel, that admittedly is not in the spirit of John Dickson Carr…but does spice up my original roster and helps kill off any burgeoning “samey-ness” creeping into the last stages of a long reading project. Plus I love Goodis (usually)!

I am loving the opening stages of this unique Mystery, can’t wait to see where it all leads. Other theatre-themed Mysteries I have loved: Hamlet, Revenge! by Michael Innes, Death on the Aisle by Frances and Richard Lockridge, Murder Has a Motive by Francis Duncan, Quick Curtain by Alan Melville, Ten Plus One by Ed McBain, Death of Jezebel by Christianna Brand. What am I forgetting!

I have a notion of what this will be like…but I could be way off. Um, yeah, this is just becoming available in a new edition, and I’m just too intrigued to let it fester in the corner. I gotta see what’s up….

Update: with only 10 books to go, when it comes to my “John Dickson Carr and Friends” summer reading project, I think I might put an unrelated book in between each project-book, rather than continuing with two in a row followed by a random read. If that means I don’t get all 30 books for the project done, it’s okay - leftovers will get attention at some point. I still think I can complete the challenge, though!

Really enjoying this one - is it one of her best? It’s long…but I’m used to that with this author. She usually gets me to read a lot of pages per day. Hard to cease and desist!

I’ve come to the conclusion that this author is brilliant in most of his books. I have especially enjoyed binge-reading him this summer, to really put a dent in his catalogue.