Two Envelopes And A Phone > Recent Status Updates

Horribly written - but I think we all saw that coming.

Ten books left in my ‘John Dickson Carr and Friends’ summer reading project, and this is one of them…one of the longest.

Okay, so Clara is basically the Joan Cusack character from Addams Family Values, but transplanted to something more like Beetlejuice or Poltergeist (depending on how much humor is here, and I don’t expect much). Alternately, this is like a Francis Iles novel - say Malice Aforethought - mixed with The Wicked Deep or something like it. I’m worried for the two girls, but they have their own…tricks.

I’m only a few chapters in, and I absolutely love everything about it. As far as my tastes go, I sense a stunningly good time ahead. Let’s hope!

One shred-it-afterwards book this month, just to let my brain do almost nothing while 150 pages or so fly by. This one gets the honor, because hey, it has no ratings or reviews at the website. The question is, how offensive is this book, while it is also being silly. I will know, right after a Horror novel - and then back to my ‘JDC and Friends’ reading project.

So I have read 20 out of the 30 Mystery/Thriller novels I have until Sept. 21 to get all done. I’m ahead. I’m gonna read at least two non-related novels before going back to John Dickson Carr and Friends…Tarzan sequel, and this Horror novel. I’m a wee bit saturated with Golden Age-to-1960s Crime novels, so modern techniques, plus non-Crime, are welcome at the moment. But I will soon go to the final 10 of the project.

I’m a cat person, but I loved a few Mysteries that have featured dogs as some kind of important piece of the puzzle. Rex Stout’s In the Best Families; Murder by an Aristocrat by Mignon G. Eberhart; the film Knives Out even has a dog factor. I also loved The Yellow Dog by Simenon, one of the Maigret books. This Van Dine effort is also very strong - it is like a John Dickson Carr book, with an “impossible crime”.

Just finished ‘The Devil Doll’ by Frederick E, Smith, I guess sort of a semi-classic that has been filmed. I did once own a ventriloquist’s doll myself; it was a Frankenstein doll. I guess the only doll I own now is a Tee Hee doll, the henchman from Live and Let Die. He comes with a little, fake piece of meat to feed to a crocodile (like Old Albert…”well done, Albert!”).

So, Death of an Author and The Kennel Murder Case will be the only pairing of books I do for my ‘John Dickson Carr and Friends’ summer reading project that does not actually feature a JDC novel as part of a pair. I wanted to round up to 30 books for the project, and I decided to go this route, rather than buy an extra JDC novel. I like it; two authors get to go head to head, while JDC gets a little break.

Thanks to BookTuber Infinite Text, for putting me on to a unique local bookstore to check out, called Little Ghosts Books. I bought five books, all Horror - which is their specialty; two were recommended by Horror reading guides, but the others, like this one, came from browsing and indulging any of my specific Horror preferences.

I’m on vacation, and if I were only about halfway through this book, I would probably be leaving it for after my time off work. It’s a great book - it’s a profound reading odyssey - but it’s not really a fun book. It’s not escapist. But…I only have just over 100 pages to go, so I’m inclined to just wrap it up tomorrow. Maybe. I just finished the section called ‘Apartheid’, and it finishes with ‘Diamonds’.

I love it. It reminds me of one of my favourite films - a suspense film from Hammer in the late 1950s, called The Snorkel. It’s the same sort of idea, but not exactly. The tension is palpable.