Two Envelopes And A Phone > Recent Status Updates

By getting to this, I feel like I will have read just about all written fictions that have led to the major Pop Culture icons of Horror entertainment. I’m talkin’ Dracula, Frankenstein, Jekyll & Hyde, Moreau, the Invisible Man, Phantom of the Opera, Hunchback of Notre Dame - plus I Am Legend (zombies) and The Werewolf of Paris…oh, and The Jewel of Seven Stars (mummy), Psycho, even ‘Slime’ (The Blob).

Oh, I loved the first story. I think this is gonna be fun!

It’s a pretty entertaining monster book, and a decent rebound from other more “sophisticated” Horror novels I read recently that ended up not working for me. Anyway, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories will likely be my next Horror pick, and I plan to bounce back and forth between it and the short stories in Woolrich’s Nightmare. After that, maybe a sustained short story focus for weeks…not sure yet.

Enjoyable - but very familiar territory, particularly if one has read Guy N. Smith. But that’s fine, this is exactly what I wanted right now.

I think I just read my favourite story so far - ‘The Adventure of the Three Red Dwarfs’. The dwarfs are figurines, by the way. The stories are like Sherlock Holmes stories…but generally not as good, IMO.

Clickers, and then this. I have to say, I’m still tempted to make October “Short Story Month”, after Clickers. I certainly have enough Horror and Crime story collections to make this feasible…and even an SF collection that would fit October creepiness, called Menace of the Machine (AI and robots kicking out butts, that’s practically Horror incarnate!). Anyway, I’m keen for this Woolrich, at the very least.

I’m at the point where I need a Horror novel to dazzle me; I’ve had a rough time with a succession of Horror choices over several weeks, and other years, when this has happened Sept.-Oct., I have actually dropped Horror and read almost all Crime & Mystery until Halloween. I’m not inclined to give up just yet, but I need good Horror as soon as possible…

Might finish it tonight - it’s actually only 189 pages long, despite rumours to the contrary. I like it. A good one for early October…not creepy enough for the last days before Halloween. I’ve only read one Scott Turow novel, and it’s not like the plot points are similar, but somehow this reads like what Scott Turow would write if he wrote in the 1950s. Style, and general feel.

My instincts tell me this deserves to be read in October of all months, where other Crime novels I have waiting perhaps look more tempting, or more sinister. I have a feeling about this one, the synopsis is intriguing, bleak…

Been a while since I read anything by Charles Maturin, so it was nice to bump into something by him in this book: ‘Leixlip Castle’ is apparently the only short story by him that has survived. Melmoth the Wanderer is a favourite of mine.

I could do with a great ghost story right about now. Let’s see if I get one.

Curios-er, and curios-er!

It’s very entertaining, and continues to be a great Halloween lead-up pick. I can’t tell yet how it ranks against his very best - way too early. There’s a lot of backstory to keep in mind, going all the way back to 1792.

Two chapters in, and this seems almost too perfect for Halloween-time reading (okay, so it's set in March). I'm scared of Mantling's whole house already, never mind just the Widow Room.

Not that I really needed convincing, since I have read quite a few books by this author, but Tom Mead’s enthusiastic Introduction to my edition has made it clear that this is a great October choice. A “death room”!? An impossible poisoning? Red widow is actually slang for guillotine? I’m in!

Not totally my thing, but I’m okay with it. This is horrific spectacle and bombast without much to explain it. I clicked to the fact that this is ‘dark humour’ Horror…but certain things that have happened are too disturbing for me to take it as a funny book. The Nightrunners was more my thing. Anyway, I’ll see what the second half is like, and if any of it makes sense.

My fave Lansdale is a Horror novel, The Nightrunners. I remember when I worked in a bookstore, the staff sent customers to me for Horror recs, because they saw two of my personal special orders: Who Made Stevie Crye?, and Monk and Zaleski, and pegged me as Horror Guy. A young fellow came in for Horror recs, and I set him up with The Nightrunners, I am Legend, and The Haunting of Hill House. Hope he got hooked!

Finished the novella ‘Madman’s Holiday’, which has lent itself as the title of the whole book (with a subtle, strange variation), and after getting a taste of this in Whispering Death, I can say for sure now that Fredric Brown can write a cracking good Spy story, though it’s not his specialty. Anyway, the back part of this book is something about 50 pages, called ‘The Song of the Dead’. Ready for it!

Newton Baird’s Intro to the 2 stories in this book reminds me of a novel that is one of my faves, even though it is for sure a hidden gem: The Sleep Police by Jay Bonansinga I just love the idea of the protagonist battling madness while immersed in a weird crime scenario - and even as it seems there’s an evil person causing the madness…the hero still must endure his own mad state. Escape a frame-up, AND find sanity!

I’m going to have to pursue some other offerings by just about every author I’m discovering in this book, it seems; everything has been delightful. Just enjoyed ‘The Man in the Bell’ by William Maginn, and ‘Master and Man’ by Thomas Crofton Croker. I’m a bit behind in getting through this book, because I’m discouraged by its size from taking it to the coffee shop for a quick indulgence just after I finish a novel.

Okay! The first chapter provides an irresistible and charming set-up for what’s coming - not that I can foresee everything that’s coming. But yeah, I’m hooked. Westlake wrote one of my fave Humorous Crime novels, Dancing Aztecs; I’m aware that it may not have aged as well I could hope, but I’m not doing re-reads to learn to hate books I loved in my earlier years. Peeper, by Loren D. Estleman is another like this.