Two Envelopes And A Phone > Recent Status Updates

The edition I have - from IPL - is showing the wrong cover at this website, and it’s a cover I don’t particularly fancy, so we’ll pretend I’m reading this okay edition. I will say, the premise sounds very intriguing.

Loving it. Kind of like MacInnes’ The Salzburg Connection meets one of Freeman Wills Crofts’ “Inverted” Inspector French extravaganzas.

A re-read. I recall an entertaining story…

Will always be happy to return to the author of Drink to Yesterday. And I need spy novel.

Loving this one…but I’ll never love the cover on this edition. I just want to scream at the pasty-faced prune “C’mon, show some dignity! Sure there’s murder erupting all around you, sure maybe you’re even the one about to be bludgeoned to death - but be a sport about it, less cringing! And if you’re not dead soon, get some sun, get a a casual outfit to wear. C’mon!”

Okay, so I’m into some South African history I’m somewhat familiar with, if we sneak in some fictions I have already read. I did read Ladysmith by Giles Foden (author of Last King of Scotland) many years ago, so I know the horror story that played out there and at Spion Kop. Besides that, I read a nonfiction book about Churchill’s Boer War exploits, and then back to fiction with the Doctor Who novel, Players!

This is the most Agatha Christie-ish things have felt, when I have been reading a John Dickson Carr whodunit...except for the notion that there is perhaps the severed marble hand of a statue clawing its way around the house over the years. Anyway - by chance, many of the JDCs I had read just ahead of these had had the shootings and strangulations, and now I seem to be entering the poisoning phase.

Oh, okay, so this connects to the Bencolin mysteries, though I doubt Bencolin himself will appear…just a supporting character or two. Cool. I do wish there were more Bencolin books; ah well. Next best thing, I guess.

I see the light at the end of the pages. Getting it done, chunk by chunky chunk. I like it. I’m taking it as sweeping fiction, built from facts.

A dark story - bleak vibes. I wonder how it will end. Cruelly, I guess.

And I thought Halo for Satan was a weird pick for Private Eye July - turns out this one is topping it! About as atypical an example of the genre as one could imagine…and I love it.

I’ve read these comics before. I always hated when Deadshot was written out of the series, but it was almost a sure thing he would be back. Even if he never came back, I was invested enough in the characters and the plot lines to keep buying each issue. These will always be some of my favourite comics…shall enjoy revisiting.

My favourite by this author, so far, is Lowland Rider, and I also loved Second Chance. When I ordered this, I didn’t know it was a private eye novel, not Horror. But it doesn’t matter; I do like this. I keep thinking Williamson ended up writing Walking Dead novels, but that’s mixing him up with another terrific author, Jay Bonansinga. I know Williamson wrote for some famous franchise (or two), have to look it up…

So this will be my second - probably last - read for “Private Eye July”. Overboard by Paretsky has not arrived yet, so I go to this unique choice. Anything else handy would be kind of a “cheat” - amateur sleuths, but not really Private Eyes in the strictest sense. I still plan to read some SF, before getting back to my own summer reading project, “John Dickson Carr and Friends”. Too many options…