Two Envelopes And A Phone > Recent Status Updates

I am an introvert and hate crowds, but I did go to one SF Convention - TorCon, in 2003. Robert Silverberg signed my copy of Up the Line. My friend mistook Connie Willis for George R. R. Martin's wife and everyone laughed politely, while my friend got a rare copy of Fevre Dream (that I had given him years ago) signed. Spider Robinson blew off his MC duties on the last day to do an interview, and people felt snubbed.

This has been a fairly entertaining overview of as many Crime & Mystery authors as can be crammed into one Big Round-Up. I have one hundred pages to go, of text that I will actually be reading (so, not the big pile of Index attached to the book’s butt). I will want to get to many books and authors mentioned. When? Who knows. Over time.

So I think this is a whodunit set at a Fantasy Convention - Fantasy fans, Fantasy writers - and with a humorous approach. I did love Sci-Fi, by William Marshall, a Crime novel set at a Science Fiction Convention…and I have actually read the sequel (years ago) to this McCrumb novel, and that is Zombies of the Gene Pool. There’s also Rocket to the Morgue by Anthony Boucher. Can this top Marshall’s Sci-Fi??

Okay, two things - I have decided to treat this like I do short story collections…returning to it in between longer works. I just think I’m going to zone out if I try and read this at a rapid clip over only a few days. Meanwhile, I’m going to start ‘Novels By Women Only’ September early, and pick something that fits that as my next longer work.

This could be FWC's best "inverted Mystery" - which is something, given how much I enjoyed most of his others. All the little plot twists and strange things that innocent people are doing, that are unwittingly muddying up the case for Inspector French! That aspect of it has really livened up the plot.

The main issue just got clouded…

Seems like this will unfold as an "inverted Mystery", and I am enjoying it as such.

Always happy to return to this author. So many of his titles have returned from limbo over the last several years, and a lot of them have been great entertainment.

A unique twist, for a Reacher novel. This is what happens when you read them out of order.

Very excited to finally reading the one that began it all. Two or three later entries really impressed me, so we’ll see how the launch compares to other Reacher favourites of mine.

Cover, title and first chapters had me thinking “okay…if this is like The Blair Witch Project, I want a lot less Project, and a lot more Witch.”. And now I’m not sure there is a witch; if that’s a witch out there in the woods, the witch is doing a good impression of Something A Lot Scarier Than A Witch.

Creepy right from the start - probably not going to let up any page soon...

This will likely be the last Horror novel I read by a male author, until October arrives; all novels I read in September - and that wil be a lot of Horror and Crime - will be by women. I am expecting a terrific read, with this one; we shall see.

This could end up as one of my favourite novels by Woolrich. It reminds me just a little of Hughes’ Ride the Pink Horse, but better.

My hardboiled/noir reading project stops and starts, and where I was binging them in bunches originally, I’ve not been quite as loyal lately. But it’s time for another one, and most of what I tackled this year has given me a new appreciation for this kind of story.

This has been an okay collection, so far. The stories mostly count as what they call “short short stories”, real quickies, and I prefer stuff that stretches out to at least 20 pages. Anyway, the last two I read - ‘Rebound’, and ‘Clocks’ - are my favourites to this point…which is not surprising because they are a little longer. Enough developments for me to care.