Crime, Supernatural and Adventure fiction. Obscure, Forgotten and Well Worth Reading.
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THE STORY: Noel Ross, ex-police sergeant with Scotland Yard, has just ad an operation to remove shrapnel from his head. He and his wife take a vacation for him to recuperate. Ross is distracted and annoyed by his fellow guests at the White Cliffs Hotel on the South Coast of England. When Mr. Griggs, a supposedly amusing and witty man, is found unresponsive in his room the maid jumps to the…
There is nothing more upsetting than falling for the hype on a book jacket. The Swan Island Murders (1930) with its striking Art Deco influenced illustration of a silhouetted damsel being threatened by claw-like hands and the promise of "mystery, horror and detection" was enough to lure me in. While there is plenty of mystery and a smattering of rudimentary detection on display there is little…
Paolo Levin, concert pianist living in Rome, is being followed by an emaciated and crippled young man. He stands outside Paolo's apartment and watches the pianist. For weeks the young man shadows Paolo. He starts to show up dressed exactly like Paolo. After several failed attempts to get the stalker to explain himself the young man speaks: "I wish you would speak in English. I don't understand a…
THE STORY: Liz & Bob Macklin purchase an old home in Marshall, Massachusetts and begin an extensive rehab project transforming the gloomy, dark paneled, house into a bright, livable home. Liz is curious about the former owner, Seton Williams, who died in the house several years ago. Cancer she's told was the cause. A lonely old man dying alone, she thinks. But who was he? One day at the post…
This bookshop receipt was Left Inside a copy of The Wallet of Kai Lung that I purchased many moons ago from John Chandler's long-lived but sadly now defunct bookstore Bookman's Corner on Broadway and Wellington in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago. I've mentioned this mess of a bookstore that I dearly loved visiting a couple of times on this blog. I bought both books listed on this receipt as…
THE STORY Elmer Bliss, reporter, is hired by a mysterious gentleman called Philander Summerfield to look into a recent Peter Somhers murder case that he believes was never solved. Bliss has been fascinated by the case because Somhers' nephew, Harrison Milbrath, was tried twice for the murder. In the first trial he was found guilty then he and his lawyer appealed due to an abundance of…
These bits of ephemera are rather remarkable for both being well over 100 years old. Both post card and newspaper story were Left Inside my extremely scarce copy of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Harper & Brothers, 1894. Revised 2nd edition). I have to brag a little about this book because my partner Joe found it at a book sale in Libertyville, Illinois many moons ago. I paid one buck for the…
The results of the Cecil M. Wills book giveaway are in. After a highly scientific method that I left to one of the many Random Number Generators on the internet a winner was selected at random by a machine. How fitting for our new age of omnipresent AI and robots. And now for the Lucky Stiff...uh, lucky winner -- Comment #5 assigned to jdf21 was selected. Congrats to jdf21 ! You are the winner of…
On rare occasions I find a letter still in its envelope inside a book. This one dated January 29, 1976 and mailed on Jan 30 of that year was Left Inside my rare copy of Call Mr. Fortune (Dutton, 1921) by H. C. Bailey. I uncovered a wealth of information about the letter's writer, her husband and the photographer who took the photo on the stationery. First, the photographer. Sally Savage has had…
A couple of years ago I bought a small pile of rare hardcover editions of Cecil M. Wills mystery novels. These included Author in Distress (his debut as a mystery writer), The Chamois Murder and Death Treads . I read all of them in quick succession, but only reviewed Author in Distress (1934) on the blog. Shortly after I posted that review I sent a PDF of the entire book to Gavin O'Keefe as a…
