RE: RARA-AVIS: loose-leaf novels

From: billha@ionet.net
Date: 13 Aug 2001


On Mon, 13 Aug, Stephen Holden wrote:

>
> Does anyone know if any gimmicky spy novels were published in the 60s or 70s
> that took the form of loose-leaf folders containing all the relevant
> 'documents' ('Top Secret' papers, surveillance reports, etc).

Perhaps of related interest--in the early 80s, perhaps as early as the late 70s, all-text interactive computer games often came packaged with case files, including photos, letters, crime scene reports, etc. Infocom (of Zork fame) put out the best series, sometimes imitating hard-boiled features, with titles such as Deadline, The Witness, Suspect. In the sense that the documents you mention were to help a reader solve a mystery that the text left open, there would be some similarity.

Wrote a short piece on computer detective games for The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing.

Bill Hagen

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