RARA-AVIS: Recent purchases

From: William Denton ( buff@pobox.com)
Date: 30 Apr 2003


I was at the seventh annual Fantastic Pulps Shows and Sale here in Toronto on Saturday. There weren't that mystery pulps (nice mix of all the others, though), and I didn't pick up any BLACK MASKs. I did get a TEN DETECTIVE ACES (December 1947), and I look forward to reading "Graveside Showdown" by Norman A. Daniels: "Detective Nolan doubles for his client and finds himself on the receiving end of a hot-lead shipment." MANHUNT seems to be selling pretty dear, but I got the August 1953 issue (Vol. 1, No. 8) for a sawbuck. Cover story is "The Two O'Clock Blonde," by James M. Cain, and other stories are by Fredric Brown, Frank Kane, Donald Hamilton, and Evan Hunter, among others.

I picked up some paperbacks: Frank Gruber's THE LAUGHING FOX, THE LIMPING GOOSE, THE GAMECOCK MURDERS (aka THE SCARLET FEATHER), and DIE LIKE A DOG
(aka THE HUNGRY DOG), all Johnny Fletcher stories; VIOLENT SATURDAY, by W.L. Heath; DAN TURNER, HOLLYWOOD DETECTIVE, an anthology edited by John Wooley (who's doing another one due later this year); and THE PRIVATE EYE, by Cleve F. Adams.

I got the last one because I remembered Adams being discussed on the list, but unfortunately, I see this in the archives from Mr. Glenewinkel:

| Over the last five years or so I have started three of his books
| (The Private Eye, Contraband and a few days ago, after he was compared
| with Huggins in this group, Sabotage) but never came further than
| about 30 or 50 pages because I was so utterly bored.
     -- http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/archives/200005/0426.html

But how can you pass up something with this on the back cover? "The town of Las Cruces was enjoying booming business in vice when J.J. Shannon, a hardboiled private cop, moved in to check a fishy suicide. But when he kidnapped the mayor, caught the police chief in a bribe trap, and managed to get control of the local paper in a fight for justice, he blew the lid off this lawless mining town. Shannon had to dodge lead from a dozen racketeers while he used three beautiful, dangerous dames to trap a cunning syndicate killer!"

Bill

-- 
William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.

-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 30 Apr 2003 EDT