Thanks. Very good to know.
On Thu, Jan 1, 2009 at 5:28 PM, foxbrick <foxbrick@yahoo.com> wrote:
> MERCURY MYSTERY and its stablemates BESTSELLER MYSTERY and JONATHAN
> PRESS MYSTERY were a periodical set of digest magazine-format
> reprints (at least for most of their run) of cf novels and
> eventually some short story collections...a number of indexers and
> collectors consider them paperback books, but they were produced in
> the same format as stablemate ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, and
> were apparently issued periodically, so I tend to think of them as
> magazines (much as I would the ELLERY QUEEN'S ANTHOLOGY issues, and
> the subsequent AHMM and ASIMOV'S and ANALOG anthologies in magazine
> form that Davis Publications and its successors have issued). They
> were very sedately covered in the 1940s into the '50s, and then
> started to use the same sort of splashy covers the newsstand EQMMs
> did from the early-mid '50s onward. At least one MERCURY MYSTERY
> cover was the same photograph that had been used on a newsstand EQMM
> a few years before, though the image was rotated so that the model
> was lying in the opposite direction.
>
> After the sale of EQMM by Mercury Press to B. G. Davis, MERCURY and
> BESTSELLER continued for a few years, into the '60s, as more
> straightforward magazines, with a lead novel/novella and s few short
> stories and at least one regular column on true crime in MERCURY. I
> believe the last MERCURY was a collection of Dahiell Hammett's "Thin
> Man" stories.
>
> Sorry, have other matters to attend to, as usual these days, so will
> let one of the true scholars here flesh out and/or correct this
> quick precis.
>
> Todd Mason
>
> --- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Nathan Cain" <IndieCrime@...>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> Although, on second glance, the Mercury Mysteries I'm talking about
>> appear to be older. They don't have the covers like those listed in
>> the link. These are solid colors, with artwork surrounded by a
>> rectuangular frame in the middle. As far as I can tell, they're
> from
>> the 40's. At least the Woolrich, Dead Man's Blues (published under
>> William Irish), was published in 1947. It is listed at prices
> between
>> $40-70 on the internet. You can see a picture at the link below.
>>
>> http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/ListingDetails?
> bi=1011584038&cm_mmc=gbase-_-us-_-gbase-_-1011584038
>>
>> Seeing as how, I just won that one and four others on ebay for
> about
>> $13 including shipping, I might have just made out. These are
> listed
>> as being published by Jonathan Press, and I'm curious to know if
> they
>> relate to the book's in Ed's link, or to Spivak's Mercury Press.
>> > On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 10:26 PM, <ejgorman99@...> wrote:
>> >> I recently ran across some Mercury Mysteries by Woolrich,
> Richard
>> >> Powell and others, but I can't seem to find out much about this
>> >> particular line of digests. They look like Reader's Digest
> condensed
>> >> versions of mystery novels. Is that impression correct? They
> seem to
>> >> be fairly rare. Does anyone collect these?
>> >>
>> >> ------------
>> >>
>> >> Here's some background with covers.
>> >>
>> >> http://www.philsp.com/mags/mercury_mystery_book.html
>> >>
>> >> http://www.philsp.com/data/data207.html
>> >>
>> >> Mercury Mystery-Book Magazine
>> >>
>> >> Total Issues: 23
>> >>
>> >> Numbering began from #210. It was a continuation of the Mercury
> Mystery
>> >> novels, published in digest form since Mar-1940.
>> >>
>> >> Issues & Index Sources
>> >> Sep-1955 – Apr-1959:
>> >> Monthly Murders
>> >> Crime Fiction Index (in progress)
>> >>
>> >> #merges with Bestseller Mystery Magazine
>> >>
>> >> Publishers
>> >> Mercury Publications
>> >>
>> >> Editors
>> >> Joseph W. Ferman
>> >>
>> >> Formats
>> >> digest
>> >>
>> >> Prices
>> >> 35c
>> >>
>> >> Pagecounts
>> >> 128pp
>> >>
>> >> Frequency
>> >> Sep-1955 – May-1956: monthly
>> >> Jun-1956 – Apr-1959: bi-monthly
>> >>
>> >> Sources
>> >> UltGuide, CookMDE
>> >> Issue Checklist
>> >>
>> >> Mercury Mystery Book Magazine (Australia)
>> >>
>> >> Total Issues: 6 (at least)
>> >>
>> >> Australian reprint edition of Mercury Mystery Book Magazine.
>> >> Issues & Index Sources: Mar-1956 – ?:
>> >> Crime Fiction Index (in progress)
>> >> (Missing: #2, any after #6)
>> >> Publishers: Atlas Publishers, Melbourne
>
>
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