In his last posting Bill Crider clearly has an outsized
estimate of my book collection/accumulation. I have to
confess that I have contributed to that inflated view.
By giving the page citation of a 1933 issue of Black Mask a
few days ago, I left everyone with the impression that I
owned that issue and probably a vast collection of the
ultra-rare pulp. Alas, I own only a handful of issues but I
do have E.R. Hagemann's A COMPREHENSIVE INDEX TO BLACK MASK,
1920-1951 which provided me with the page number of the story
in question.
I did recently unpacked a box with my Black Mask issues and
was reminded that I owned one of them (September 1947) due to
a mistake. The issue featured the story "Murder Makes the
Cock Crow" by Fergus Thuslow and when I spotted it at a
Bouchercon a few years ago, I snatched it up with hardly a
second glance. When I got back to my hotel room I discovered
the damn story was about cockfighting! It taught me to slow
down and read titles more carefully before whipping out my
wallet.
I will brag about one purchase that arrived just today--the
September 1942 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. This
was the only one of the 738 EQ issues published to date that
I did not own. It feels great to have them all--even though
some are in boxes at the moment. I do not have all the
variants, such as alternate covers but I was driven by the
desire to have the content not a truly "complete" collection.
The magazine has given me and continues to give me so much
reading pleasure. I tip my hat to the ghost of Fred Dannay,
who was the founder and guiding genius of EQ as the
bibliographically minded cousin of the Ellery Queen cousin
duo.
Richard Moore
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