TOP DETECTIVE ANNUAL, 1952. (Volume 1, Number 3.) Editor: David X. Manners, Cover art: Samuel Cherry. Overall rating: ** HAROLD HELFER “The Cell.” Listed as a short story, it is more a short [two page] documentary of a man’s strange punishment for his sex crimes. (4) STEWART STERLING “The Glass Guillotine.” Novella. Gil Vine. Originally published in Thrilling Detective, November 1940. Former FBI agent Gil Vine intervenes in a political kidnapping on the eve of the nominating convention. Mostly unbelievable. (2) WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT “Four Kings and a Jack.” Originally published in Thrilling Detective, December 1942, The story of a jazz musician in murder trouble. (2) FREDRIC BROWN “The Spherical Ghoul.” Novelet. Originally published in Thrilling Mystery, January 1943. A graduate student, whose thesis is on superstitions, and who works nights in a morgue, discovers a half-eaten corpse. Has good mood, but how did trigonometry get in there? (3) DWIGHT V. BABCOCK “Jumbled Justice.”…
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