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The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Part I of III by Matthew R. Bradley The Granada Television productions starring Jeremy Brett adapted 43 of the 60 works in the Sherlock Holmes canon by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) into 41 episodes, two of which drew upon a pair of short stories each. Those 41 comprise four series: The Adventures… (1984-1985), …Return… (1986-1988), …Case-Book… (1991-1993), and …Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1994). The titles match four of the five books collecting all 56 short…
EDWARD D. HOCH “The Alexandria Solution.” Jeffrey Rand, formerly of British Intelligence. Published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, December 2008. Not yet reprinted or collected. (I may be wrong about this.) What this story is most remarkable for, perhaps, is that (as we are informed in the introduction to it) it is that new story to appear by Mr. Hoch in EQMM. In this tale, Rand is now retried from his long time position as the head of the Department of Concealed Communications for British…
A. A. FAIR -Widows Wear Weeds. PI’s Donald Lam & Bertha Cool #27. William Morrow, hardcover, 1966. Dell, paperback, date?. Reprinted several times since. Donald Lam is hired to stop a blackmailer from making more demands, or so he thinks. The blackmail is fake, intended to establish an alibi, but it creates ideas which prove to be fatal for the would-be blackmailer. The murder scene is set up to be embarrassing for Sergeant Sellers, and Donald will have no part of the policeman’s subsequent…
I may have miscalculated and come back to the blog a few days too early. There are still lots of things to be done that should have been done while I was away, and while I thought I was back, they weren’t done and they still have to be done, and it’s best if I’m the one does them. So bear with me for a while longer, if you so kindly would. See you again soon. Thanks!
RAYMOND MASON – Someone and Felicia Warwick. Gold Medal s1248. Paperback original; 1st printing, October 1962. Felecia 19, is the daughter of the town drunk and is widely known as the town whore, although of the unpaid variety. The first 14 chapters all end with same ominous harbinger of events to come: “Someone was going to kill Felicia Warwick.” This is a detective story, one in which the victim is known far in advance. Who among her man lovers and those (occasionally) rejected will be the…
ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Worried Waitress. Perry Mason #77. William Morrow, hardcover, 1966. Pocket, paperback, 1967. Reprinted many other times. A waitress who wants to ask Perry Mason for advice in a restaurant is invited to come to his office, Her story concerns her aunt’s financial problems and the discovery of several thousand dollars hidden in her closet. Mason advises the waitress to move out of her aunt’s house, but it is too late. The aunt is attacked, and the girl is…
It was last Tuesday night, just an ordinary night. The parking lot was well lit, but the night itself was dark and cloudy. Jon and I were walking back to our car, The way was downhill, not steeply, but you could tell it was trending down rather than up. We were, I think, within an arm’s length from the car when I suddenly realized I was lying down, face on the pavement. There was no in between that I can recall. I was walking, then I was down. I scrambled up, brushing myself off when I heard…
< A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by Newell Dunlap. strong>JAMES GRADY – Six Days of the Condor. W.W.Norton & Co., hardcover, 1974. Dell, paperback, 1975. Also published as Three Days of the Condor (Dell, paperback, date?). Film: Also as Three Days of the Condor (1975; directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, and Max von Sydow). Six Days of the Condor is a riveting book that subsequently became a riveting movie starring Robert Redford with the “Six” of the…
DOUG ALLYN “The Hate Tapes.” Published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, March 2010. Not known to have been collected or reprinted. Murph, the leading protagonist in this all-too-short short story, is the guitarist and lead singer for a rock band named the Kurves. You may not have known about them before, but at one time they were one of the hottest bands in the country. Time has passed, as it always does, and the Kurves are playing in much smaller venues now, but the crowds who come are…
ANNE McCAFFREY – Dragonrider. Serialized in Analog SF, December 1967 – January 1969. Novella. Nebula winner. Reprinted in Nebula Award Stories Four, edited by Poul Anderson (Doubleday, hardcover, December 1969; Pocket, paperback, January 1969). This is the sequel demanded by the story “Weyr Search” that appeared in the October 1967 issue of Analog. Once again there seems to be the feeling of watching an alien culture from the outside, as the deadly Threads begin falling from the Red Star. A…
DAY KEENE – The Brimstone Bed. Avon T-459, paperback original; 1st printing, 1960. Macfadden, paperback, 1968. Disbarred lawyer Bill Bailey picks a bad time to find his former assistant Joey Montana – it’s the same day somebody decides to shoot him full of holes, and the three years in prison Bailey blames on Joey for a crime he didn’t commit gives him a pretty good motive for the job. Only a blonde he knows can save his skin, but her husband is, in a word, is jealous. It’s no wonder Day Keene…
ANALOG SF – January 1968, Editor: John W. Campbell. Cover art credited to NASA. Overall rating: ***½. R. C. FITZPATRICK & LEIGH RICHMOND. “There Is a Tide.” Novelette. The continuing story of Sr, Stephen Jansen and his experiments with brain transplants, This time threats come from outside, with underlying hints about the pressures for immortality that may follow. (3) BRUCE DANIELS “…And Cauldron Bubble.” Artifacts, in the form of letters and memos, of bureaucracy. A point, but why read it…
A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by Julie Smith RON GOULART – Ghosting. Raven House, paperback original, 1988. A writer of very funny mysteries and science fiction, Goulart has said he likes to mix “murder, bug-eyed monsters, and satire.” Ghosting contains no BEM’s, but there is plenty of murder and satire. The hero, Barney Kains, is “a defrocked commercial illustrator who got dragooned into the comic book business” as a ghost writer for the comic strip “Poor Little Pearl.” It seems Archie Judd, the…
DICK STODGHILL “Deadtown.” Appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, November 2009. Never reprinted or collected, as far as I’ve discovered so far. The year Is 1940, and a man drives into the gritty out-of-the-way town named Dealtown with an empty tank and forty-seven cents in his pocket, and as chance would have it, he decides to stay for a while. He’s the kind of guy who’s offered a job as soon as the man who owns the roadhouse just outside of town sees him. (He takes it.) He also meets…
THE GANG’S ALL HERE. Monogram Pictures, 1941. Frankie Darro, Marcia Mae Jones, Jackie Moran, Keye Luke, Mantan Moreland. Director: Jean Yarbrough. Frankie Darro and his pal Jeff (Mantan Moreland0 land jobs with a trucking company that, unknown to them, is having a problem with hijackers. What’s worse, even though the boss and his daughter are fine people, the problem is an inside one. The budget restrictions were painfully obvious, but this is my kind of movie. It has everything: action,…
JULIE SMITH – Tourist Trap. Rebecca Schwartz #3. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1986; paperback, August 1987. Fawcett, paperback, 1992. Rebecca Schwartz is an outspoken Jewish feminist lawyer who lives in San Francisco, and I wish I liked the mysteries she gets involved in more than I do. In this one, a madman disrupts the local tourist trade by committing a series of more or less random killings. And in the process frames Rebecca’s latest client for the deeds. Totally incompetent police work…
ELLERY QUEEN – Kiss and Kill. PI Barney Burgess. Ghost-written by Charles W. Runyon. Dell, paperback original; 1st printing, April 1969. Cover art by Robert McGinnis. The opening is meant to grab you, and it does A man looks up from his work to find his wife missing from the kitchen, and a search of the neighborhood leads nowhere. The police cannot help, and the man turns to private eye Barney Burgess. The pace then shifts, noticeably so. Events hurtle along, coming faster and faster. There is…
A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by John Lutz PAULA GOSLING – The Zero Trap. Coward McCann, hardcover, 1980. Warner Books, paperback, 1981. Published earlier in the UK by Macmillan, hardcover, 1979. Paula Gosling’s first novel, Fair Game, won critical acclaim and the 1978 John Creasey Award in England. In this, her second novel, she creates an elegant psychological thriller involving a hijacked military aircraft. On a routine flight, the plane’s nine passengers are gassed into unconsciousness. They…
ANTHONY BOUCHER “The Numbers Man.” Short story. Reprinted in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. First published in Black Mask, July 1945 as “The Catalyst.” Both of two titles given this story are appropriate. Gregor Stolz is a catalyst, all right. The kind of guy who just happens to be around as a murder or strange death is about to happen, or even as a witness to the event itself. He is also a man fascinated by numbers, and it will do no harm if I were to tell you that the particular chapter in…
REVIEWED BY MIKE TOONEY: Just a short note to Mystery*File fans who might not have heard of a couple of high-quality websites. While they reproduce literature of many genres, both of them also have substantial collections of mystery and science fiction books, and, as noted, the quality is very high indeed. Roy Glashan’s Library doesn’t just copy the originals but also improves on them, adding copious numbers of illustrations from various sources whenever feasible. The link: https://freeread.de/…
ROBERT RAY – Bloody Murdock. Matt Murdock #1. St.Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1986. Penguin, paperback, 1987. Reference to a “salvage fee” on page 16 suggests that Southern California PI Matt Murdock intends to follow in the footsteps of JDM’s character Travis McGee, In his own words, Murdock is idealistic and a romantic. Here, the death of a young girl arouses his noblest instincts. A vivid writing style is vitiated by muddy motivations. Hired [also] as a bodyguard by a nervous man who saw the…
Just in case anyone is interested, yes, I’m OK. Doing fine, all things considered. The lack of regular posting by me here is a lot simpler than that. The last month or so, I’ve just been very very busy. Busier now than when I was working for living. The second half of the month should […]
A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by Bill Pronzini JOE GORES – Hammett. Putnam’s, hardcover, 1975. Ballantine, paperback, 1976. Gores is a lifelong aficionado and student of the works of Dashiell Hammett, and Hammett’s influence is clearly evident in Gores’s own fiction. Hammett is his personal monument to the man he believes was the greatest of […]
NORMAN SPINRAD – Bug Jack Barron. Avon M206; paperback, June 1969. Cover art by Alex Gnidziejko, Hardcover edition published simultaneously by Walker. An abbreviated version appeared earlier in New Worlds SF, December 1967 through October 1968. From the back cover: POWER PLAY. The lines of power are tangled in a future America threatened by a […]
Back to the Wells, Part 5: The First Men in the Moon by Matthew R. Bradley Both Jules Verne and H.G. Wells are sometimes known as “the father of science fiction,” and authored early depictions of lunar travel. Verne got off the ground first, so to speak, with De la Terre à la Lune […]
(Give Me That) OLD-TIME DETECTION. Spring 2026. Issue #71. Editor: Arthur Vidro. Old-Time Detection Special Interest Group of American Mensa, Ltd. 34 pages (including covers). Interest in classic detective fiction seems to be as high as ever, and we can’t think of a better gateway into it for the neophyte reader than Arthur Vidro’s Old-Time […]
