DANIEL BOYD – Hamlet Among the Pirates. Montag Press, softcover, August 2024.

   The book’s been out a while, but I’ve been in a long-lasting reading slump the past few months, and instead of having you wait for me to read it and tell you to buy it, I think it best if I for now just skip the middle step and tell you to buy it.

   Why? Maybe you already know this, but Daniel Boyd is actually our good friend and ace book and movie reviewer Dan Stumpf. He also leaves good comments here as well.

   Here below is Amazon’s cover image the book, should you care to buy it there, and after that a description of sorts of the story itself. (You can also click on the cover, follow the arrows, and (if all goes well) all kinds of wonderful things will (might) happen.)

         HAMLET ON THE HIGH SEAS!

When Captain Jacobus Hooke, Master of the
Dread Pirate Frigate DEBACLE, meets up with Hamlet,
Prince of Denmark, the action never stops.
Get ready for laughter and excitement, as a hard-working
Pirate Captain accidentally kidnaps the Melancholy Dane and finds
himself saddled with a princely hostage no one wants to ransom!

      Swordfights
      Strumpets
      Sea Battles
      Literary Allusions
      Surprise Encounters
      Super Storms
      And Just Plain Silliness

   Whether you know Shakespeare and HAMLET, or you just enjoy a good adventure story, this one will keep you turning the pages. Inspired by one brief reference to pirates in the play, Daniel Boyd creates a high seas adventure like no other.

   I want to let everyone know that my first novel, The Nuremberg Papers (Stark House Press) is now available on Amazon. When writing the book, I drew inspiration from various genres and subgenres in both literature and cinema, including classic detective fiction, stories about Nazi war criminals, film noir, suspense thrillers from the 1970s such as The Parallax View and Marathon Man, and movies and television shows set in gritty 1980s New York City.

   Aside from the conspiracy thriller aspect of the work, there’s also a story about Jewish identity in postwar America that runs throughout the course of the novel. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. And if you happen to appreciate the book, positive feedback on Amazon is more than welcome!

   Available now for pre-ordering is Jon’s book, The Nuremberg Papers:

         https://www.amazon.com/Nuremberg-Papers-Jonathan-Lewis/dp/B0DJV521GQ.

    “Private investigator Mike Levinas’s life has stalled. All that changes when a desperate Southern woman enters his office, asking him to find her dissolute older husband. What begins as a standard missing persons case reveals itself to something far more nefarious. Mike soon finds himself embroiled in intrigue and the target of a dangerous international conspiracy.

    “As Mike traverses the seedy streets of 1980s Manhattan on the hunt for a Nazi war criminal, he encounters an array of shady characters and lonely souls. When the cops prove to be less than helpful and the violence rises to a fever pitch, Mike toughens up and takes matters into his own hands.”

   My son Jonathan’s first novel, from Stark House Press:

   Here’s the descriptive blurb, taken from the back cover:

   Private investigator Mike Levinas’s life has stalled. All that changes when a desperate Southern woman enters his office, asking him to find her dissolute older husband. What begins as a standard missing persons case reveals itself to something far more nefarious. Mike soon finds himself embroiled in intrigue and the target of a dangerous international conspiracy. As Mike traverses the seedy streets of 1980s Manhattan on the hunt for a Nazi war criminal, he encounters an array of shady characters and lonely souls. When the cops prove to be less than helpful and the violence rises to a fever pitch, Mike toughens up and takes matters into his own hands.

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY – Crime and Punishment. Translation from the Russian of Prestuplenye i Nakazanye.  First published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments in 1866. Vizetelly, UK, hardcover, 1886. Crowell, US, hardcover, 1886.   There have been over 25 film adaptations of the book.

   Just finished this book, but I don’t Intend to review it here; I get the feeling all the best things have already been written about it, and besides, it’s pretty easy to spot the killer. One major problem I had with it, though: the story is supposed to be set in St. Petersburg, but this guy doesn’t write like he’s ever even been to Florida. Descriptions, names. even the money are all wrong. If I were giving him advice, I’d say, “write what you know, Fyodor.”

   I have just learned that this book starring a new version of my favorite OTR hero will be out in July. The start of a new series? “The Shadow knows!”

EDWARD S. AARONS – The Art Studio Murders. Macfadden 50-198, paperback, 1964; Manor, paperback, 1975. Originally published by Handi-Book, #122, as Dark Memory by Edward Ronns; Avon 688, paperback, 1950, also as by Edward Ronns but under the new title.

   First let me assure everyone out there that I don’t feel the least bit suicidal. But if I ever do, I know the perfect, fool-proof method: I shall simply call the Police, tell them I know who the Killer is, but I can’t name him over the phone — I must meet a Detective and tell him in person. Meeting arranged, I can simply sit back and relax, secure in the knowledge that when the cops get here, they will find me dead, bludgeoned from behind. Or fatally stabbed. Or perhaps shot. Maybe poisoned, a la The Big Sleep, but that’s rare. In any case, I shall be well & truly Dead.

   Works all the time in fiction. With metronomic regularity. So much so that when I came across it here, I had a flashback to High School and Julius Caesar:

   Well I couldn’t say off-hand, but I myself just couldn’t take any more. I closed Art Studio and picked up something else.

   Up to that point, it had been a perfectly serviceable mystery. Aspiring artist and babe-magnet Henry Dana gets pushed off a subway platform two days before his big show at a prestigious gallery. No one sees him get pushed, the police are inclined to disbelieve him, and he himself begins to have doubts, but a second attack… well you can write the rest yourself. Or read my copy, which has a rather nice cover.

   I just couldn’t get past that familiar phone call that always, invariably, repeatedly, inexorably, eternally, persistently, habitually, unceasingly, perpetually, unchangingly, endlessly, unfailingly, inalterably, everlastingly, and without exception, leads to the same end.

THE BEST OF MANHUNT 2. Edited by Jeff Vorzimmer. Stark House, trade paperback, August 2020.

   Well, this was a nice surprise. It was a typical gray and gloomy sky here in Connecticut all day, drizzling on and off, or at least it was until I discovered what Rose my mail carrier dropped off for me this afternoon, and all of sudden everything got a whole lot cheerier.

   I’ve not begun to read it, but you can bet the farm I will be over the next few months until August when it officially comes out and you’ll be able to as well. I’ve listed the contents below. You may be struck as quickly that as I was that some of the authors don’t seem to have the same “name value” that the first collection did. I think that that’s all to the good and am willing to wager that the stories were chosen on how good they are, and not so much who wrote them.

   If there are any errors in the Table of Contents below, they’re mine. I didn’t type them in by hand, but OCR scanning is still often only an approximate art.

Forward: For The Love of Manhunt … Peter Enfantino. .. 7
Introduction … Jon L. Breen … 11
On the Passing of Manhunt … Jon.L. Breen … 15
Life and Death of a Magazine … Robert Turner … 17
A Stabbing in the Street … Elezazer Lipsky … 23
As I Lie Dead … Fletcher Flora … .36
So Dark for April … Howard Browne … 49
Shakedown … Roy Carroll … 66
The Choice … Richard Deming … 73
Confession … John M. Sitan … 85
The.Empty Fort … Basil Heatter … 92
You Can’t Trust a Man … Helen Nielsen … 127
Sylvia … Ira Levin … 136
Protection … Erle Stanley Gardner … 15
Blonde at tl1e Wheel Stephen Marlowe 154
Vanishing Act … W. . Burnett … 166
One More Mile to Go … F. J. Smith … 186
Key Witness … Frank Kane … 192
Puddin’ nd Pie … De. Forbes … 229
Blood and Moonlight … William R. Cox … 234
Shadowed … Richard Wormser … 244
Deatl1 of a Big Wheel … William Campbell Gault … 248
The Geniuses … Max Franklin … 271
Kitchen Kill … Jonathan Craig … 285
The Crying Target … James McKimmey … 299
The Girl Friend … Mark Mallory … 320
Midnight Caller … Wade Miller … 326
Arrest … Donald E Westlake … 329
Time to Kill … Bryce Walton … 333
Absinthe for Superman … Robert Edmond Alter … 356
Wharf Rat … Robert Page Jones … 333
The Safe Kill … Kenneth Moore … 374
A Question of Values … C. L. Sweeney, Jr … 378
Shatter Proof … ]ack Ritchie … 381
The Old Pro … H. A. DeRosso … 385
Retribution … Michael Zuroy … 395
In Memoriam … Charles Boeckman … 398
Bugged … Bruno Fischer … 402
Interference … Glenn Canary … 412

[UPDATE] Jiro Kimura has advised me that the contents have changed slightly from the galley from which I obtained the above to the final product. He says: “It does not have ‘Sylvia’ by Ira Levin but ‘Where There’s Smoke’ by Edward D. Hoch instead, which was an Al Darlan story first printed in the March 1964 issue of Manhunt.

   “Hoch’s story was placed at the bottom of the contents page and the last one in the book.”

DANIEL BOYD – The Devil & Streak Wilson. Montag Press, trade paperback original, March 2020. Also available in ebook format.

   Let me say the outset that this is not really a review. I know the author personally, and there is no way I could be unbiased. You may know him, too, if you are a regular reader of this blog, since under his real name, his book and movie reviews that are posted here are even better than mine, if that were at all possible. But since he wrote this book under a false name, perhaps he does not want his own name associated with it, and I will honor his intentions until such time that he allows me to reveal it.

   Let me also say that this is the best book I have read over the period of the last two months. That this is the only book I have read over the period of the last two months does not, I hope, lessen the truth and impact of that statement. (I do not think that I am the only one who has been suffering from a reader’s block over the last two months, but I digress.)

   What is the book about, you may ask. I’m going to guess as to the year that it takes place in, but perhaps the 1880s; and as for the setting, it may suffice to say that it’s The West. Streak Wilson is our hero, a young lad with no roots that he knows of, but who is the best shot with a rifle in the entire county. The other major protagonist is, well, read the title of the book again. On the earth he appears as a gent who suggests he be called Harvey. Harvey Rideout, a friendly 50ish gent who seems to be able to light his tobacco with only his finger.

   By means of a small subterfuge, not a lie, exactly, but hedging on the details, he makes a small deal with Streak, who ends up not being able to see his reflection in mirrors, while at the same time a vicious doppelganger is released upon on the world. I could continue, and very easily, but I would like to leave some of the story for you to read for yourself.

   Besides being a riproarer of a tall tale in and of itself, The Devil and Streak Wilson is also a story of life, death, and growing up in between, filled with as much home spun philosophy as you can find in the total work of Spinoza, John Locke, and my Uncle Ezra combined. And I don’t even have an Uncle Ezra. If from reading this you get the sense that you might enjoy this book, I will suggest that you are miscalculating. You will love this book.

   Rupert Heath, publisher of Dean Street Press’s line of reprinted vintage mystery fiction, recently sent me an email flyer outlining what’s in store for us from them this March. I asked if I could reprint it here, and he has most graciously agreed:

   We are delighted to be adding new Golden Age mysteries to our range of publications on 2 March 2020. This time we are featuring authors Moray Dalton, E. & M. A. Radford, Henrietta Clandon and Roy Horniman, including the classic black crime-comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets.

   Further to our successes last year, we are publishing five further titles from Moray Dalton: The Belfry Murder, The Belgrave Manor Crime, The Condamine Case, The Case of Alan Copeland, and The Art School Murders.

   We have three more titles from E. & M.A. Radford, the married Golden Age crime-writing couple: The Heel of Achilles, Death of a Frightened Editor, and Death and the Professor.

   A new author for DSP, we are very pleased to add four classic Golden Age mysteries from Henrietta Clandon: Good by Stealth, Inquest, Power on the Scent, and This Delicate Murder.

   And finally we are excited to bring out a new edition of Kind Hearts and Coronets (aka Israel Rank) by Roy Horniman – the basis for the famous Ealing Comedy, and every bit as fresh, funny and relevant as when it was first published in 1907.

   All best wishes

       Rupert Heath

           Publisher