The first winter storm of the season, here in the Northeast, and our first power outage, from 7:15 this morning to about 1:30 this afternoon. I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come. Wisely planning ahead, I made the big push this weekend, and Judy’s car was in her half of the garage when the ice and freezing rain hit. (Of course some of the boxes of books that came from there are now in the living room, but you have to remember: one step at a time!)

   But the reminder of how much we depend on electricity is a sobering one, not to mention access to one’s computer. I’m still working on Saturday’s New York Times crossword puzzle, for example, and without Google the Southwest corner is proving to be impenetrable.

   Al Hubin also sent me Part 21 of his online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV early this morning, and here it is, almost 4:30 in the afternoon, and I’ve only now gotten it uploaded.

   This new data is strong on newly discovered birth and death dates for authors, along with added info on series characters and settings. But also in this installment are lengthy entries for romantic suspense writers Kylie Brant and Glenna Finley, among others; historical fiction author Nigel Tranter, whose books often contained elements of crime-related activities; western writer Tim Champlin, for whose books the same can be said; Ian Rankin, whose books have been the basis for a number of recent TV films; and science fiction writer Walter Jon Williams, whose stories of galactic gentleman burglar-thief Drake Majistral are now included.

   It’s too early for me to have start adding cover images and so on, along with whatever additional commentary I will begin to add as soon as I can get to it, but I will, as soon as I can get to it!

   Tom Taylor is a Herbert Adams collector as well as the author of The Golf Murders (Golf Mystery Press, 1997), a bibliography of golfing mysteries, and yesterday he sent me the cover image below. It’s for Death of a Viewer (Macdonald, 1958), a book that Mary Reed reviewed back in August. I couldn’t come up with a copy on my own, so he sent me one. (The cover image, not the book.) Tom also says that he’s working on an Adams bibliography and has a complete collection except one title, Black Death (Collins, 1938).

   A partially illustrated checklist of Adams’s Roger Bennion novels, of which this is one, appeared along with Mary’s review. Follow the link above.

   I was working in Part 9 for a short while again this evening. The following are consecutive entries in the M’s. Not the most interesting group of authors, perhaps, but they’re all grist for the mill. (And who is to say, without reading them?)

MILLAR, FLORENCE N(ORAH). 1920-2000? Add tentative year of death. Author of two detective novels and one work marginally criminous, all three included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV. Chief Inspector Douglas Grant (DG) is the series detective in two of them. See below.
      Fishing Is Dangerous. Gifford, UK, hc, 1946. DG
      Grant’s Overture. Gifford, UK, hc, 1956. DG
      -The Lone Kiwi. Dawson, UK, hc, 1948. Setting: Italy, World War II.

MILLAR, J(OHN) HALKET. 1899-1978. Born in New Zealand. Add as a new author entry.
      Death Round the Bend. R. W. Stiles & Co., New Zealand, hc, 1954. [A novel about the bushranging Burgess gang that terrorized the New Zealand goldfields in 1866.]

MILLAR, PETER. British journalist and author of one thriller novel included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV. See below. Bleak Midwinter (Bloomsbury, 2002) is about an outbreak of bubonic plague set in modern Oxford.
      Stealing Thunder. London & NYC: Bloomsbury, hc, 1999. Add setting: 1945. [Alternative history thriller involving Klaus Fuchs, the German born Los Alamos physicist who passed on critical pieces of information about the atomic bomb.]

MILLER, RON(ALD) JAY. 1943- . Add full first name and year of birth.
      The Medallion. Salt Lake City: Northwest, pb, 1992. Setting: Wyoming. “This tale of courage and triumph follows Calvin Taft as he battles to regain his past with the help of a special medallion.”

MILLS, JOHN FITZMAURICE. 1917-1991. Add year of death. Lived in Wales; art critic for Irish Times for 10 years. Besides one novel included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV (see below) the author of such reference books as Collecting and Looking after Antiques and How to Detect Fake Antiques.
      Top Knocker. Dublin, Ireland: Wolfhound, pb, 1990. Wolfhound, US, pb, 1990. Setting: Dublin. [Novel about intrigue in the antiques trade, by an insider.]

MILLS, MAX. 1910?-2001? Add both dates, both tentative. Author of one novel included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV. See below.
      Bedtime at Eleven. Quality Press, UK, hc, 1949.

   Cover by Jim Manos, about whom Google turns up nothing, but a James Manos, Jr., is a writer-producer for movies & TV, including The Sopranos, The Shield, and Dexter.

Pinnacle, paperback; 1st printing, Sept 1983. UK hardcover: Collins (Crime Club), 1980; US hardcover edition: Doubleday & Co., 1980.

   From the back cover:

Famed for his extravagant houseparties and his nasty jokes, the Maharajah of Bhopore had asembled as odd assortment of guests for his annual April Fool’s Day fun. With consummate charm, he plies them with luxuries — and then, he tortured them with his tricks.

But mirth turned to murder with the crack of the Maharajah’s backfiring rifle. Obviously someone in the palace had a deadly sense of humor … and Detective Superintendent of Police Howard was just the man to find out who the joker was.