As he does at regular intervals, Al Hubin sent me this morning Part 19 to his ongoing online Addenda to the Revised Edition of Crime Fiction IV, and within minutes (or so) I had it uploaded and ready to read.

   There are no major discoveries in this installment, perhaps none that haven’t already been mentioned in these pages already, but for additions and corrections to the entries for authors ranging from Salar Abdah to A. T. Worden, you might want to take a look.

   This new page is all in plain text, without the annotations I’ve been adding to previous chunks of the Addenda. I’ve recently finished Part 3, for example, on the main page, and I’m about to start merging it into the combined alphabetical sections of Parts 1 and 2.

   Of possible interest are the following entries from Part 12, which indicate a family connection that hadn’t been pointed out before in CFIV:

BYATT, A(NTONIA) S(USAN) (née DRABBLE). 1936- . Daughter of J. F. Drabble, 1906-1982, and sister of Margaret Drabble, 1939- , qq.v. Broadcaster, reviewer, editor, prize-winning author. Of several novels, one is included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV as having marginal crime content. See below.

    –Possession. Chatto & Windus, UK, hc, 1990; Random House, US, hc, 1990.

Byatt: Possession



DRABBLE, J(OHN) F(REDERICK). 1906-1982. Add year of death. Barrister and county court judge; father of A. S. Byatt, 1936- , and Margaret Drabble, 1939- , qq.v. Author of one book included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV. See below.

    Death’s Second Self. Sidgwick & Jackson, UK, hc, 1971. [Described by one online bookseller as “a diabolical crime piece.”]

DRABBLE, MARGARET. 1939- . Daughter of J. F. Drabble, 1906-1982, and sister of A. S. Byatt, 1936- , qq.v. Biographer, critic, and prize-winnning author of many works of fiction, including one novel cited in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV. See below.

    The Gates of Ivory. Viking, UK, hc, 1991; Viking, US, hc, 1992. [A London psychiatrist receives a cryptic package in the mail. Deciphering the message leads her to the chaos and corruption of Southeast Asia.]

The Gates of Ivory



   From the sublime, in terms of status in the literary world, to the less so — and I say this even though the late Mike Avallone was a friend of mine — we have the following entry from Part 18. [Note that this does not constitute the entire body of work for the previously mentioned Mr. Avallone. All that are listed here are the titles requiring additions or changes.]

AVALLONE, MICHAEL (ANGELO, JR.)

   The Coffin Things. Lancer, pb, 1968. Add setting: NY State (the Adirondacks). Note: According to the front cover, the book was “soon to be a major François Truffaut motion picture.” The movie does not appear to ever have been made.

The Coffin Things


   The Werewolf Walks Tonight. Warner, pb, 1974. #2 in the “Satan Sleuth” series, which relate the occult adventures of Philip St. George, a masked avenger who fights the forces of darkness. Add setting: Tennessee-Kentucky border.

   Note: There were three books that appeared in the Satan Sleuth series. According to one website no longer accessible, Avallone wrote two others that have never been published:

* VAMPIRES WILD (unpublished 1975) Philip St. George combats sorcery and Satanism in cynical Hollywood and comes face to face with the oldest living movie star. Is timeless Lola Vane actually who and what she seems to be? Do vampires really walk again in the modern age?

* ZOMBIE DEPOT (unpublished 1976) Philip St. George travels to Haiti to fight the legendary Baron Samedi, the Man Who Will Not Die. Not even Voodoo can explain the existence of The Python, incredible ringleader of a cult beyond sanity.