Thu 30 Mar 2023
An Archived Mystery Review: PATRICK KELLEY – Sleightly Invisible.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[5] Comments
PATRICK KELLEY – Sleightly Invisible. Harry Calderwood #3. Avon, paperback original, 1986.
Another mystery with magic involved (*) – Kelley’s detective (this is his third adventure) is a magician named Harry Calderwood. Harry was once a big name, on TV and all, but he is now doing street corners. I don’t know why. Maybe I should read the earlier books.
But maybe I won’t, since I found this one rather disappointing. It involves a missing coed that Harry is forced into finding. Harry has a glib tongue, but his attempts at humor seem to miss tw7o times out of three. The mystery he solves also needs some work.
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(*) I was referring here to the book The Wealth Seekers, the Shadow paperback by Maxwell Grant reviewed a few days ago on this blog.
The Harry Calderwood series —
Sleightly Murder. Avon 1985.
Sleightly Lethal. Avon 1986.
Sleightly Invisible. Avon 1986
Sleightly Deceived. Avon 1987.
Sleightly Guilty. Avon 1988.
March 30th, 2023 at 2:42 pm
A longer and (i have to admit) much more incisive review of this book can be found here:
http://moonlight-detective.blogspot.com/2020/11/sleightly-invisible-1986-by-patrick.html
March 30th, 2023 at 3:54 pm
Slightly seems to have been a general view of these and not merely a theme of the titles.
March 31st, 2023 at 8:32 am
We named our son Patrick Kelley but not because of this series. Avon was a good publisher for slight mystery novels back in the Eighties. Now that market has disappeared.
March 31st, 2023 at 1:48 pm
Lots of Patrick Kelley’s come up on a Google search, perhaps one of whom might be your son but none of them seem to be the author. He (the author) had a short career with Avon, but you’re right. Bigger publishers are not looking for midlist writers (or below) any more, especially for mass market paperbacks. And the list of bigger publishers gets smaller every year. They’re all one big conglomerate, and have been for a while.
April 1st, 2023 at 7:05 am
I did some digging for my review of Sleightly Lethal and discovered Patrick A. Kelley is a magician from Altoona, Pennsylvania, who performed magic tricks at banquets and children’s parties in the 1970s. You can find it in the review and someone left a comment with a link to a review of one of his books from the Altoona Mirror.