(Cross-posted to vintage_crime)A. A. Fair was one of the pseudonyms used by Erle Stanley Gardner, who is best-known for creating the famous defense attorney Perry Mason.  Gardner wrote over seventy Perry Mason books from the 1930s through the 1960s.  Perry Mason is most known from the 1950s television show starring Raymond Burr, but there were also earlier ( Read more... )

Acting on jordannamorgan's recommendation of the Mr. Moto films and Wikipedia's description of the Mr. Moto books by John P. Marquand, a couple weeks ago I found myself the proud possessor of four out of six novels.  Unsurprisingly, given my track record, I zoomed through all four in less than a week.

Wikipedia supplies a lot of analysis in a lengthy and slightly ( Read more... )

This time I'm quick with another Alistair MacLean review!  In the past year I've pretty much exhausted his pre-1970 books.  Now I'm working my way through the later ones. (Complete list and links here.)  I'm not bothering to read them in order, since by most accounts their quality, although uniformly poor in comparison to his previous excellence, ( Read more... )

I've had a few friends-list additions (Yay!) since I last wrote about Alistair MacLean, one of my Favorite Authors Evah. To sum up, since explaining would take too long, he wrote action/adventure/spy novels from the 1950s to the 1980s. They particularly appeal to me because they (1) are really exciting, (2) are complexly and carefully plotted, (3) ( Read more... )

More Mutt-ley pictures here: The Singing Marine, Part 2

So Monday I received a pudding a beautiful present, made of a suitable material, from the Tree herself.  (That is,
( Read more... )

After the success of my last free book posting, I'm emboldened to post another recommendation.

This one, alas! lacks any Saintly references.  However, it has another reference, I might say theme, which is just as marvelous - to more than one reader of this blog.

To set the stage: "The Return" is a science fiction short story published in 1954.  It is ( Read more... )

I worked late last night, of course, to offset coming in late from my eight o'clock morning class. When I walked into the house (passing Bro. No. 1 on the way, going I know not where), "Be Our Guest!" was blasting from the stereo and Dad was dancing around the living room. It was so funny and so typical all at once. His dancing, by-the-bye, is most ( Read more... )

Since I have to. I guess.

;-)

Pith helmets are fantastic.  Mine is the honest-to-goodness African explorer look.  It's pretty big (the pith is at least 1/2" thick) but incredibly light.  For ventilation, there are eyelets in the sides of the crown, and the knob at the top is actually a vent.  Bro. No. 2 discovered that in a wind, the eyelets can ( Read more... )

Forcing myself to write about the MacLean books has been good for me. (Don't get me wrong; I love to write about MacLean. It's just work, like anything besides reading is, for me, Work.)  In some ways PaperBackSwap has been a greater temptation than a blessing.  The sheer volume of my reading this year is staggering.  I couldn't keep up with a ( Read more... )

I found this book waiting for me in a PaperBackSwap package when I got home one day last week.  By lunch the next day, I'd finished it.

Alistair MacLean's Circus

Published in 1975, Circus is one of MacLean's last, and poorest, set of novels.  I'm glad to report, however, that it was a very enjoyable read.  It's not up to the technical standards of ( Read more... )