MURRAY LEINSTER “The Fourth Dimensional Demonstrator.” First published in Astounding Stories, December 1935. Reprinted in The Other Worlds, edited by Phil Stong (Funk, hardcover, 1941), and The Future Makers, edited by Peter Haining (Belmont, paperback, US edition, 1971). First collected in Sideways in Time (Shasta, hardcover, 1950), then The Best of Murray Leinster (Ballantine/Del Rey, paperback, 1978), and A Logic Named Joe (Baen, paperback, 2005).    This one begins with a fellow named Pate Davidson complaining to his newly inherited man servant Thomas that his uncle had lef ..read more

Nero Wolfe on Page and (Small U.S.) Screen: “Poison à la Carte” by Matthew R. Bradley        As with Murder by the Book (1951), the Nero Wolfe novel Plot It Yourself (1959) gets a metafictional spin from Rex Stout, who’d served as the president of Vanguard Press; the Authors Guild, lobbying for copyright-law reform; and the Mystery Writers of America, receiving their Grand Master Award that year. The National Association of Authors and Dramatists (NAAD) and Book Publishers of America (BPA) hire Wolfe due to a rash of “plagiarism upside down,” with successful works ..read more

Reviewed by TONY BAER:     JOHN McPARTLAND – The Wild Party. Gold Medal #596, paperback original; 1st printing, 1956. MacFadden 60-367, paperback, date?  Film: United Artists, 1956.    Tom Kupfen is a hulking psychopath. Former football player. Hell with the ladies who love a sweaty bull.    Gorgeous debutante Erica London is out on the town with her fiancé, Lieutenant Arthur Mitchell, fighter pilot. They decide to go slumming with the lowdown miscreant jazz musicians living hand to bop.    Erica falls for psycho Tom. For just a ..read more

THE ADVENTURES OF THE ABBOTTS – The Man in the Green Nile Suit. NBC, 29 May 1955. Claudia Morgan & Mandel Kramer as Pat & Jean Abbott. Based on the characters created by Frances Crane.    Married couples, one of whom is a famous detective, should never take second honeymoons, as this episode of The Abbotts well demonstrates. About to embark on a cruise in the West Indies, they stay overnight in a cabin where they find in the bathroom … a dead body. The captain of the ship insists on taking over, a task Pat Abbott is well willing to step away from    But no ..read more

MAX ALLAN COLLINS “Marble Mildred.” Nathan “Nate” Heller. First appeared in An Eye for Justice, edited by Robert J. Randisi (Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1988: A PWA Anthology). Collected in Dying in the Post-War World: A Nathan Heller Casebook, (Foul Play Press, hardcover, 1991).    Running a one-man PI office in 1936 post-Depression Chicago, Nate Heller is hired by a woman who thinks her husband is cheating on her. It turns out that she’s wrong. In spite of following the man for several days, he manages to find incriminating at all. In truth he discovers that the story is qui ..read more

Remembering The Great Merlini: An Interview with Clayton Rawson Jr. by G. Connor Salter.        Clayton Rawson (1906-1971) was a key member of the American mystery fiction community for over four decades. His best-known work combined his interest in magic with mystery, particularly in stories about amateur detective The Great Merlini — a name Rawson used himself at magic shows.    His son, Clayton Rawson Jr., has carried on The Great Merlini legacy in various ways. In a March 2024 virtual event for Rendever Live, he showed some of his father’s magic ..read more

REVIEWED BY DAVID VINEYARD:     KURT STEEL – Murder for What? Hank Hyer #2. Bobbs-Merrill, hardcover, 1936. Select Publications, digest-sized paperback, 1943. Also published, perhaps in abridged form, in Detective Mystery Novel, Fall 1948.    McRae cultivated an English accent… it was like gold leaf on a slot machine.        McRae is a gambler who is in a poker game with Hank Hyer when the subject of Kip Shannon comes up. Hyer, a NY based Private Eye in the Sam Spade/Michael Shayne tradition hasn’t got much use for Shannon, who marri ..read more

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by Ellen Nehr     MARGARET ERSKINE – Give Up the Ghost. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1949. Mercury Mystery #163, digest paperback, 1953. Ace, paperback, 1970s? [published as part of Ace’s line of Gothic paperbacks].    Margaret Erskine wrote the same book about Scotland Yard inspector Septimus Finch twenty-one times. In each one Finch is described as having a nondescript face and a proclivity for dressing all in gray. This repetition doesn’t enhance the inspector’s limited charms, although it could be argued that his stolidity and matt ..read more

ROBERT SILVERBERG – Thorns. Ballantine U669, paperback original, 1st printing, August 1967; cover by Robert Foster. Walker, hardcover, 1969. Bantam, paperback, 1983. Nominated in 1968 for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel of 1967.    A manipulated love affair, between Minner Burris, starman disfigured by aliens, and Lona Kelvin, virgin but mother of one hundred children, Mutual sympathy was the original reason for their attraction. But their obvious differences were bound to lead to the emotional conflict that Duncan Chalk, dealer in public entertainment, could fee ..read more

REVIEWED BY RAY O’LEARY:     PHILIP KETCHUM – Death in the Library. Timothy Y. Crowell, hardcover, 1937. Dell #1, paperback, 1943.    This has some historical importance, to collectors anyway, since it was the first of what came to be the Dell Mapbacks. Curiously enough, though, it doesn’t have a Map on the Back, but a blurb announcing this as the first in a series of Mysteries selected by the editors of America’s Foremost Detective Magazines. Pity, because this one could have used a map — this one could have used all the help it could get.    Stev ..read more