Nearly a year after the debut issue, SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY MAGAZINE #2 is finally available, with another 130-ish pages of mostly all-new material, perfect-bound and edited by the ever-reliable Marvin Kaye.
It begins with Kim Newman’s reviews of a handful of Sherlock Holmes-oriented books, which are welcome, but many of the titles are several years old. With so many new titles published every season, it’d be nice to see those covered instead. Holmes’ landlady Mrs. Martha Hudson returns with a faux advice column that’s more annoying than anything, especially with the inclusion of recipes.
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After bringing the exploits of Arsène Lupin and Fantômas back from obscurity, Penguin Classics resurrects a whole slew of gentlemen thieves in THE PENGUIN BOOK OF GASLIGHT CRIME: CON ARTISTS, ROGUES, AND SCOUNDRELS FROM THE TIME OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. Anyone who enjoys a good, smart, short, literate crime caper should snatch this anthology up … but pay for it, please.
Editor Michael Sims has rounded up a dozen examples of this all-but-dead subgenre — a lineup that includes works by the likes of O. Henry, William Hope Hodgson, Edgar Wallace and Sinclair Lewis, but mostly from authors whose reps have vanished like so many objects in their stories.
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T.T. Flynn (the first T stood for Thomas and the second for Theodore) was one of the more mature writers of Westerns to move into slick magazine and book publication in the 1950s. I know, it’s hard for you non-Western readers to imagine a story from that genre that was intended for grown-ups, but you should take a look at Flynn, Luke Short and Ernest Haycox as starters.
It’s not that their yarns never contained gunfights and saloon brawls, but those favorite elements were not the high points of their books. Stop a second and remember some of the movies based on their stories: Short’s CORONER CREEK, Haycox’s STAGECOACH and Flynn’s THE MAN FROM LARAMIE.
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Another in Papercutz’s revival of the classic comics series, CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED: THE RAVEN AND OTHER POEMS is a collection of nine pieces of verse written by Edgar Allan Poe, with illustrations by the macabre master of the inkwell, the great Gahan Wilson. If there’s anyone born to bring these lines to life, it’s Wilson, and he provides solid, consistent work throughout.
“The Raven” is the most famous here, obviously, with “Annabel Lee” and “The Conquerer Worm” included as well. I’d rather see adaptations of stories rather than the poems, but well, that’s what GRAPHIC CLASSICS is for. This may be a good way to introduce kids to Poe’s work, but adults — other than Wilson and completists — won’t be too drawn to it, especially given the god-awful ugly typeface chosen for its guts. —Rod Lott
Buy it at Amazon.
Food, glorious food is our theme this time out. But I’m severely bending the rules on this one, since our second book barely fits; I would really need to add an S to the second word of the title. However, there are plenty of scenes of people eating by a campfire, so it’s covered. Meanwhile, the first book is more of a dessert, and the final book deals with a stale old muffin. Still, all three are worth searching out, that’s for sure — especially since the middle one is considered a true American classic.
THE SHARK-INFESTED CUSTARD by Charles Willeford — This 1993 novel is unlike anything else I’ve read by Willeford, since it’s not a straightforward story, but more like four vignettes whose main characters appear in each others’ stories. At the start of the book, all four friends live at the same apartment complex. The opening story is all told from the perspective of Larry “Fuzz-o” Dolman. He and pals Eddie Miller, Don Luchessi and Hank Norton are all shooting the breeze by the pool, discussing the hardest place to pick up women in Florida.
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