<<Did anyone get any good books? I went to a nice used
bookstore in
Manitoba and got three Henry Kane: _Trinity in Violence_,
_Too French
and Too Deadly_, and _Armchair in Hell_ (all with Peter
Chambers); and
five Richard S. Prathers: _Over Her Dead Body_, _Three's a
Shroud_,
_Slab Happy_, _Always Leave 'Em Dying_ and _Take a Murder,
Darling_ (all
with Shell Scott). I've never read anything by this Kane and
I'm
looking forward to them.>>
Good stuff, all of it. For the reader that can abandon
"serious"
sensibilities and let himself go, the Shell Scott's are
great
entertainments and funny as hell, too. Henry Kane wrote a
good mystery,
too; overall, he was a much more polished and ambitious
writer than
Prather - I'm not saying better, just different. I hope you
enjoy these
authors.
I did receive quite a few holiday presents in book form, the
jewels
being two of the greatest collections of short stories I have
ever read:
the complete stories of Bernard Malamud (Farrar, Straus and
Giroux) and
the collected stories of Erskine Caldwell, the latter in a
very handsome
tome published by the University of Georgia Press. If you
haven't read
either of these authors, run to the nearest store and pounce
on these
volumes. Caldwell had some definite affinity with the
hardboiled writers
of the thirties. The Malamud collection had me mesmerized,
reading for
days on end, to the slight detriment of my attention to the
kids. I
claimed exhaustion from a long and busy year. I also got
quite a few
mysteries that I hope I get to comment on as I read
them.
Apologies for writing off topic, but books are books.
Regards,
mt
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