Last weekend I went to our family cottage on Lake Winnipeg to
have Canadian Thanksgiving dinner and close it for the
winter. Well, the plumbing froze so we didn't have water and
then my brother-in-law got sick at home. That meant no dinner
and an immediate trip back to the city. One of that last
things I saw as I pulled down a blind on the porch was a
shelf full of my late father's Michael Shayne paperbacks.
Most are early if not first paperbacks and those are the
books that got me reading mysteries. He also read Earle
Stanley Gardner, A.A. Fair and George Harmon Coxe. So did I
because living in northern Manitoba where there was no town
library, a small school library filled with very old Tom
Swift and one tobacco store that sold paperbacks meant you
had little choice. For some reason, I made sure we kept the
Shayne books while the Gardner, Coxe, etc. disappeared. The
problem I now see is having to make one more trip to the lake
and go into a very cold cottage to rescue the books if we are
going to have a Michael Shayne Festival. I won't be able to
stay out of that. By the way, am I right in thinking one of
the above authors had a detective called Kent Murdock? If so,
why didn't I like him best.
Kent Morgan
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