Appreciate the highlights of what sounds like a great con.
Frustrating to miss it after months of anticipation but my
broken shoulder and surgery made it impossible.
As the recovery is slow, I am at home with lots more reading
time. Unfortunately, it is difficult to manage hardbacks
unless I am seated at a table. Paperbacks are better but best
of all for one-handed holding are the digest magazines. As
the painkillers I am still on make lengthy concentration
difficult, I am better off reading short stories anyway.
Thankfully, I have many digests both recent as well as back
to the 1940s.
"Manhunt" was, of course, the digest of greatest interest to
this list as the focus was very much on the hard boiled. In a
broader sense, "Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine" was from the
beginning the gold standard of the mystery magazines. It
obtained the rights to the "Black Mask" name and regularly
published reprints as well as new stories in the Black Mask
tradition. I am currently enjoying the police procedural
stories of Lawrence Treat, who pioneered this form
And EQ also featured Anthony Boucher's reviews, which
intrigue to this day. For example, in the August 1965 issue
he gives atop ranking of four stars to Thomas Hinde's THE DAY
THE CALL CAME (Vanguard). His review states:
"Extraordinary and disturbing novel on the parallel between
our world of tension and subversion and the private world of
paranoia." I am ready to order this one just based on that
sentence. Has anyone out there read it?
"The Saint" digest has some good material but while it might
feature a few stories that could be termed noir, the editor
Hans Stefan Santesson did not care for the hard boiled
detective story.
"Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine" is a reliable source of
good stories from tough to funny. Lots of early Block,
Westlake, Willeford, Clark Howard as well as the short story
specialists like Jack Ritchie, Bryce Walton, and Robert Twohy
(consistently excellent over a long career--anybody know
anything about him)?
Richard Moore
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