RARA-AVIS: Moore's digest of digests...

From: Todd Mason ( Todd.Mason@tvguide.com)
Date: 23 Oct 2002


While MANHUNT staggered into the latter '60s as a shadow of its early-mid-'50s glory, one digest founded in 1956, along with HITCHCOCK'S, managed to contribute consistently, if not consistently in its quality, to HB fiction until the early-mid-'80s...MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE (for most of its run, MICHAEL SHAYNE and other small changes beforehand), and its several Renown sibling magazines. Some members of this list, and certainly not a few of their friends, used MSMM as a salvage market and a training ground. Certainly when I began reading cf digests in the '70s, I may've found a higher standard of literature in both EQMM and AHMM, but enjoyed the earthiness and lack of self-censorship in SHAYNE. HARDBOILED and the lamented BLUE MURDER can remind one of MSMM, but I still miss it.

But since you're a collector, Rich, have you picked up issues MYSTERY BOOK or ED MCBAIN'S MYSTERY BOOK, or the many direct imitators of MANHUNT?

Then there was that fine revival of BLACK MASK in digest-sized paperback... TM

-----Original Message----- From: Moorich2@aol.com [mailto: Moorich2@aol.com] 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.

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