MERCURY MYSTERY and its stablemates BESTSELLER MYSTERY and JONATHAN
PRESS MYSTERY were a periodical set of digest magazine-format
reprints (at least for most of their run) of cf novels and
eventually some short story collections...a number of indexers and
collectors consider them paperback books, but they were produced in
the same format as stablemate ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, and
were apparently issued periodically, so I tend to think of them as
magazines (much as I would the ELLERY QUEEN'S ANTHOLOGY issues, and
the subsequent AHMM and ASIMOV'S and ANALOG anthologies in magazine
form that Davis Publications and its successors have issued). They
were very sedately covered in the 1940s into the '50s, and then
started to use the same sort of splashy covers the newsstand EQMMs
did from the early-mid '50s onward. At least one MERCURY MYSTERY
cover was the same photograph that had been used on a newsstand EQMM
a few years before, though the image was rotated so that the model
was lying in the opposite direction.
After the sale of EQMM by Mercury Press to B. G. Davis, MERCURY and
BESTSELLER continued for a few years, into the '60s, as more
straightforward magazines, with a lead novel/novella and s few short
stories and at least one regular column on true crime in MERCURY. I
believe the last MERCURY was a collection of Dahiell Hammett's "Thin
Man" stories.
Sorry, have other matters to attend to, as usual these days, so will
let one of the true scholars here flesh out and/or correct this
quick precis.
Todd Mason
--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Nathan Cain" <IndieCrime@...>
wrote:
>
> Although, on second glance, the Mercury Mysteries I'm talking about
> appear to be older. They don't have the covers like those listed in
> the link. These are solid colors, with artwork surrounded by a
> rectuangular frame in the middle. As far as I can tell, they're
from
> the 40's. At least the Woolrich, Dead Man's Blues (published under
> William Irish), was published in 1947. It is listed at prices
between
> $40-70 on the internet. You can see a picture at the link below.
>
> http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/ListingDetails?
bi=1011584038&cm_mmc=gbase-_-us-_-gbase-_-1011584038
>
> Seeing as how, I just won that one and four others on ebay for
about
> $13 including shipping, I might have just made out. These are
listed
> as being published by Jonathan Press, and I'm curious to know if
they
> relate to the book's in Ed's link, or to Spivak's Mercury Press.
> > On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 10:26 PM, <ejgorman99@...> wrote:
> >> I recently ran across some Mercury Mysteries by Woolrich,
Richard
> >> Powell and others, but I can't seem to find out much about this
> >> particular line of digests. They look like Reader's Digest
condensed
> >> versions of mystery novels. Is that impression correct? They
seem to
> >> be fairly rare. Does anyone collect these?
> >>
> >> ------------
> >>
> >> Here's some background with covers.
> >>
> >> http://www.philsp.com/mags/mercury_mystery_book.html
> >>
> >> http://www.philsp.com/data/data207.html
> >>
> >> Mercury Mystery-Book Magazine
> >>
> >> Total Issues: 23
> >>
> >> Numbering began from #210. It was a continuation of the Mercury
Mystery
> >> novels, published in digest form since Mar-1940.
> >>
> >> Issues & Index Sources
> >> Sep-1955 – Apr-1959:
> >> Monthly Murders
> >> Crime Fiction Index (in progress)
> >>
> >> #merges with Bestseller Mystery Magazine
> >>
> >> Publishers
> >> Mercury Publications
> >>
> >> Editors
> >> Joseph W. Ferman
> >>
> >> Formats
> >> digest
> >>
> >> Prices
> >> 35c
> >>
> >> Pagecounts
> >> 128pp
> >>
> >> Frequency
> >> Sep-1955 – May-1956: monthly
> >> Jun-1956 – Apr-1959: bi-monthly
> >>
> >> Sources
> >> UltGuide, CookMDE
> >> Issue Checklist
> >>
> >> Mercury Mystery Book Magazine (Australia)
> >>
> >> Total Issues: 6 (at least)
> >>
> >> Australian reprint edition of Mercury Mystery Book Magazine.
> >> Issues & Index Sources: Mar-1956 – ?:
> >> Crime Fiction Index (in progress)
> >> (Missing: #2, any after #6)
> >> Publishers: Atlas Publishers, Melbourne
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