November 2025 Reading Summary

I read ten books in November, two from my Avon/Equinox authors and the rest from my vast collection of fiction from Delphi Classics on Kindle. 

 

 

In the 1985 Storm Over Valia (#35 in the Dray Prescott series) Bulmer lets us in on what has been happening with Dray's #1 son.  We have heard a bit about his doings, but he has never had his own volume until now.  Drak is attempting to rid the mainland of Valia of traitorous enemies.  It takes several battles and reinforcements before he is able to turn the tide in his favour, but then he is kidnapped by the enemy.  #35 in the Dray Prescott series is filled with the usual amount of fighting, carousing, intrigue, humour and outrageous incidents, even though Dray is not present.  While he has been battling the witches' plagues, we learn what else has been going on in other parts of Kregen.  While Drak is a mere shadow of his father, he hasn't had the same amount of time to have his character developed.   Drak shares plot time with Silda, daughter of Dray Prescott's best friend.  Silda is a Sister of the Rose, highly trained in all manner of combat, and she gets a good chunk of the story to herself and her deeds, too.  In fact, she is a more interesting character than Drak.  This is a good entry in the series, allowing the readers to gain a more multi-dimensional view of what exactly is going on.

 

 

It's unfortunate that Tubb is an artful dodger.  In his Dumarest series Tubb never allows his hero to get near the original Earth, as if a change of direction for the series would be detrimental.  And in his Cap Kennedy series Tubb never allows us to stay long enough to learn more about the Zheltyanians, that ancient race that has left traces of itself across the galaxy.  I think most readers would like to see Dumarest getting closer and closer to Earth, and they would also like to see Cap learning more about the mysterious old ones.  But each time they make a discovery, it has to be destroyed for reasons to do with the main story plot.  In Spawn of Laban (1974; 127 pages), Cap and his team have to deal with giant insects, scorpions and spiders that will be used to devastate Earth in the near future.  A twisted professor is mixed up in the plot, and perhaps his lovely daughter.  It's a good story, except for the blowing up of the Zheltyana artifacts which are destroyed at the end.  It appears that giant wasps are using one of their ancient structures as a nest.  So much for getting clues from there.  Many of Tubb's stories would make fantastic movies, and this is one of them.  Any filmmakers out there listening?

 

Cover by Jack Gaughan. 

 

Turning now to Delphi Classics on Kindle, I began the month with an end of the world story by Arthur Conan Doyle.  The Poison Belt is from 1913 and undoubtedly influenced writers like John Chrisopher.  However, Doyle's story is somewhat spoiled by a chicken-out ending, where everyone wakes up next morning as suddenly as they had passed out and were presumed dead the previous day.  This is a Professor Challenger story (The Lost World), and the same team is together again as a poisoned bit of ether seems to have crossed Earth's path.  They survive the night with oxygen, and the best part of the story has them heading for London next day in a motor car to see the devastation.  And while the ending is a cop out, there has been great devastation as a result of people passing out amidst their duties.  There are train wrecks, shipwrecks, completely burned cities and other disasters.  So Earth does not get a get out of jail free card without considerable bumps and bruises.  If you like the stories of Christopher then you will certainly like this one, from one of the great storytellers.

An interior illustration for Doyle's story. 

 

 

Edgar Wallace wrote a few books featuring a London detective from Scotland Yard. The first of these novels is The Nine Bears from 1910. A group of men attempt to manipulate the stock market, causing a major London bank to fail if their plot succeeds. T. S. Smith has his hands full in this cracking crime thriller that has a global reach, including a climax at sea. Wallace writes well and craftily, setting up the capture of the group and their leader time and again, only to be foiled and outwitted. There is a master criminal mind behind the whole thing, and even the best at Scotland yard seems to be no match. My Delphi edition had colour plates of a few scenes. Highly readable, with the bad guys finally done in in the end.

 

 
Next up was T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, from 1922. This is only the 2nd time I've read this work, and the only time I had a clue as to what is about. My Delphi Classics edition includes the author's notes. The title and much of the mood of the text refers to Jessie Weston's book From Ritual To Romance, about the Grail legend. Eliot claims he was thinking a lot about the Fisher King, his wounded condition and how the landscape reflected that condition. Other influences include Dante, Ovid and Chaucer. The poem is divided into 5 segments, with the 4th being my personal favourite. However, I also love the opening to the 3rd part, and a part of the 5th. 

 

The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf

Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind

Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.

 

Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song. 

 

And.... 

In this decayed hole among the mountains
  In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
  Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
  There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
  It has no windows, and the door swings,
  Dry bones can harm no one.

 

Jacques Futrelle (real name John Futrell) was an American writer who wrote mystery and crime novels.  He was a passenger on the Titanic and died as a result of the sinking.  I read his first novel, The Chase of the Golden Plate from 1906.  The author sets up a man as being just about as guilty a person could be of committing a crime, with all evidence pointing to him ass the culprit.  Of course the man is innocent, and the reader must read on to find out how the author gets him off the hook.  Some of the tactics used are a bit much, such as the girl who is engaged to be married to him, and with whom she is eloping the very night of the robbery, does not recognize the fact that she is with someone else.  She thinks it is her lover the whole time.  Hmmmn.  Week, he did have a face mask on.  In the story we are introduced to The Thinking Machine, Futrelle's version of Sherlock Holmes.  He is a man who uses only logic to solve crimes.  It was an okay read, but not the kind of crime novel that I am a big fan of.

 

 

Next came a collection of stories by Gogol, an 1835 set of four tales collectively called Mirgorod.

"The Old Fashioned Farmer" is a tribute of sorts to the author's grandparents.  Minute descriptions of the house interior, exterior and lands surrounding it are given, painting a wonderful picture of a Ukraine ("Little Russia") homestead at the time.  Despite being silently robbed by the workers and overseer, as the old farmer no longer tends to the farm himself, they still get by without enough to keep them happy in their older years.  Not so much a story as a celebration of a way of life.

 

"Taras Bulba" is the tale of a Cossack's life back in the good old days.  It was a manly man's world, leaving wives and young children behind to live in a large permanent encampment upon the steppes of central Asia.  Everything you have wanted to know about Cossacks is here, and perhaps everything you did not want to know.  I would equate the true Cossack to its modern equivalent of the football (soccer in North America) hooligan, out looking for trouble for no real reason other than to prove 'manhood.'  In the famous story, which is quite a long one, Taras introduces his two sons to the life of a Cossack.  The eldest lad takes to it quite well, but the youngest is a bit soft on the emotional side and ends up falling in love with a beautiful woman.  Silly lad.  Several films were made from the story, including a famous Hollywood one.

 

"Viy" is a supernatural horror tale, one of the best!  A young seminary student, a philosopher, has a life or death meeting and struggle with an evil witch.  When he bests her and she dies his troubles begin.  This is a such a great story that I hesitate to give any of the plot away.  Last March we watched the 1967 Russian film version, which, as it turns out, closely follows the story and has incredible effects for the time. (see my review from the March 23rd/25 blog).  A must to read for horror fans. 

 

"The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled With Ivan Nikiforovich" is a tragic/comedy story about two very close friends who have a serious falling out and are unable to reconcile.  The story follows the men as their differences escalate into a court drama, and shows the negative effects it has on their aging and quality of life.  Told with humour, it is a good story that would also make a good film.

 

 

Carson McCullins' Clock Without Hands (pub. 1961) is the 2nd story by her I have read.  The lives of four male characters intertwine much like themes in polyphonic music, though decidedly in a minor key.  J.T. Malone is a small town pharmacist in southern Georgia, a man who failed to pass his second year of medical school.  Now 40, he blames Jewish students for his failure.  He soon finds out that he has leukemia and has just over one year to live.  One of his close friends is Judge Clane, a widower whose lawyer son committed suicide many years earlier.  The judge is a southern bigot, and his big scheme to become even richer than he is, is to get the federal government to redeem confederate money.  The time is the early 1950s.  The judge weighs over 300 pounds and has type two diabetes.  He hires Sherman, a blue-eyed young Black man, to help him administer his shots and to be his personal secretary, writing the letters dictated by the judge.  Sherman's blue eyes attract the judge's grandson, Jester, a homosexual young man yet to act on his leanings.  Sherman can also sing really well, and play piano.  The relationship between Sherman and Jester, between Sherman and the judge, and between Jester and his grandfather form the basis of the book, with Mr. Malone and his terminal illness providing a 4th narrative line.  They keeps the book interesting from start to finish.  There are a lot of f-bombs dropped during the tale, as well as liberal use of the n-word.  This is the deep south of the the 1950s, and it isn't a pretty place for Black folk.  But it's a time of change, too, and more Blacks are speaking up for their constitutional rights, though few are receiving them.  Malone himself is the main 'clock without hands', a man who cannot find himself in life until he is upon his death bed.  But none of the characters really know or understand what they are doing.  The judge fights for whites, in the end separating himself from Sherman.  His son who died by suicide had attempted to defend an innocent black man accused of raping a white woman, and this really put a chasm between the father son relationship.  The same thing happens with Jester, the judge's grandson.  Once Jester figures out what his grandfather really stands for, he rejects him and goes his own way.  Sherman finally finds a cause and a reason to stand up for himself and his race, but it is a useless sacrifice.  Though depressing in many ways (as a piece of music in the minor key can be), it is nothing but an honest glimpse at life in those "good ol' days" white Americans like to think about, the golden age of the 1950s.  I didn't like the book quite as much as The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, though I am left with similar feelings after reading Clock.  Definitely a book worth reading, as this woman is a terrific writer.

 

 

Next came a collection of eight stories of childhood by Kenneth Grahame.  Dream Days was first published in 1888, and illustrated by Maxfield Parrish in a 1902 edition (the one I read).  Of the eight stories four of them are excellent, with one of these being among the best things ever written regarding childhood.  It is a follow up collection to his remarkable Golden Days of 1885.  My four favourite stories are "Mutabile Semper," where our young hero meets a new girl his age and what befalls their brief affair.  Funny and poignant at the same time with an irresistible point of view.  "The Magic Ring" opens with a warning to adults to be careful what they say aloud when children are present, illustrating perfectly how a broken promise can affect a child.  Again our hero becomes momentarily infatuated with not one, but two different females as he unexpectedly is brought to see the circus, after finding out that he would not be going with his parents after all.  We get to experience the lowest and highest points of childhood in one short story.  "The Reluctant Dragon" is one of the most famous stories of all time, and certainly worth reading.  Filled with dry humour and life lessons for accepting others as they are, the tale is a story within a story.  Two of the children, our young hero and his youngest sister, follow what they imagine might be dragon tracks in the snow.  It eventually leads them to the garden of a well known local man who works in the circus.  Once he discovers their mission, he offers to walk them back home, as it is now dark and very chilly.  Along the way he is prompted to tell a story, and out comes the tale of the reluctant dragon.  A beautiful package, indeed.  The final story of the set is the best of them all.  "A Departure" is the story of how the children parted with their toys once they had officially, though not emotionally, out grown them.  As they are packaged up to be delivered to a sick children's hospital, the two youngest, observed by the eldest, undertake to save at least a few of the precious and once-loved toys and give them immortality.  Very touching and moving if read by anyone that had well loved toys as a child.  Like the previous Golden Age stories, this set is indispensable reading.

 

One of ten plates included in my Kindle Delphi Classics edition of Dream Days.

The Man In The Moon watches as the children say good bye to a few of their old toys.
 

 

 

I finished up the month with a detective story by Anna Katherine Green.  XYZ--A Detective Story is a very readable novella about a detective hunting down a gang of counterfeiters, but inadvertently getting mixed up in another crime instead.  From 1883, the story involves a father estranged from one of his sons, and the efforts the other brother and a sister make to reunite the family.  When the father is murdered, however, the detective,thanks to several mix ups and misunderstandings, is right on the scene, and it doesn't take him long to collar the criminal.  Easy to read and quite a fun story.

 

Mapman Mike 

 

 

 

August Reading Summary

 I was slowed down in the middle of the month by some medical issues, taking a very long time to read the Dunsany novel discussed below.  But at least the first five novels, all related to my Avon/Equinox SF Rediscovery authors, went by quickly.  Let us begin, as usual, with Robert Silverberg.

His next crime novel to be recently republished is called Blood on the Mink, first published in Trapped Magazine, 1959.  Besides the main short novel, there are also two shorter tales.  The author gives a modern afterword to his stories.  The plot has to do with a federal agent taking the identity of a criminal, and trying to stop the flow of counterfeit cash coming out of Philadelphia.  There is a lot of tension and a lot of plot thickening in this decent story of underworld crime and violence, which includes a few dames and lots of shooting.  It is a short novel, and I easily read it over the course of a day.  There is some humour regarding night life in Philly.  Worth a read for pulp crime fiction fans.  It would make a decent noir film, even today.  Also included were:

Dangerous Doll, a story from 1960, also to do with counterfeit money.  A Chicago hoodlum is to deliver some plates, but things go wrong when he is tested by the syndicate.  He sells them down the river the first chance he gets, but afterwards he realizes that he is out of chances.

One Night of Violence is from 1959.  An innocent Wisconsin furnace salesman involves himself in an altercation in the motel room next to his, and soon regrets his interference.  It leads to a shootout between two Chicago gangs in the motel and parking lot.  A lively story!

 

Cover art by Michael Koelsch.  I read the Kindle edition. 

 

In A Fortune For Kregen, we have arrived at the 21st book of the Dray Prescott series, one in which Bulmer's imagination continues to impress readers.  Things take yet another different turn in this novel from 1979.  At first it seems like the same old thing, as Dray once again is captured and becomes a slave.  But soon things develop, and the adventure we read about could easily be transferred to a Lara Croft Tomb Raider game.  Dray is a slave in a large expedition that heads to a vast underground burial site, protected by traps and wizardry, including monsters, ghouls, walls that close in, and even stinging insects.  Most people are out for loot from the burial tombs.  The underground caverns have grown vast over the centuries, and the traps more diabolical and dangerous.  Dray just wants to get out, alive if possible.  Though never quite up to the sword and sorcery standards of Fritz Leiber, Bulmer has created a world filled with excitement, adventure, and danger.  That includes wizardry, which takes a front seat in this story.  A fun read, and quite different from most of the other entries in this enticing series.

 

The fifth book of E C Tubb's Cap Kennedy series (he is a secret agent for Earth) is called Jewel of Jarhen, dates from 1974, and is a brief 111 pages.  It features a good opening chapter, as the cruel leader of a medieval-type world is killed while on a hunt, and his more rational younger brother has to take over.  The title jewel itself is quite intriguing, and forms the central plot line of the story, nicely mixing science with sorcery.  Cap and his boys are charged with a diplomatic mission, even though they are warriors rather than diplomats.  This puts a different spin on the story as well.  Science and magic and superstition meet on the planet Jarhen, as three civilizations compete for the right to trade with the backward planet and help it along its course of growth.  When the previous Earth diplomat is found drowned in his bed, far from any water, Cap is called in.  Good thing Cap can swim.  How did someone drown when they weren't near water?  Read this fun pulp adventure story to find out.

Barry Malzberg's (writing as Mike Barry) Peruvian Nightmare is from 1974 and is 137 pages long.  The story picks up directly after #6 in this series, about a lone wolf out to exterminate the North American drug trade after his girlfriend was killed by an overdose.  Burt Wulf lands in Peru, where he is trapped in a large hotel.  The bad guy from book 6, Calabrese, just wanted Wulf out of the country and out of his hair, but realizes too late that he should have had him killed instead.  Wulf is helped out by the hotel owner, who has a little job for him, and who promises to get him out of the country at the same time.  Book 7 includes a narrative recap of many of the events that happened in earlier books, but finally gives us some details about his relationship with his deceased girlfriend.  The book spends a lot of time inside Wulf's head, and the on-going killings, still a goodly number of them, seem to take a backseat to the man's introspective life.  In Peru Wulf takes a bus to Cuzco, where his bus is ambushed by Calabrese's men.  He is ambushed again at the climax of the novel, on a narrow ledge along a high mountain trail.  The death of two horses in this scene is very unpleasant, and is treated in a thoughtless and mostly carefree way.  Kill all the bad people that you want, but leave the animals alone, svp.  We are now halfway through the series, and so far Malzberg is able to make each story not only different, but interesting and mostly fun to read.  Let's hope that Wulf succeeds in eliminating the drug trade, and that in 2024 there will not be anymore overdose deaths (add heavy sarcasm to preceding statement).

 

Lastly from SF writers comes James Blish's More Issues At Hand.  Blish's second group of essays dates from the late 1950s to 1970.  There is more focus here on single novels, rather than shorter stories.  I find myself disagreeing with Blish much of the time, though he speaks many truths and bursts many bubbles.  He seems, to put it bluntly, to be an old fogey.  I do not blame him for trying to raise the standard of SF literature, and for blasting poor writing.  He blames writers, editors, and readers for the problems.   Why does some real drivel get published, and why does some of it even win coveted awards?  Well, Mr. Blish, the universe is filled with mysteries, many of which will never get solved.  Why do voters vote for criminal and psychotic politicians?  Why do people eat tons of junk food every day?  Why do hideous billboards appear on highways that have beautiful natural scenery?  Why do so many women marry male crumb bums?  I could go on.  There isn't much that Blish can do about it, except insult writers and make enemies of them, which he seems to have done rather well.  Among his other incisions, he tears apart the British New Wave SF writers, often with very prescient comments.  I agree with much of what he says here, but what's done is done.  He loves SF literature, but never once mentions the many horrible SF movies that helped lower the bar even further for writers.  For most people, SF means monsters, aliens, and flying saucers, all threatening our existence (are you listening, Dr. Who?) instead of well plotted stories about characters dealing with some form of science problem.  He blames SF writers for trying out new forms, ones which have been prevalent in regular literature for decades.  Since many writers never come to terms with Joyce's writing, nor even attempt to, why belittle SF writers when they try something new in the genre that has never before been done here?  Even failures have their value, providing that the writer and others can learn something from them.  Sometimes he swill rip apart a story without even saying why, though most of the time he gives his reasons for disliking a book.  While some may boil and fume at Blish's criticism, at the time he was only one of two writers even doing such a thing.  Overall, like the first book, this one is well worth reading for SF fans, especially if well read in others areas of literature.  Highly recommended. (The second SF writer to turn critic was Damon Knight--I have seen purchased his book of such from Kindle).

Now comes the free reading period of the month, when nearly anything can turn up.  First up was Curse of the Wise Woman by Lord Dunsany, from 1933.  This is a very special book only to those who have known a piece of land well, and been changed and formed by it.  The Sudbury landscape where I grew up is now completely changed, though for the better.  Still, I cannot return here and see what I saw growing up.  The bare rocks have now sprouted forests, and Sudbury is now green instead of black.  Lake Penage, where our summer camp was located, probably shaped me as a person just as much.  Though the landscape remains much the same, since we sold the camp I can never go back.  My third major influence from the land was New Mexico, with deserts and alpine mountains in heaping quantities.  Much of it remains unchanged, and I am free to visit whenever I can.  Those three landscapes--early Sudbury, Penage, and certain parts of New Mexico will always be with me, even if I cannot always be with them (the former, never again).  Anyone with similar experiences will understand Dunsany's book, and his attempt to show one young man's connection to a vast Irish bog that is about to undergo transforming development from an English peat company.  All that stands in their way is an Irish witch.  This is a story with deep, deep roots in the land, and despite the person being a 'sportsman', the message still comes across loud and clear.  Will the witch be able to save the bog from developers, or will it be lost for all time.  It would be a spoiler to tell, but the ending and the story isn't was this book is about--it's about the land.  A masterpiece.

A book with very special powers to enchant the reader. 

 

T. S. Eliot's Poems 1920 contains 12 poems written up to that year.  Like most Eliot poetry, the surface seems easy to read, but understanding the inner meaning of words and phrases is beyond most casual readers, including this one.  To make matters more difficult, 4 of the poems are entirely in French!  What is a reader to do?  In my case, Genius.com came to the rescue.  This site not only will translate back to English, but will carefully annotate and explain the poem, often line by line.  I found it invaluable in understanding the meaning and relevance of the poem.  Two favourite poems for this reader were the incomparable "Hippopotamus", where a hippo's life is compared to that of the Church.  Biting satire at its finest, not to mention quite funny.  The other is "Dans le Restaurant", one of the French poems.  Chilling and somewhat mystifying.  The poem ends with an early version of Death By Water (written for a good friend killed in the Gallipoli fiasco.

Next came three novellas by Gogol, contained in a volume entitle Arabesques, from 1935.  The first is called The Portrait, and is a lesson for writers in how to tell a good story.  It is a supernatural tale, but one that could also be explained in more rational ways.  In two parts, the first part tells how the purchase of a portrait in a junk shop alters the life of a young artist, in mostly negative ways.  In the 2nd part we learn about the artist who painted the portrait, and the man depicted in the picture.  Though not a hair raising tale and not likely to appeal to fans of Stephen King, it is an extremely well crafted story.  All the information required for readers is eventually given out in Part 2, and after experiencing Part 1, we can make our own judgment of whether or not "the devil' was involved.  An excellent read.

Nevsky Prospekt was next.  The exposition is dedicated to detailing the life of the famous street in St. Petersburg from dawn to dawn.  Then the author begins to tell his story, which is actually two stories.  Two young men, one an artist and one a lieutenant each follow a different beautiful woman they encounter on the boulevard.  The two stories and their outcomes are very different, the second perhaps more unexpected than the first.  These are the kinds of stories that could have produced an entire volume unto themselves based around that street, and perhaps Gogol had such an idea in mind.  But the second story ends so abruptly that it seems as if he tired of the idea and wanted to move on.  Not nearly as satisfying as the first story.

Third and finally came Diary of a Madman.  Some people might actually read this thinking that it is a comedy.  Though not exactly a case study for madness, it does get the idea across of how delusions, often of grandeur, accompany some forms of madness, as well as auditory hallucinations.  The wretched clerk in the story is pretty far gone before the story proceeds very far.  The most entertaining part of the story for this reader was the dialogue and letters between two lap dogs.  But the story becomes more and more horrifying as it proceeds.  Definitely a unique story for its time.  In the present, the streets are where many schizophrenic people end up.  Back then it was in an institution, where treatment was so often brutal and inhuman.

 

Anna Katherine Green's The Sword of Damocles is her third novel and is from 1881.  It is an epic tale, well planned, and divided into five books.  The fun of reading books about love, courtship, and honour from the 1800s is to undertake it like an expedition in archaeology.  What was it like back then for middle and upper class people to get married?  What was expected of the man?  Was it all up to the father of the bride?  All these questions and more will be answered when a book such as this is read.  Besides the love interest of two couples, there is a mystery or two to be solved, including the mysterious reason for Mr. Sylvester's clouded brow.  There is also a type of bank robbery, which casts doubt on the character of one of the young suitors.  Though it is a long novel, it is an easy read.  Occasionally the story itself is interrupted while one of the characters relates a background story.  One of the interesting things about the book, which proves its careful planning, is that virtually every character one meets has a crucial role to play, sometimes much alter in the story.  Just what is the sword that figuratively hangs over the head of Mr. Sylvester?  Nothing much, by today's criminal and moral standards.  But back then it was enough to ruin a man's reputation, and cause him to lose the woman he loves.  Overall it is quite a good novel, and well suited for adaptation to a TV series.

We are watching a crime and mystery literature course on The Great Courses.  This is a very thorough investigation of the genre, beginning with its creator Edgar Allen Poe, through much of Conan Doyle's creation, Sherlock Holmes, delving deeply into Agatha Christie's contributions, continuing on through the American hard boiled detective years of the 1930s, right up to contemporary writers.  One of the episodes spent a lot of time discussing dime novel detectives.  These stories sprang up in the 1800s between the time of Poe's three detective stories and those of Conan Doyle.  One of the most prolific writers of that time, and one which had a huge influence on later detective fiction, went under the by-line of The Old Sleuth, AKA Harlan Page Halsey.  He wrote hundreds of dime novel mysteries back in the 1880s.  I read #12, called The Twin Detectives, or The Missing Heiress, from August 1885.  Written well before Conan Doyle's Holmes stories, I was surprised how many little connections there were between the two.  Doyle was obviously a fan of dime novel detective stories before he set out on his own enterprise.  The dime novels originate in the US, and it is interesting to note that the first Holmes and Watson novel takes place there.  In this story, the detective has to find a missing man and the person to whom he left a fortune.  He has very little to go on, and we follow this brilliant man from step to step as he pieces the puzzle together, one step at a time.  There is considerable humour in the story, as well as tragedy and sadness.  His method of extracting information from people is one similar to one that Holmes uses, and at one point in the story, after telling his client how he ingeniously figured out one part of the puzzle, the client replies that he guesses that being a detective isn't so difficult after all.  Doyle used this quite often in the Holmes stories, with Watson claiming that solving the puzzle was rather easy, after the fact.  I have six more of these short novels on hand, and will likely get through them over the next few months.

Finally came the 17th novel in the Doc Savage series, called The Thousand-Headed Man.  From July 1934, it was written by Lester Dent, a prolific author who wrote over 159 novels.  The book cover gives the house name of Kenneth Robeson as the writer.  When I read these books as a young teen, I was completely unaware of any racism in the stories.  Doc went after bad guys (or they went after him), and they battled it out with guns and wits until Doc finally got the upper hand.  This book has an Oriental bad guy, and some of the worst racism I have ever come across fills the pages.  The dialogue consists of the Chinese men speaking in that horrendous English that writers often used back in the day, and it is truly cringe worthy.  One fun part of the book is that the early part takes place in London, with Doc arriving on the scene to awaiting crowds at Croydon Airfield.  Once the story takes off, literally, and Doc and his comrades fly to Indochina, Dent is at his pulp writing best.  Into the jungle we go, finding lost and isolated pagoda temples and, finally, a vast abandoned city.  The city holds a great mystery, and even Doc is captured and taken prisoner.  But not for long.  Escape for him and the people he has come to rescue seems impossible.  Can he do it?  Dent has a good eye for detail, and after allowing the creation of numerous mystical-seeming events, explains everything by the end.  Except for the racist attitudes to Orientals, the adventure itself is quite a good one.  This reader is a sucker for lost jungle cities and the secrets they hold.

Original 1934 publication.  Cover by Walter B. Baumhofer. 

 

Mapman Mike

 

June Reading Summary

 Besides the usual 8 books by my remaining Avon/Equinox series writers, I managed to read 4 others, and parts of four others.  I am taking my time reading 4 books over many months, including one on American paintings in the DIA, the Beethoven biography by Swafford, a book of folk tales, and a coffee table book on great train journeys of the world.  Those will be wrapped up eventually, but I am in no hurry.

My monthly reading always begins with Robert Silverberg.  This time it was the epic Lord of Darkness, from 1983.  At 612 pages, it is one of the longest novels by the 24 Avon/Equinox authors I have come across.  Silverberg divides the story into 5 books.  Essentially it is the true story of Andrew Battell, from Leigh in England.  The action takes places in the latter part of the 16th C and the early part of the 17th.  Silverberg is a renowned history writer, where I first encountered him as a youth.  While the historical details of Battell's surrealistic life are scant, Silverberg fills in the narrative skillfully and with great attention to historical detail.  If proof is needed that truth is stranger than fiction, look no farther than the life led by Battell.  Stranded in South America on his first voyage abroad, he is enslaved by the Portuguese and eventually brought to Angola, in Africa.  Here the adventures truly begin, and never stop.  While Silverberg invents details such as a family for Battell, for the most part his story jives with the facts (available on the internet in full).  This is a tale of darkness and suffering, and a harrowing account of  Portuguese rule at the time.  If this were pure fiction, no reader would believe it remotely possible that such events ever happened.  And even if only 1/3 of the things told in this tale did actually happen, and the rest never did, then Battell still would have led the most remarkable life one could ever imagine.  Highly recommended.

For Love of Evil is the 6th book in Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series.  Published in 1988, this is one of the best of the series, if not the best so far.  What I do like about the series is how Anthony relates some of the same events from different perspectives.  Book Six concerns the doings of Satan, and while he has been featured in each of the first five books, he finally gets to tell his own story here, and we see his side of things for the first time.  The action starts in the late 12th C, and is quite brutal.  The opening scene of a frightened village girl entering the hut of a sorcerer is one of the best openings to a fantasy novel I have ever read.  At some point I asked myself where this medieval tale, good as it was, was going.  Knowing Anthony's writing as well as I do, I was confident it would all tie in.  And it does, quite beautifully.  We meet many old characters, and a few newer ones.  I seriously don't know how Anthony can keep track of all this without continually rereading the earlier volumes.  He seems to write a book from many different series each year, so how he can keep them all straight in his mind is really something.  A winner!

The Stainless Steel Rat Joins the Circus, Harrison's novel from 1999, is another very fun entry in the beloved series.  What is special about this one is that he is aging, and beginning to think that the insane and dangerous life he leads, with his beautiful and equally deadly wife, Angeline, is getting to be a bit much.  Retirement seems like the thing to do, as soon as he finishes up this adventure.  He does briefly join the circus as a magician, as he tries to find out who is committing a series of bank robberies on various planets.  The whole family gets in on this one, with their twin boys taking up much more of the slack than in previous adventures.  Only one more book in the series remains to be read.  Then I shall have to start them over.

I am hooked on Kenneth Bulmer's late 18th C early 19th C Fox series.  Number 4 is called Siege, and is a complete historical look at the great battle of Aden, Arabs and British against the ground forces and navy of Napoleon.  We get a first hand view of the action and intrigue from the perspective of Mr. Fox, an officer in the British navy.  He and his men happen to become embroiled in the great siege, though Bulmer follows all details of the events very closely to what actually happened.  A great read, as I continue to learn some obscure history from these authors.

Ironhead, a collection of stories by E C Tubb from the 1950s, was first published in 2018 for Kindle.  There are five stories, the best of which is "Iron Head", about a lowly man who looks after cattle.  40 pages later he is the top leader of the joint planets.  An amusing story with a great last line, this could have taken up a series of four or five huge books by lesser writers (I think of the endless prequels and sequels to Dune written by Herbert's kin).  No need, since someone like Tubb can say it all in a novelette!  "Memories Are Important"--What would happen if a person lost all access and connection to every one of his/her memories?  If they only lived in the moment, in the "now".  A fun but scary question, which is answered by Tubb in this engaging what-if story.  It also has a very unique answer to the "escape from the locked room" trope used by so many mystery story writers.  Two of the other three stories are also of high quality and fun to read.

Jack Williamson hits yet another home run with Terraforming Earth, a SF novel from 2001 that is written on a scale obviously influenced by Olaf Stapledon.  This is a truly great SF novel, one that should be read by all fans of the very best of the older stuff.  The action takes place on a moon base, and on Earth, but through many generations and centuries.  Divided into 5 sections, it was originally published that way.  Highly recommended, and easy to read.

Cover of the month, by Stephan Martiniere.

Michael Moorcock's The Warlord of the Air was originally written in 1971, but reworked for this 1993 edition, which contains 3 stories starring Oswald Bastable (a minor character from a story by E Nesbit).  In this story, he carried into the future, an alternate 1973 in which steam power and airships still reign supreme, and the world ha been without war for nearly a century.  However, there is a catch; colonialism is still going strong, and native inhabitants are still being subdued and ruled by Britain and the other colonial powers.  An interesting look at an alternate future, one that Bastable finds quite baffling.  A good story, and I am looking forward the other two.

The first segment of my reading month concluded with Barry Malzberg's The Cross of Fire, one of his finest novels.  From 1982 we watch as Harold Thwaite of Denmark is undergoing an administered hypnotic procedure, in which he is able to step into the shoes (sandals) of historic religious figures.  The year is 2219.  The problem with Harold is that he has a martyr complex, and when it is time to come out of his trances it becomes more and more difficult.  Eventually he refuses to come out, wishing to remain, be crucified, and to rise again a few days later.  Besides scenes of Jesus with the apostles, and Jesus with Mary Magdalene, and Jesus with Lazarus, we also have Harold as God, disputing and wrestling with Satan.  In addition there are scenes with Moses and Aaron, including the parting of the Red Sea, scenes with the suffering of Job, scenes of his being the Lubavitcher Rabbi (an old testament judge), and various conversations with his wife, Edna, back in real time.  The book is totally fascinating, and of course very sacrilegious.  It is often quite funny, as we get a future man's version of some of the great men of the Bible.  But as the book goes on, and it becomes more and more obvious that Harold is deluding himself into believing everything that happens to him, I begin to get reminded of present day fanatics.  Not so much the religious ones, but more like the ones who deny certain events every happened, such as the Sandy Hook massacre, or Trump's inability to come to terms with his election loss.  to him, the only way he could ever lose is if the other side cheated.  Reality holds no hope for such people, and Harold is similarly doomed.  This is one of Malzberg's finest books, and would pair nicely with a reading of Moorcock's Behold The Man, though they have very little in common.  Recommended.

I read four books off the shelf last month, though really only one came from a real shelf.  The rest came from my Kindle shelf, which is now thousands of books.  Tony Hillerman's Landscape is a work of non-fiction, pairing each of Tony's Navajo mystery novels with photographs of where the action takes place.  The book was begun during Tony's later years, but he died long before it was completed.  His daughter Anne took up the torch.  She writes a long intro, as well as gives a description of each of the novels, showing the original cover.  Tony provides his thoughts on each volume.  The photos are stunning, and the book is a must for fans of Hillerman.  Since his death, Anne is now writing similar mysteries, but focusing more on a female Navajo officer, one who played smaller roles in her father's books.

Next, I had the great pleasure of reading Lord Dunsany's 2nd book of tales featuring Jorkens, called Jorkens Remembers Africa, from 1934.  These 21 tales are among the most imaginative and humorous tales of fiction and fantasy ever written, and are often ignored by Dunsany fans.  I never had access to them before, but I now have all of Dunsany's writing on Kindle, thanks to Delphi publishing.  While all the stories are fun, particularly notable are the following: The Lost Romance; The Escape From The Valley; Ozymandias (the best!!!); In The Garden of Memories.  A real treasure chest of short tales of the imagination of a genius.

 

The cover to my Kindle version of stories, lasting 300 pages.  

The unicorn story is one of the best! 

Next came the first novel by Anna Katherine Green, a mystery writer who inspired Doyle and many others, including Agatha Christie.  The Leavenworth Case is from 1878, and while not a truly great detective novel, it was one of the earliest published by a woman.  Though American and set in New York and upstate, it is a thoroughly Victorian novel.  As soon as the reader realizes that neither of two beautiful women, cousins, could possibly have been the murderer, the rest is academic.  Even though all evidence points to one of the women especially, it just was not fitting nor acceptable for a woman to commit such a crime.  Besides the original murder that gets the whole case going, there is only one other murder, something for which I was grateful.  Too many contemporary novels of this type never know when to stop with the killings.  I liked the police inspector, who will feature in other novels by Green.  In an odd twist, he has rheumatism quite badly.  Well worth a read for mystery fans who want to find the source of such things.

Near the end of a month, if I only have a day or two remaining before I need to restart my Avon/Equinox, I turn to L Frank Baum.  I read his 4th Oz book, from 1908.  Called Dorothy and The Wizard In Oz, it begins with an earthquake, and Dorothy, Zeb (a young boy), her kitten, and an old horse, falling into a crack and ending up in a strange country of plant people.  This is yet another amazing adventure, brought into being by the author because of all the children who kept writing to him for more more more.  Luckily for all of us, he complied. The book is great fun!

Cover and interior art by John R Neill. 

 

Mapman Mike