#402: The Affair of the Bottled Deuce (1958) by Harry Stephen Keeler

June 21, 2018June 18, 2018 / JJ / 11 Comments

Emboldened by the experience of The Rynox Mystery (1930) by Philip MacDonald from last week — an author with whom I started poorly and have come to really enjoy — I turn to Harry Stephen Keeler. The only other Keeler I’ve read to date was…fine, and I’ve been admittedly reluctant to begin this despite its locked room murder being why I bought it in the first place. The superb introduction from Francis M. Nevins explains how and why this was unpublished in Keeler’s lifetime and only came into public being through Keelerite Fender Tucker’s Ramble House imprint in 2005. As you gather from my rating, I’m of the opinion the public would’ve coped perfectly fine without it.

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#93: The Tuesday Night Bloggers – America from the Outside: The Traveller’s Perspective in The Sharkskin Book (1941) by Harry Stephen Keeler

May 31, 2016May 29, 2016 / JJ / 12 Comments

This week, for my actual final post for the Tuesday Night Bloggers on the subject of travel (I was, er, premature in predicting the number of days in May last week…), I was going to look at another book entirely. But in reading The Sharkskin Book by Harry Stephen Keeler – chief loon of the sanatorium that is Ramble House – I was struck by something rather more nebulous that I’m going to try to explore here: the sense of dislocation one can experience when separated from familiar trappings.

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#92: Character v Plot

May 29, 2016June 15, 2025 / JJ / 37 Comments

So here’s a starting point that doesn’t belong on a blog about crime fiction between 1920 and 1959 with frequent diversions into apparent impossibilities: I freakin’ love Batman. The whole Bruce Wayne/Batman duality in almost any form is an absolute joy to me – I’m not going to geek out here over the many, many years I’ve spent reading the comics nor the sundry disappointments of the various cinematic fusterclucks (I’m looking daggers at you, Schumacher…Burton, you’re borderline), and shall instead make the following observation: the second I heard Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was announced, I’d practically bought my ticket on the fact of it being a new Batman incarnation.

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