Book Review: The Last Séance

Book Review: The Last Séance by Agatha Christie Agatha Christie is best remembered for her tales of mystery and detection, but she didn’t confine herself to that field. She also wrote stories with elements of the supernatural, and this new volume collects twenty of them in one place, rather than in scattered anthologies. The title… Continue reading Book Review: The Last Séance

Movie Review: Diamonds Are Forever

Case and Bond play a crane game.

Movie Review: Diamonds Are Forever (1971) directed by Guy Hamilton We open with James Bond (Sean Connery) globetrotting in a search for his archenemy, Ernst Stavros Blofeld (Charles Gray), leader of the international crime syndicate SPECTRE. He quickly catches up to and kills two Blofelds, one of whom was a surgically-altered double for the real criminal.… Continue reading Movie Review: Diamonds Are Forever

Magazine Review: High Adventure #172: The Hell’s Angels Squad

Magazine Review: High Adventure #172: The Hell’s Angels Squad edited by John P. Gunnison This time around, the focus is on the French Foreign Legion stories of Warren Hastings Miller originally published in Blue Book magazine back in the late 1920s. As I’ve discussed before, tales of the Legion were a popular subgenre of pulp… Continue reading Magazine Review: High Adventure #172: The Hell’s Angels Squad

Magazine Review: The Phantom Detective September 1935

Magazine Review: The Phantom Detective September 1935 Quick recap: The Phantom is Richard Curtis Van Loan, a wealthy man-about-town. While he started fighting crime out of boredom and a chance to get thrills, he soon developed a burning hatred of crime and major criminals that allow him to carry on a crusade. A master of… Continue reading Magazine Review: The Phantom Detective September 1935

Magazine Review: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine June 1953

Magazine Review: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine June 1953 edited by Ellery Queen Since this has floated to the top of my TBR pile, let’s look at another vintage issue of this classic mystery magazine. The cover depicting an aerialist falling to presumed death after being stuck with a dart has nothing to do with any… Continue reading Magazine Review: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine June 1953

Book Review: The Last Victorians

Book Review: The Last Victorians by W. Sydney Robinson Much as we sometimes like to pretend otherwise, historical eras do not have clean breaks. Bits and pieces of the Roman Empire lasted well into the Middle Ages, most of us have met people who haven’t got the memo that it’s the Twenty-First Century now, and… Continue reading Book Review: The Last Victorians

Magazine Review: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine August 1949

Magazine Review: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine August 1949 edited by Ellery Queen It’s time for another issue of this venerable mystery magazine. The cover this time is uncredited, and does not directly match any of the stories in the issue. “Double Exposure” by Ben Hecht opens the issue with a tale of a psychiatrist who… Continue reading Magazine Review: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine August 1949

Book Review: Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters

Book Review: Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters edited by Tim Marquitz & N.X. Sharps Like many a Godzilla fan, I have a fondness for movies where gigantic monsters rampage across the landscape. The fandom has more or less adopted the Japanese term for such monsters, kaiju. While the big critters have been a staples of… Continue reading Book Review: Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters

Movie Review: Goldfinger

Bond flirts with Tilly Masterson.

Movie Review: Goldfinger (1964) directed by Guy Hamilton On his way back from a Caribbean sabotage mission, British agent James Bond (Sean Connery) stops over in Miami Beach. He’s met by his CIA contact Felix Leiter (Cec Linder) who passes on a mission from MI-6 boss M. Bond’s to do some surveillance of British citizen Auric… Continue reading Movie Review: Goldfinger

Book Review: The War of the Worlds

Book Review: The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells Early in the Twentieth Century, odd flashes of light are seen on the surface of the planet Mars. This phenomenon is highly interesting to scientists, but seems irrelevant to most people going about their lives on Earth. That is, until what is initially mistaken for… Continue reading Book Review: The War of the Worlds