Book Review: The Sculthorpe Murder

Book Review: The Sculthorpe Murder by Karen Charlton Disclaimer:  I received a Kindle download of this book as a Goodreads giveaway for the purpose of writing this review.  No other compensation was offered or requested. The year is 1810, and Bow Street Runner Detective Stephen Lavender has been called from his native London to Northamptonshire.… Continue reading Book Review: The Sculthorpe Murder

Book Review: Kaiju: Lords of the Earth

Book Review: Kaiju: Lords of the Earth edited by Essel Pratt Kaiju (“strange beast”) is primarily a subgenre of the monster movie that became codified in Japan.  They’re mostly gigantic monsters that are nigh-unstoppable by conventional armaments, and run around destroying cities or fighting other giant monsters.  The seeds of the story type were sown… Continue reading Book Review: Kaiju: Lords of the Earth

Magazine Review: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine July 2016

Magazine Review: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine July 2016 edited by Janet Hutchings Frederick Dannay, who along with Manfred B. Lee wrote the Ellery Queen mystery stories, was asked by Mercury Press to be the editor of a new magazine that would print a higher class of detective stories than the general run of pulps, with… Continue reading Magazine Review: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine July 2016

Comic Book Review: Essential Tomb of Dracula, Volume 2

Comic Book Review: Essential Tomb of Dracula, Volume 2 mostly written by Marv Wolfman and art by Gene Colan. When the Comics Code restrictions on horror were loosened in the 1970s, DC primarily went in for horror anthology comics, while Marvel Comics based entire series around horrific heroes and villains.  One of these was the… Continue reading Comic Book Review: Essential Tomb of Dracula, Volume 2

Book Review: One in Three Hundred

Book Review: One in Three Hundred by J.T. McIntosh Most of you will have run into some variant of the “Lifeboat Problem” at some point.  (In my youth, it was done with bomb shelters due to the strong possibility of atomic war.)  A disaster has occurred, and a large number of people are going to… Continue reading Book Review: One in Three Hundred

Book Review: The Queen of Zamba

Book Review: The Queen of Zamba by L. Sprague de Camp (Also published as Cosmic Manhunt) It started out as a normal missing person case.  Victor Hasselborg was hired to find runaway heiress Julnar Batruni.  Her trail is easy to pick up, as she used her own name to buy tickets off-planet with her lover, one Anthony… Continue reading Book Review: The Queen of Zamba

Book Review: The Inugami Clan

Book Review: The Inugami Clan by Seishi Yokomizo In a manor on the shores of Lake Nasu, an old man lies dying, surrounded by his kin.  But there is no sorrow for the passing of Sahei Inugami in their eyes, only greed for the vast fortune he will be leaving to his clan.  It seems… Continue reading Book Review: The Inugami Clan

Book Review: The Financial Expert

Book Review: The Financial Expert by R.K.  Narayan In the South Indian town of Malgudi, across from the Central Cooperative Land Mortgage Bank, there is a banyan tree under which sits Margayya, the financial expert.  Margayya (“the one who shows the way”) is an unofficial middleman who helps the unlettered villagers apply for small loans… Continue reading Book Review: The Financial Expert

Book Review: The Marsco Dissident

Book Review: The Marsco Dissident by James A. Zarzana It’s a Marsco world. Much has changed by the last years of the 21st Century.  The rot started to set in with the Abandonment Policy (euphemized as “Divestiture”) where countries with prosperous sections and not-so-prosperous bits split off the not-prosperous sectors as “another country now, not… Continue reading Book Review: The Marsco Dissident

Book Review: Fright

Book Review: Fright edited by Charles M. Collins The cover makes this book look like a generic product, but that’s a little deceiving.  It’s actually an anthology skewed towards the Gothic end of horror rather than the gory, emphasizing vocabulary-rich authors.  Most of the stories were rarely reprinted before this collection in 1963. We open… Continue reading Book Review: Fright