Otto Penzler

"The Golden Snare," by Farnham Bishop and Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (1918): 8.75
- would be quite a pleasant surprise if all these prewar adventure stories were told with this much economy, momentum, and vigor. The question then: how representative is this? I'm gonna guess pretty representative in terms of gender conventions, sexualization, and ethnic stereotyping/racialization, as in the unnecessary initial sensualization of Fulvia, the expectation of audience surprise at her aggression and show more competence, and the de rigeur assignment of national tropes (such as the Italians swarthiness and the Normans "keen mind," even though he's the most evil. Nonetheless, all of this is quite skillfully told and likely captures something truly inimitable in its presentation, which is by no means inextricable from the very "problematic" elements pervasive at the same time.

"The Devil in Iron," by Robert E. Howard (1934): 9.25
- So das Abenteuerbuch gewinnt? Of all the genres, and of all my genre knowledge coming into this stupid short story reading frenzy, ‘adventure’ -- or whatever I imagined that to be -- stories had to have the worst reputation in my mind. At least, my expectations of what they’d entail had to be the lowest, the meanest. And, in many ways, that is right. This Conan story here -- in which, in an admirably convoluted plot, an ancient god is awoken on an island with ancient ruins, at the same time that a conniving lord of a decadent people tries to trap Conan there, lured by the nubile suppleness of a “white,” as he makes sure to tell us over and over, princess. What ensues, then, is fairly breakneck action in which Conan rescues her, defeats the lord, and sends the godthing back to the Abyss with the help of a magic dagger -- exemplifies tonedeaf prewar chauvinism, racism, sexism, gender essentialism, and ingrained imperialism about as much as I’d expect: the denigration of the dark-skinned races, the constant valorization of whiteness as purity and worthiness and civilization, the forever swooning maidens, the explicit denunciation of effeminate luxuriated (Muslim) civilizations, the sexaul assault on unwilling women turning into sincere lust and acceptance on the part of those same women, among others. All of that, however, is quite digestible, given one’s previous reckoning with this aspect of the history of literature and the ability to compartmentalize one’s appreciation and recognition of anachronistic deficit smoothly enough. Not that such a reckoning should be done by all; it’s enough of a limb to stand on to even say that it can be done. That done, then, all the quite wonderful things about this text then start to become much more apparent. And this is not, on my part, I can venture to say, simply a general approving response to certain genre masters of many years ago. Holmes and Doyle left me quite cold, without a doubt. The same goes for Asimov and others. No, instead, it is something in the story itself, and maybe something more common to this kind of story than others. There’s the almost effortless mixture of so many disparate genre elements in one story -- swords and sandals; epic fantasy; horror; mythology -- blended so well, actually, that unless you think about it, it does really seem just like one large fantasy story by itself. And while Howard is by no means not a purple prose-stylist -- and the plotting sometimes strikes one as especially slapdash, esp. here that complete, almost unexplained info drop where Conan/Us learn the whole backstory of the god and the city randomly while standing in the hall, a complete perspectival narrative voice shift that is not really repeated elsewhere in the story -- there is an undeniable momentum in the tale, as a well as a fluidity of description of both character and scene that I rarely comprehend otherwise. For example, the whole big middle setpiece, in which Conan is being chased through the ancient ruins of the palace, going room to room, and seeing new things in each. Usually, I only half follow along the general description of interior and placement and action, but here I was able to understand all of these things, which was especially effective thereafter, as when the beast was beating against the massive steel door, ever so slowly breaking it open with Conan and Olivia inside. Altogether, if, again, we’re transporting that film crit credo to lit here -- how well does the story succeed at what it wants to do? -- then I can’t help but give this the score I did.

"The Mighty Manslayer," by Harold Lamb (1918): 8.5
- Das Abenteuer Buch continues its unexpected quality streak. The tone, themes, and preoccupations, truly, vary little between the 'adventure' examples I've so far been given, but it's hard to complain much when each remains as stridently wide-scoped, plains-spanning, kookily fun, and unironically bombastic as the other. Key differences: length and supernatural elements--the former not of much note beside the see-sawing tax it puts on the reader (first, bemoaning the length, and then, subsequently, getting understandably sucked in because of the mechanical way in which additional length conditions you in spite of yourself), and the latter a bit more interesting. The stories previously dealt quite unambiguously with supernatural elements. They were worked without kink into both the narrative and mythos of the worlds being described. Here, Lamb plays into the allure of the supernatural, but always pulls back at the last minute, having his speculative cake and eating the realism too (as in: the thought that a mythical beast was preying up Kerula, but actually one of Fogan's henchmen; the undead, smokemonster defenders of Genghis Khan's tomb being actually the deadly sulfur from a neighboring active volcano, etc.). The story: quiet westerner takes up with shifty merchant to find Khan's treasure-laden tomb, gets crossed and double-crossed, with many more hijinks to ensue. What makes up for the occasional slack, however -- in terms of keeping this solidly in the Adventure/Epic camp -- was the historical scope. Or, to put it more bluntly, the Orientalist tropes that would have been attractive to turn-of-the-century adv. readers, who saw grandeur in tales of the East (replete, obviously, with all the attendant racist, sexist, and literary tropes common to all such contemporary stories: i.e. the cruelty of eastern despots, the taciturn nobility of the most caucasian among them, the straightforward racializing descriptors and language; the deviant and voracious sexual proclivities of the groups [Kerula's sexual vulnerability as a slave, and her placement within the Chinese emperor's harem; the ironic valorizing -- from the inevitably settled, relatively cosmopolitan writer -- of the nomadic over the city dweller)]. show less

I love Christmas-themed mysteries so I was excited to be granted access to the audiobook Christmas Crimes at the Mysterious Bookshop by Netgalley. The book is edited by Otto Penzler and contains twelve short tales set in the Mysterious Bookshop, a real bookstore that I now really really want to visit someday. But, that aside, the stories are written by various authors, some well-known like Jeffrey Deavers as well as many authors I was unfamiliar with previously like David Gordon but whose show more work I will definitely be checking out in the future. If I had to choose a favourite tale, I’d probably say A Christmas Puzzle by Ragnar Jonasson but, honestly, I enjoyed them all. The stories cover many subgenres from noir to cozy so there’s something here for pretty much every mystery fan. The book is narrated by Jennifer Pickens and Graham Rowat, both of whom do an excellent job of expressing the nature of the stories from the dark and suspenseful like Jeffrey Deaver’s A Christmas Party to the humour of Here We Come A-Wassailing by Thomas Perry. A fun group of stories to help get you into, well, maybe not the spirit of the season per se but, shall we say, the mystery of it.

Thanks to Netgalley and HighBridge Audio for the opportunity to listen to this audiobook is exchange for an honest review show less

There’s a certain satisfaction to a good Locked Room mystery. From the original example of Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841 which ushered in the modern era of the detective story to the examples contained in this book which play with the basic concepts of a room which it would either be impossible to escape or impossible for the murderer to have entered -- even up to playing with the concept of “room” itself – working it out ahead of the detective has almost always been show more the point. Therefore, it was a delight to read through these and see the artform well executed and still be able to beat them to the punch at least a few times. show less

The biggest, the boldest, the most comprehensive collection of Pulp writing ever assembled. Weighing in at over a thousand pages, containing over forty-seven stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train—a bullet couldn’t pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre show more and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes; sultry dames whose looks are as lethal as a dagger to the chest; and gin-soaked hideouts where conversations are just preludes to murder. This is crime fiction at its gritty best. Including: • Three stories by Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Dashiell Hammett.• Complete novels from Carroll John Daly, the man who invented the hard-boiled detective, and Fredrick Nebel,one of the masters of the form.• A never before published Dashiell Hammett story.• Every other major pulp writer of the time, including Paul Cain, Steve Fisher, James M. Cain, Horace McCoy, and manymany more of whom you’ve probably never heard.• Three deadly sections–The Crimefighters, The Villains, and Dames–with three unstoppable introductions by Harlan Coben,Harlan Ellison, and Laura Lippman Featuring: • Plenty of reasons for murder, all of them good.• A kid so smart–he’ll die of it.• A soft-hearted loan shark’s legman learning–the hard way–never to buy a strange blonde a hamburger.• The uncanny “Moon Man” and his mad-money victims. show less