WHAT'S NEW IN JANUARY 2010?



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A TALE ABOUT A TIGER, by S. J. Rozan

A Tale about a Tiger I may be one of the few people who read the short stories by S. J. Rozan in the earliest issues of P. I. Magazine. (In the earliest days, that magazine ran private eye short stories and a list of private eye novels, while now it only runs articles on real-life private investigators for real-life pee-eyes.) Shira is also the only foreign writer that visited me in Kanazawa when I lived there in 2003. (Roger Simon came to Kanazawa in 2005 and met me there but I had moved to Takarazuka and had to go meet him and his family there. So it didn't count.) Anyway, we, Shira and I, had a good time in Kanazawa. She visited a fire station and got a special T-shirt there.

Most of her novels and stories feature two shamuses: Lydia Chin and Bill Smith. In some of them Lydia is a main character and Bill a supporting one, and in the others they reverse the roles. A TALE ABOUT A TIGER AND OTHER MYSTERIOUS EVENTS (Crippen & Landru, 2009) is her first short story collection with 9 short stories as follows:

"Film at Eleven," featuring Lydia with Bill's support, first published in DEADLY ALLIES 2 (Doubleday, 1994; edited by robert J. Randisi and Susan Dunlap)
"Hoops," featuring Bill, first published in the January 1996 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
"Seeing the Moon," first published in ON A RAVEN'S WING (Harper, 2009; edited by Stuart M. Kaminsky)
"Passline," first published in MURDER IN VEGAS (Forge Books, 2005; edited by Michael Connelly)
"Night Court," first published in THE PROSECUTION RESTS (Little Brown/Back Bay Books, 2009; edited by Linda Fairstein)
"Subway," featuring Lydia, first published in VENGEANCE IS HERS (Signet, 1997; edited by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins)
"A Tale about a Tiger," featuring Lydia with Bill's support, first recorded in SOUNDS LIKE MURDER, Vol. 4 (Random House Audio, 1998) and first published in CRIMINAL RECORDS (Orion, 2000; edited by Otto Penzler)
"Childhood," featuirng Bill, first e-published by MightyWords (2001), and first published in THE WORLD'S FINEST MYSTERY & CRIME STORIES: SECOND ANNUAL COLLECTION (Forge Books, 2001; edited by Ed Gorman)
"Double-Crossing Delancey," an Edgar winner, featuring Lydia, first published in MYSTERY STREET (Signet, 2001; edited by Robert J. Randisi)

Lydia Chin is a Chinese-American lady gumshoe good at martial arts, and Bill Smith is a middle-aged piano-playing WASP shamus. Incidentally, a checklist of S. J. Rozan's mystery writings is very helpful. She won two Shamus awards for CONCOURSE (St. Martin's, 1995) and REFLECTING THE SKY (St. Martin's, 2001) and two Edgar awards for WINTER AND NIGHT (St., Martin's, 2002) and "Double-Crossing Delancey," as well as one Falcon Award from the Japanese Maltese Falcon Society for WINTER AND NIGHT. The publishing of A TALE ABOUT A TIGER in September 2009 is almost timely because the year 2010 is a year of the tiger. (Well, I finally got my copy in January 2010.) Her forthcoming book is THE DARK END OF THE STREET from Bloomsbury she co-edits with Jonathan Santlofer.

This collection comes in two editions: the hardcover edition ($43) limited to 225 copies, and signed and numbered by S. J. Rozan; and the trade softcover edition ($17). Each limited hardcover copy contains a separately printed pamphlet containing her columns, "The Private Eye: An American Hero," first published in the Private Eye Writers of America newsletter, Reflections in a Private Eye (RIPE). Order from Crippen & Landru by e-mailing to info@crippenlandru.com, or by sending a letter to Crippen & Landru, Dept. G, P. O. Box 9315, Norfolk, Virginia 23505, USA. They honor Visa, MasterCard and Amex.

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THE MURDER IN THE STORK CLUB, by Vera Caspary

The Murder in the Stork Club Vera Caspary (1889-1987) is most famous as the author of LAURA (Houghton Miflin, 1943), which was made into the 1944 movie directed by Otto Preminger, but Caspary did not like Preminger's portrayal of Laura as "a hard, sexless career girl." She worked as a writer and editor for Dance Magazine and True Story among others in the 1920's, and wrote general novels, stage plays and screenplays including "A Letter to Three Wives" (1949) and "Les Girls" (1957). She also authored mystery novellas and novelettes, and THE MURDER IN THE STORK CLUB AND OTHER MYSTERIES (Crippen & Landru, 2009) contains 4 novellas and noveletts as follows:

"Stranger in the House," first published in the March 1943 issue of The American Magazine
"Sugar and Spice," first published in the December 1943 issue of The American Magazine
"The Murder in the Stork Club," first published in two parts in the November and December issues of Good Housekeeping, and later issued in book form by Black (publisher) in 1946
"Ruth," first published in the February 1968 issue of Good Housekeeping, and later issued in book form by Pocket Books in 1972

Editor A. B. Emrys's introduction entitled "Vera Caspary's Magazine Mysteries" is very informative. Caspary wrote her autobiography, THE SECRET OF GROWN-UPS (McGraw-Hill, 1979), and all of her novels are out of print now except LAURA and her second mystery novel BEDELIA (1945), both reissued by The Feminist Press in 2005.

This is the 29th in the Crippen & Landru "Lost Classics" series. There are two editions of this book: clothbound ($29) and trade softcover ($19). Order from Crippen & Landru by e-mailing to info@crippenlandru.com, or by sending a letter to Crippen & Landru, Dept. G, P. O. Box 9315, Norfolk, Virginia 23505, USA. They honor Visa, MasterCard and Amex.


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