[Book 99] Islands in the Sky by Arthur C. Clarke (1952)

The time is somewhere around 2050. Space enthusiast and aviation whiz Roy Malcolm, only 16 years old, has successfully ran the gauntlet of increasingly difficult questions to finally win the World Airways sponsored “Aviation Quiz Contest” on national television.

His prize? An all expense round trip to any part of the Earth of his choosing.

When asked where he would like to go, Roy tells the announcer in a firm voice (to World Airway’s vast dismay), “I want to go the Inner Station,” the station in question being a maintenance and refueling space-station in low space orbit…

I had last read Islands in the Sky, one in the classic Winston SF series, sometime around 1977. I had found an ex-libris hardcover copy (the ninth printing, March 1966) sometime this past year, and finally got around to re-reading it today. I was surprised just how much the book has stood up despite the passage of time (56 years!).

This is a hard SF travel story, detailing young Roy Malcolm’s trip to the Inner Station, and various adventures and educational excursions he has over the next few weeks. There are no space pirates or BEMS (well, two, of a sort) in this realistic depiction of the scientific hurdles we’ll face on our road to space, and not much of a plot (unless you consider how to manage in zero-gravity, space-suits, “broomsticks”, and how geostationary communication satellites work) but despite this lack (or perhaps because of it) the story holds up reasonably well even today.

While reading this book written by the late Sir Arthur C. Clarke who died just this past year in March, I was struck at just how few hard SF books are aimed at younger readers today that can be found in libraries and bookstores. When I was younger, I used to use the list of other Winston SF titles (reprinted on the back of each Winston book) to track down other SF works in this publishing series. Looking at the back cover of my copy, a few more Winston titles I recalled reading included The Ant Men, Attack From Atlantis, Moon of Mutiny, Rocket to Luna, Secret of the Ninth Planet, Stadium Beyond the Stars, The Star Seekers, Trouble on Titan, Vault of the Ages, and The Year When Stardust Fell (just to name a few).

::B:

[Book 75] The Men Who Explained Miracles by John Dickson Carr (1963)

Vintage collection of 6 short mystery stories and one novella written by one of the masters of the Golden Age of Detective fiction.

There are two stories about Colonel March of the Department of Queer Complaints (“William Wilson’s Racket” and “The Empty Flat”), two Dr. Fell stories (“The Incautious Burglar” and “Invisible Hands”), Sir Henry Merrivale puzzling out a sinister plot (in the novella “All in a Maze”), and two more throw-aways.

Not a bad mystery story collection, but not a great one, either. One crooked thumb up.

::B::

[Book 74] Graveyard Rats and Others by Robert E. Howard (2003 reprint collection)

While REH is best remembered for his famously iconic Conan the Barbarian stories, he wrote literally dozens of pulp stories in many other pulp genres, including Western, Adventure, Boxing, Weird Menace and Horror.

He also wrote several Howard-esque (no other word quite fits) detective stories that were published in such pulp magazines as Strange Detective Stories, Super Detective, and Thrilling Mystery back in 1934 and 1936, and this collection published by Wildside Press includes many of these grisly and grotesteque mystery short stories.

I had fun reading most of these stories.  The preface is pretty throwaway, ditto the public domain art cover.  Still, there’s a lot of power in these stories and I enjoyed reading most of all “Fangs of Gold” and “Names of the Black Book”, and I felt “Graveyard Rats” made me squirm more than a little.  “Black Talons” and “Black Wind Blowing” were the weakest. The stories include:

Black Talons: Professor Joe Brill, and Detective Buckley face crimson death in an ex-explorer’s lonely cottage.

Fangs of Gold: Steve Harrison, Private Eye, tracks down a killer and his ill gotten gains deep inside a Voodoo haunted swamp.

The Tomb’s Secret: Detective Brock Rollins puzzle’s out the secret why three millionaires are been killed for possession of their dead bodies!

Names in the Black Book: Has Erlik Khan, the dreaded and now dead Mongol “Lord of the Dead” cheated death and come back to life?  His ex minion, Joan La Tour, thinks so, and enlists the aid of Detective Steve Harrison and the Afghan assassin, Khoda Khan to save her life.

Graveyard Rats: Detective Steve Harrison didn’t bargain with grave-robbers or ghoulish rats when asked to intervene in a deadly hillbilly feud.

Black Wind Blowing: A reclusive and wealthy miser in ranch country makes poor but honest farmer Emmett Glanton a very strange offer; marry the miser’s beautiful niece and Glanton’s mortgage will be written off.

::B::

[Book 73] The Moon Tunnel by Jim Kelly (2005)

A team of archeologists working on a dig-site for an Anglo-Saxon burial area located beneath an old WWII POW internment camp stumble over a more recent collection of bones from an accidentally discovered tunnel in the earth.  These, from an corroded identity medal, appear to be the last remains of an Italian POW trapped in an escape or ‘moon’ tunnel.

An interesting footnote to a ho-hum local interest story, so reporter Philip Dryden thought, right on the scene of the discovery.  And then he noticed two strange things:

The remains of dead man were such that he was obviously entering, not leaving the POW camp when he was trapped in a cave-in.

And secondly, that there was a bullet hole in his skull…

This third solid entry in Jim Kelly’s Philip Dryden series of quirky mystery stories set in Fen country England again features events of the past rippling forward to affect today.  Two thumbs up.

::B::

[Book 51] The Ransom Game by Howard Engel (1981)

The second of the Benny Cooperman detective stories, featuring Canada’s answer to Philip Marlowe. Cooperman is a nebbishy 40-something fellow, a nice Jewish slob working in the gumshoe trade in Grantham, a fictitious city located somewhere between Hamilton and Niagara Falls.

It’s a cold Canadian February, and nearly everyone he knows has gone to Florida for the winter.  While freezing his tender bits and wondering if he should join them, Cooperman unexpectedly lands a job.  He is hired to track down an ex-con by his girl-friend, who had been living with her as soon as he got out of Kingston in November.  The fellow has gone missing, and could Cooperman track him down?

Benny soon learns that the ex-con was famous for being the ring-leader of an amateur gang responsible for a notorious kidnapping in Grantham nearly a decade ago.  While the victim was recovered safely, the $500,000 paid ransom was never found, and now all the gang is out on parole, with the local cops, OPP and RCMP watching everyone like hawks to see if anybody will lead them to the loot.

While his girl-friend insists he has gone straight, Cooperman wonders, especially as somebody in a dark blue mustang starts immediately to tail him after his first visit to the parole board office for more information…

Highly enjoyable mystery. I’ll be reading the others.

::B::

[Book 50] Killer’s Payoff by Ed McBain (1958)

Blackmail and extortion are dirty words to describe the deeds of dirty people.  Whoever shot Sy Kramer in the face with a 0.300 Savage hunting rifle causing it to explode into flying fragments was doing the world a favour in cleaning it up a little.

And not the cops have to clean up after the cleaners…

Another solid, fast-paced entry in the long running 87th Precinct series.

::B::

[Book 49] Something Fresh by P.G Wodehouse (1915)

While there have been previous Blandings short story collections before, this is the first Blanding’s novel (247 pages), one where the crazed denizens of the rural British aristocracy form the backdrop of yet another droll yet somewhat more meaty tale.

In this effort, the struggling author of the awful Gridley Quayle pulp detective novels named Ashe Marson, and a plucky young woman who writes for a love pulp, Joan Valentine are rivals for stealing a rare Egyptian scarab of the Fourth Dynasty of Cheops.

The owner of the scarab is the dyspeptic millionaire, Mr. Peters.  His scarab is missing, and he is offering a vast reward for its return.

The Villain of the piece?  The fluffy-brained Earl of Emsworth, owner of Blandings Castle, who accidentally purloined the valuable antique.

Now the stolen scarab is reposing in the Castle Blandings museum next to a Gutenberg Bible, amongst other relics seemingly open for all to steal it.

Naturally the two poverty-pulpsters need to steal it back for the reward.

Naturally complications ensue.

::B::

P.S. My copy of the book was found in the omnibus reprint collection, Life At Blandings (1981, itself reprinted 2008) a collection that also included Summer Lightning and Heavy Weather.