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Post by pulphack on Mar 30, 2011 13:15:57 GMT
So anyway, there I was mindign my own business reading Bill Pronzini's Gun In Cheek and Son Of Gun In Cheek, wherein he posits that so-called 'bad' crime fiction is mostly just called that because it's written by people who don't fit the mould and have a unique viewpoint (with copious examples of wild imagination and technique that puts most modern writers to shame), when I come to a chapter called The Kracked King Of Keelerland. And I was hooked. Harry Stephen Keeler died in 1967. He was published in the UK and the US for over thirty years; he wrote over fifty books; critics loathed the fact that he eschewed character for plot (so did Dame Agatha, and it didn't do her any harm); and they hated his incrediibly dense webwork plotting, where the kind of co-incidence that lecturers and teachers eschew as wrong was a fulcrum of the novel. But then we all know real life ain't as detached as the lit profs would like us to think. Weird synchronicity does happen. Keeler is king of this. And his style is unique. Sure, he overdoes the phoenetics for accents. Ok, so some of his ethnic characters seems like stereotypes... except he was a socialist, and used this to send up popular fiction stereotyping as his 'ethnics' turn out to be the really good and morally honest guys. Moreover, his style is hard to adjust to as it reads like William Burroughs writing Edgar Wallace. Some say he can't write. Not so. The grammar is idiosyncratic but correct, and the threads of story are neatly woven. He just don't see things quite the same way as most other writers. Hunting him down proved easier than I'd feared. www.ramblehouse.com is where all his novels are now available, and reasonably. I got three - one at £9, two thicker volumes at £13 apiece. RH uses Lulu for POD and mailing, and I got them within five working days. RH is worth checking for the weird and wonderful fiction on their list. A conventional narrative, THE BARKING CLOCK (1946) is about a guy on death row whose last hope is a mathematician with a penchant for solving crime by equations, and ties in with the inheritance expected by a secretary in London, thousands of miles away. The clock in question has arabic not roman numerals (this is important somehow) and barks the hour as it's an ad for dog biscuits. Almost ludicrously unrelated strands suddenly tie together in logic that is breathtaking but feasible. And the guy on deathrow didn't commit the murder, but DID kill the guy who was actually guilty. Go figure... THE MARCEAU CASE and X JONES OF SCOTLAND YARD (both 1935) are both presented as a series of letters, cables, interviews, press reports and photos. Henri Marceau is the victim of a crime known as - wait for it - The Flying Strangler Baby Murder! Both novels present a plausible solution from two detectives, one blaming a wirewalking dwarf, the other a strange case of asphyxiation by epileptic fit. Both books use the same evidence, have some sections in common, can be read independently, and BOTH MAKE SENSE!!! HOW??? There is a third in the series, THE WONDERFUL SCHEME OF CHRISTOPHER THORNE, from the following year and a conventional narrative. I must get this now, as Thorne crops up briefly in X JONES and how the hell he fits in to everything is beyond me (but it will make sense, I bet). Mad, weird, ahead of their time yet timeless... I am converted to the Kracked world of Keelerland.
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Post by cw67q on Mar 31, 2011 8:54:30 GMT
Thanks for posting this Pulphack, I'm a big fan of Ramble House but haven't ventured into Keelerland itself, confining myself to the Masterman, Hansom and Hake Talbot reprints thus far. (Although it is taking an age for the last round of HAnsom and Masterman books to become available as pb editions in the uk :-(). I've also been considering trying one of their Norman Berrows reprints next time I order some of their books, there are quite a few of his titles that sound very interesting, but then the RH catalogue is full of enticing titles. Here is a link to the Ramble House home page for anyone who might be interested: www.ramblehouse.com/- Chris
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Mar 31, 2011 10:35:22 GMT
confining myself to the Masterman, Hansom and Hake Talbot reprints thus far. The Talbot novels are wonderful, are they not?
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Post by dem bones on Mar 31, 2011 10:49:37 GMT
i'd not seen a Ramble House until pulphack flashed his The Barking Clock at me last week and i can easily understand why you're smitten, Chris. i'm sure you'll already have found it but Richard Polt's Harry Stephen Keeler Society provides an invaluable crash course for those wishing to investigate the man and his works - you can even download some sample stories (though i must admit, i find the prospect of reading a 70, 000 word novel from a screen pretty intimidating even if it is called The Man Who Changed His Skin). The Riddle Of The Travelling Skull? The Case of the Two-Headed Idiot? Beats me how he's never shown up on Vault before now.
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Post by pulphack on Apr 1, 2011 11:23:03 GMT
have to say, only discovered RH via the Keeler society site, and haven't checked any of the other titles - though where to begin? Hake sounds a good bet as i do think JoJo has a keen eye. if any of the writers are as unique as HSK, then it'll be a pleasurable jump into the unknown.
the downloads on the society site were tempting as a way to try him out before taking the plunge, but it really is a strain reading off a screen, which is why i haven't plumped for a kindle, though it is tempting. harry has the 'eh?' factor which means somehow you need a paper copy, so you can flick back easier to check some outrageous development without inducing temporal lobe epilepsy. (how Henri Marceau would have coped... is that a babe from hell i see before me, complete with gun and maggots for eyes? aaaaaarrrrrgggghhhhh....)
dem, you have to try HSK at some point - he has the same wacko charm as the Rev, but is actually a better writer.
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Post by severance on Sept 27, 2011 15:02:14 GMT
Using this thread as a catch-all Ramble House thread - I see that two of their latest releases are Death March of the Dancing Dolls, Volume 3 of Day Keene's 'Detective Pulp' fiction and Man Out of Hell, Volume 2 of the selected stories of John H. Knox. I've got all the previous volumes but, as per usual, haven't got around to them yet
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Post by dem bones on Nov 15, 2011 12:47:50 GMT
Helen McCloy & Brett Halliday (eds.) - Murder, Murder, Murder (Hillman, 1961) Baynard Kendrick - Preface: Department Of Nostalgia Brett Halliday - Introduction
John Dickson Carr - The Black Cabinet Ellery Queen - The Adventure of the Dead Cat Fay Girssom Stanley - The Last Day of All Lillian De La Torre - Goodbye, Miss Lizzie Borden Philip Ketchum - Uncle Charlie D. B. Olsen - The Absent Hat Pin Stuart Palmer - The Riddle of the Snafu Murder Clayre & Michael Lipman - My Last Book Robert Arthur - The Man In The Morgue Harry Stephen Keeler - The Hand Of God
Helen McCloy - PostscriptBlurb Ten Tales From Twenty Great Tales Of MurderPicked this up for 25p from friend the back of the van man on the way to Zardoz and, truth be told, it was entirely on account of a contribution from Robert Arthur, didn't even notice Harry Stephen "O. Henry-on-hashish" Keeler's name on the back 'til i pulled it from the shelf last night. Murder, Murder, Murder is abridged from the McCloy & Halliday edited Twenty Great Tales Of Murder (Random, 1951), Hillman (a forerunner of MacFadden Books who seem to have mysteriously vanished when the notorious Manor hit New York) had previously published the first half of the Random hardcover under the title You Killed Elizabeth (1960) from Halliday's story of the same name. Harry Stephen Keeler - The Hand Of God: Wealthy artist Donald Carew's dreams are pleasantly haunted by 'Moon-Flower', a composite of the Chinese girls he duped and betrayed before his recent engagement to High Society débutante Laurine Cassia Randell. All is well until the fantasy girl learns of his impending nuptials and produces a jewelled dagger from behind her back. When Carew's corpse is discovered skewered to the bed, Detective Grogson is left with an unfathomable locked room mystery on his files until Dr. Birkhalter, the hotshot Detective-Alienist, proves conclusively to the coroner's court that Carew was "murdered by his own imagination!" Runs to just the eleven pages and no doubt he was capable of far weirder stuff, but a tasty introduction to Mr. "O. Henry on hashish' all the same.
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