No Picnic

Murder's No Picnic

E.L. Cushing

London: Wright & Brown, 1956

188 pages

My latest Dusty Bookcase review, of E.L. Cushing's Murder's No Picnic, is now available gratis at the Canadian Notes & Queries website:

A House Full of Orphans

I wish I could say I liked the novel. I didn't. Given its cover, I was at the very least expecting a fun read. It wasn't. Regular readers may remember my enjoyment of Murder Without Regret. Now that was fun!

I don't know that I'll read anything more by Cushing. Her books aren't at all common and tend to be quite expensive. My warped copy of Murder's No Picnic was purchased earlier this year £16.00 from an English bookseller located somewhere in Devon. With shipping added, the thing set me back well over fifty dollars. The true first edition was published in 1953 by New York's Arcadia House. There has never been a Canadian edition. I don't expect we'll ever see one.

Not a Ricochet Books candidate.

Related post:
Bewitched, Bothered, but Not Bewildered

'Strangely Entangled in the Threads of Love'

The Girl at Bullet Lake

H.A. Cody

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1933

304 pages

Nine years ago, I suggested that Isabel Ecclestone Mackay's Up the Hill and Over features "the most improbable coincidence in all of Canadian literature." I haven't changed my opinion – not yet, at least – but I will say, without reservation, that H.A. Cody's The Girl at Bullet River has more coincidences than any novel I've ever read. The first comes in the first scene, in which protagonist Robert Rutledge's doctor prescribes rest and relaxation away from the big city:

“Bullet Lake will do you fine. And there is a snug house on the shore, known as ‘Bullet House.’ It is not a very poetical name, I admit, but that will make no difference, Si Acres will charge you something, but it will be worth it. There is excellent fishing there, too.”
      “Where is this wonderful paradise, doctor?”
      “It is not far away, only a few miles back from the river at Glengrow. You surely must know the place.”
     “I know Glengrow, for my sister lives there.”

There follows a steady stream of improbabilities. Their number is so great that they consume much of my review of The Girl at Bullet Lake, likely the first in 85 years, which was posted today at the Canadian Notes & Queries website. You can read it here:

Little More Than Coincidence

C'est gratuit!

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Ontario, Opium and Cocaine

Mrs Lowry's West Coast Murder Mystery

"Malcolm Lowry has an entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia, so why not wife Margerie?" This is the question I pose in reviewing Margerie Bonner's 1946 novel The Shapes That Creep for the new Summer edition of Canadian Notes & Queries. As I point out, Bonner lived in Canada just as long as her husband, and published three novels during the couple's Canadian years. The Shapes That Creep, the first, is set in motion by the discovery of a murdered recluse in a community modelled on Deep Cove, British Columbia.

My review of The Shapes That Creep – with argument for Bonner's inclusion in the Encyclopedia – is the subject of my Dusty Bookcase column. Over at the What's Old feature, I recommend reissues of two Canadian classics, Hugh MacLennan's Two Solitudes and The Black Donnellys by Thomas P. Kelley; along with Jimmie Dale, Alias the Gray Seal, a new Gray Seal adventure written by fan Michael Howard.

This being the Genre Issue, Deborah Dundas writes on her relationship with romance novels, Rui Umezawa looks at Enter the Dragon, and Robert J. Wiersema considers Stephen King's It as a work of empathy. Gemma Files, Sandra Kasturi, David Nickle, Andrew Pyper, and Robert Rowe dare revisit their first monsters.

Seth provides a cover that can double as a Halloween mask.

All is overseen by guest editor James Grainger, who also contributes an excellent piece on the disturbing 1972 horror/comedy Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things. Other contributors include:

Myra Bloom

Daniel Donaldson

Justin Donnait

André Forget

Chris Gilmore

Alex Good

Camila Grudova

Sandra Kasturiit

Sibyl Lamb

Annick MacAskill

David Mason

Patricia Robertson

Keven Spenst

Jay Stephens

JC Sutcliffe

Drew Hayden Taylor

and

Bruce Whiteman

As always, things wrap up with Stephen Fowler. This issue he exhumes the Civil Defence Health Service's Casualty Simulation (Ottawa: Department of National Health and Welfare, 1955).

The horror! The horror!

Related post:

Late of the Bowery

The Great Canadian Lesbian Pulp Novel?

Sadly, no; but I think my expectation was justified. See if you don't agree. Here's the beginning of my review, which was posted yesterday on the Canadian Notes & Queries website:

Strange Desires [?]

Alan Malston [?]

Toronto: News Stand Library. 1949

160 pages

The title of this novel is either Strange Desires or Strange Desire. It doesn't matter which because "Strange" is key. Anyone familiar with post-war paperbacks will recognize the word as code for "lesbian" fiction. Delicate lingerie, gentle caresses, and tender kisses will feature. An insecure, vulnerable, and somewhat unstable young woman (more often than not a blonde) will likely be seduced by a confident, slightly older woman (usually brunette). The young woman will become increasingly insecure, vulnerable, and unstable as a result, until finding safe harbour in the arms of a man. The slightly older brunette may or may not commit suicide. 

Those unfamiliar with that code word in 1949 would’ve been aided by the cover pitch: “WHAT MAN COULD SATISFY HER — STRANGE DESIRES.” But for the truly dim-witted, everything is laid out in the back cover copy: 

Adele was sophisticated, spoiled and reckless, and her inspired strip dance performed with a snake as partner set men's blood pounding and women's tongues to wagging. Her inseparable female companion seemingly did not quench Adele's desire for the conquest of men and for the one man in particular who seemed capable of resisting every trick and every charm.

Am I right or am I right?

Before wasting good money on tracking down a copy, you'll want to read the rest of the review:

Weird, But Not Really Strange

Note: Not to be confused with...

Strange Desire
Wayne Wallace
Hollywood: Brandon House, 1965

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Bewitched, Bothered, but Not Bewildered

From Femme Fatale to Dewy-Eyed Dame

Reviewing W.E.D. Ross

Online mag Book Marks has a new feature, "Secrets of the Book Critic," which takes the form of interviews with American "books journalists." I've begun following, in part, because of its promise to cover "overlooked recent gems." Sometime San Francisco Chronicle critic Alexis Burling kicked things off last month, by recommending Claire-Louise Bennett's Pond, Montpelier Parade by Karl Geary, All the News I Need by Joan Frank, and our own David Chariandry's Brother.

Good suggestions all, I'm betting – I know the Chariandry is – but what really caught my attention was this:

BM: What is the greatest misconception about book critics and criticism? 

AB: How about the idea that everyone can be a book critic? That all it takes to write a worthwhile review is just a quick read of a book and then a dribbling out of your off-the-cuff opinion? Anyone who contributes to this column can tell you that reviewing a book is definitely not an easy, zippy process. There’s research involved – reading an author’s past work(s) to put the current book in context, maybe reading an interview or two to see where the author was coming from when he/she wrote the book, plus keeping on top of what else has been or is being published about the subject. Then there’s the taking notes while reading (well, I do that) and the working and reworking of sentences and paragraphs that hopefully come together into a cohesive and un-stuffy package that will do the book justice. Maybe it sounds a bit like I’m tooting the collective book-critic horn, but as with any profession, the job requires training, humility, and lots of practice 

And, might I add, here’s a newsflash about book critics in general: Just because many of us read all day for work, that doesn’t mean we are always in our pajamas. Because: gross.

I doubt many people think anyone can be a book critic, just as I doubt many critics spend all day reading. Much as I like to picture book reviewers –  some anyway – in pyjamas and other sleepwear, I was troubled by Ms Burling's assertion that other works are always read. It got me wondering if my recent CNQ review of W.E.D. Ross's Lust Planet had been unfair, in that it had been written without my reading so much as one of the author's 357 other novels.

This question hung over me as I read Backstage Nurse, which Ross wrote under his Judith Rossiter pseudonym. Published in 1963, the year after Lust Planet, it was a transitional novel, written with some coaching from the author's second wife, nurse Marilyn Ross (née Clark). Backstage Nurse is important as Ross's entry into the nurse romance sub-genre. It was followed by fifty-seven more, ending two decades later with Nurse Marsha's Wish.

My review of Backstage Nurse has just been posted on the Canadian Notes & Queries website. Here's a small taste:

Dying American theatre legend Oliver Craft wants to spend his few remaining days touring a production of a new play, The Cardinal, a Cold War tragedy in which he plays the lead. Tall, imperious Doctor Trask of Boston’s Eastern Memorial Hospital looks to make it possible by casting about for a nurse to accompany the ailing actor. 

The role falls to beautiful Shirley Grant for no other reason than she had once pursued a stage career herself. At eighteen, she’d attended theatre school, and by nineteen was performing on Broadway. But then her father, a medical doctor, died in a plane crash, leaving her an orphan. “And so, although she still loved the theatre, she had decided to become a nurse. In this vocation, she could follow in the footsteps of her father in being of service, and find fulfillment she knew now the theater could never give her.” 

I suggest that another reason Shirley Grant seems a good fit for the role is that she has no social life.

The complete review can be read here.

Backstage Nurse hasn't change my mind about Lust Planet.

I recognize that I still have 356 W.E.D. Ross novels to go.

Related posts:

Not to Be Confused With Bust Planet

Not to Be Confused with Bust Planet

The new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries has arrived, bringing with it my long promised review of W.E.D. Ross's Lust Planet (1962), Canada's very first work of science fiction erotica. I found the novel every bit as good as expected.

Collectors of Canadian literature are advised to pick up this France' Book – oddly-named imprint of Hollywood's International Publications – while they still can. As I write, I see just one copy listed for sale online. To those requiring further enticement, I offer this: something I neglected to mention in the review is that Lust Planet features three intriguing illustrations. Intriguing because they have no connection at all with the text.

The other two are even better.

As I say, get it while you can. Better yet, subscribe to CNQ... easily done through this link at the magazine's website.

This issue's contributors include:

Madhur Anand

Jason Dickson

Jesse Eckerlin

André Forget

Cecil Foster

Stephen Fowler

Alex Good

Dominic Hardy

Ann Ireland

Penn Javdan

Samuel Johnson

Colette Maitland

Dominic Martinello

David Mason

Dakota McFadzean

Rebecca Rosenblum

Kate Sherren

JC Sutcliffe

Derek Webster

Bruce Whiteman

In addition to the cover and design, Seth reflects on CANADA official handbooks of days gone by (including this one): "I find these books fascinating, in a doctor's office kind of way. They have a sort of sublime dullness about them. A quality hard to put into words. Pleasing. Comforting. Sleep-inducing."

Editor Emily Donaldson not only put the whole thing together, she contributed a review of  David Chariandy's Brother.

This issue marks the second time I've shared pages with John Metcalf. Friends will recognize how much this means to me. Coincidentally, it was through John that I first learned of W.E.D. Ross.

Related post:

Winning With the erotic W.E.D. Ross
The Greater Canada of 1962
When Poets Ruled; Or, Never Mind the Novelists

HBC as Murderers of Men and Killers of Dogs

The Land of Frozen Suns
Bertrand W. Sinclair
Chicago: Donohue, 1910
309 pages

A Scottish transplant by way of the United States, Bertrand W. Sinclair wasn’t Canada’s most prolific pulp magazine writer; I know of two hundred and ninety-four appearances, which is nowhere near the fifteen hundred or so (I lost count) logged by Ontarian H. Bedford-Jones. Sinclair isn’t our best-known pulp writer, either; that title belongs to Thomas P. Kelley, author of The Black Donnellys, Vengeance of the Donnellys, I Found Cleopatra, and, of course, The Gorilla’s Daughter. 

Sinclair’s distinction rests in being our best pulp writer. Though his plots are invariably marred by melodrama — a prerequisite in pulps — he usually brought something to his stories that shook convention. My favourite Sinclair novel is The Hidden Places. Serialized in The Popular Magazine (Oct 7 - Nov 20, 1921), it concerns a disfigured war veteran who seeks sanctuary on the remote BC coast from Vancouverites disgusted by his appearance. By great coincidence, he finds his nearest neighbour is his wife, who believes he'd died in battle. She is now married to another man. 

As I say, melodrama.

So begins my latest Dusty Bookcase review, posted today on the Canadian Notes & Queries website. Here's the link.

The Land of Frozen Suns was Bertrand W. Sinclair's second novel. It tells the tale of a Texas rancher's son who eludes American frontier justice by fleeing to Canada. Once there, he must contend with a company of murderers from which I once purchased a Braun coffeemaker.

Related posts:

Sex, Betrayal and the Scars of the Great War

The Fugitive Bertrand W. Sinclair

Remembering Ron Scheer... on a Friday

May Agnes Fleming's Very Worst Marriage?

The Heiress of Castle Cliffe; Or, Off With the Old Love
     [Victoria; Or, The Heiress of Castle Cliffe]
May Agnes Fleming
New York: Street & Smith, [c. 1917]
289 pages

The Heiress of Castle Cliffe, the most reprinted work by Canada’s first bestselling writer, May Agnes Fleming, appeared under many titles, but none so intriguing as Wedded for Pique, the one slapped on the 1878 edition. 

Wedded for pique? I couldn’t imagine what sort of slight would lead to matrimony. 

The affront is revealed in the last third of novel, just before an angry, malicious walk down the aisle. It follows a series of great misfortunes and misadventures, and leads to even more, resulting in a murder, a drowning, and a hanging. 

To think it all begins with a pleasant evening at the theatre.

My first book review of the year! The rest can be read – gratis – here at the Canadian Notes & Queries website.

Pique your interest?

Sorry.

As recompense, I offer a visual treat comprised of three other editions. Interested readers are advised not to look too closely at the scribblings on the first, which give away the novel's twist:

Victoria; Or, The Heiress of Castle Cliffe
New York: Brady, 1864

Heiress of Castle Cliff [sic]
New York: Hurst, [1880?]

Wedded for Pique
New York: Dillingham, [1889]

Related posts:

The Parents of the Children of the Revolution

Soldiering on With Edith Percival

Falling Hard for May Agnes Fleming

The Year's Best Books in Review – A.D. 2017; Featuring Three Books Deserving Resurrection

I finished reading my last book of the year yesterday afternoon; there is no way the I'll reach the end of the next before January. And so, the time has come for the annual recap of the best dusty books reviewed here and in Canadian Notes & Queries.

Twenty-seventeen was an unusual year for the Dusty Bookcase. Roughly twice as many books were covered in the first half as in the second. Promotion of the Dusty Bookcase book, The Dusty Bookcase: A Journey Through Canada's Forgotten, Neglected and Suppressed Writing, had something to do with it, but so too did other projects. The sad result is that just nineteen books were reviewed in 2017... and here I include that for the book I finished yesterday, which has yet to be written and posted. Either way, it is an all-time low.

Happily, despite the relatively small number – nineteen! – it was very easy to come up with this year's list of three books deserving a return to print:

Revenge!
Robert Barr

Barr stands with May Agnes Fleming and Grant Allen as one of our three most interesting Victorian novelists, and yet we ignore them all. This 1896 collection of twenty short stories delves into the darkest, deadliest areas of the soul.

Behind the Beyond
Stephen Leacock

First published in 1913, this is one of titles dropped in the New Canadian Library's bloody post-Ross purge. It stands amongst Professor Leacock's best collections. Interested publishers should consider the sixteen A.H. Fish illustrations featured in the first edition.

In Quest of Splendour
[Pierre le magnifique]
Roger Lemelin
[trans. Harry Lorin Binsse]

Lemelin's third novel, and very nearly his last, this pales beside the sales of the other three, but I think it is his best. Harry Binsse's 1955 translation enjoyed a single printing. Time has come for a new edition.



Three works reviewed this year are in print:

First published in 1902, the oldest is Ralph Connor's somewhat nostalgic, somewhat autobiographical novel Glengarry School Days. Last I looked, the 2009 New Canadian Library edition with introduction by John Lennox was still available from Penguin Random House. For how much longer, I wonder.

Shadow on the Hearth (1950) by Judith Merril is far from the best novel I read this year, but is recommended just the same. A Cold War nightmare, it has as much to do with the H-bomb as state secrecy and control. It features as one of three novels collected in Spaced Out: Three Novels of Tomorrow, published by the New England Science Fiction Society Press.

Wives and Lovers (1954) is generally considered the last Margaret Millar non-Mystery... which isn't to say that there isn't mystery or that its characters don't do some very bad things. The very best novel I read this year, it can be found in The Master at Her Zenith, the third volume in Syndicate Books' Collected Millar.

I was involved in resurrecting only one book this year:

The Pyx
John Buell

The twelfth title in the Ricochet Books series, I consider this the best. A debut novel, first published in 1959 by Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, it has drawn considerable praise through the decades. This new edition has an introduction by Sean Kelly.



Praise this year goes to Biblioasis' ReSet series. Now, I do recognize the optics – Biblioasis being the publisher of The Dusty Bookcase – but, really, is it not overdue? For six years now, roughly half the life of the press, it has been bringing back some of our most unjustly neglected titles. Early in the New Year, I Don't Want to Know Anyone Too Well, the collected stories of Norman Levine, will be added to the series.

Speaking of the New Year, I don't think it's too early for resolutions. Here are mine:

• I resolve to read more books by women (two-thirds of my 2017 reading were books by men);
• I resolve to read more books by French language writers (In Quest of Splendour was the only one read in 2017);
• I resolve to read and review more forgotten, neglected and suppressed books than I did this past year;
• I resolve to continue kicking against the pricks. 

You?

Related posts:

The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2016
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2015
The Christmas Offering of Books - 1914 and 2014
A Last Minute Gift Slogan, "Give Books" (2013)
Grumbles About Gumble & Praise for Stark House (2012)
The Highest Compliments of the Season (2011)
A 75-Year-Old Virgin and Others I Acquired (2010)
Books are Best (2009)

The Unexpected Robert Barr

Professor Leacock Sets the Stage

The Beautiful, Very Desirable Stephen Leacock

A Novel That Killed a Novelist?

A Novel My Mother Read

A Nuclear Family Nightmare

An 'Other Novel' by Margaret Millar

The Return of The Pyx

RIP NCL: A Multinational Reacts to a Eulogy

It has been a month since the publication of "For All Its Faults," my essay on the death of the New Canadian Library (CNQ 100).

The response was immediate. Penguin Random House replaced its NCL webpage, featuring Jane Austen, Herman Melville, Edith Wharton, W. Somerset Maugham,  and T.S. Eliot, with this:

It's an improvement, I suppose.

"For All Its Faults" is now available online – gratis – at the CNQ website. It can be accessed through this link.

Related posts:

Young Mister Richler on the New Canadian Library

Devolution, Evolution and Lateral Moves

About Those Ugly NCL Covers

Winning with the Erotic W.E.D. Ross

Congratulations go  to Eric Wilkinson, winner of last week's contest for a copy of The Dusty Bookcase. Eric's name was drawn from those who correctly guessed that Lust Planet – and not Airport Nurse, Arctic Nurse, Backstage Nurse, Bermuda Nurse, Front Office Nurse, Hotel Nurse, Night Club Nurse or even Operating Room Nurse – was the W.E.D. Ross book read for my next Canadian Notes & Queries Dusty Bookcase column.

Ross's second and final work of erotica, how could I resist? Sure, his first, The Case of the Naked Diver tempted, but Lust Planet promised a combination of erotica and science fiction!

I give something of the column away in writing that it may be the last W.E.D. Ross book I ever read.

The issue featuring my review – number 101! – will be coming out in the New Year. In the meantime, enjoy this cover image of the 1963 first edition of Ross's pseudonymously published Backstage Nurse. I find it strangely compelling.

Related posts:

The Erotic Brian Moore

The Erotic Mordecai Richler

The Homoerotic A.E. van Vogt
The Homoerotic E.J. Pratt
The Pornographic Edna Jaques

Win a Copy of The Dusty Bookcase!

Part of this past weekend was spent writing a new Dusty Bookcase column for the next issue of Canadian Notes & Queries. This time out I'm reviewing a book by W.E.D. Ross, Canada's most prolific novelist. The man is known to have written at least 358 novels, most of which were published under pseudonyms like Rose Dana, Rose Williams, Ruth Dorset, Olin Ross, and Jane Rossiter. As "Marilyn Ross" he penned thirty-two Dark Shadows tie-ins, including:

The book I reviewed for CNQ is not Barabas, Quentin and Dr. Jekyll's Son, but it is one of W.E.D. Ross novels below.

In the spirit of the season, I'm giving away a copy of my new book, The Dusty Bookcase, to a lucky person who guesses correctly the title that is the subject of my next column. Send me the title via email – the address is in my Blogger profile – and, if correct, I'll enter your name in a draw. The contest closes Sunday at midnight. The winner will be announced next Monday.

Bon chance!

Related posts:

The Dusty Bookcase in Publishers Weekly
The Dusty Bookcase in the National Post

The Dusty Bookcase in the Toronto Star
The Dusty Bookcase - The Book!

Winning with the Erotic W.E.D. Ross

CNQ at 100

It doesn't seem right to describe the new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries as special – every issue is special – but this one, the one hundredth issue, marks a remarkable milestone. That it did so in its fiftieth year is both a reflection of an often precarious past and its stability this past decade under publisher Dan Wells.

I came on board with my first Dusty Bookcase column in issue 81 (Spring 2010). My subject back then was The Miracle Man, the very first book I'd ever read by Frank L. Packard. This time around, the column takes the form of an investigative update on thriller writer and passer of forged cheques Kenneth Orvis (a/k/a Kenneth LeMieux). His is not exactly a household name, though regular readers may remember my reviews of his debut, Hickory House (1956), and Cry Hallelujah! (1970), his greatest flop.

I've also contributed an essay, "For All Its Faults," which has been described by historian Christopher Moore as an evisceration of the killing of the New Canadian Library. In this unpleasant task I was supported by Daniel Donaldson's razor sharp editorial cartoon.

On a related note – two, actually – my daughter Astrid provides an editorial cartoon to "Hints and Allegations," a chapter from Elaine Dewar's GG-nominated The Handover, the shameful story of how it was our country's greatest publisher was given away to a foreign multinational.

Also featured is Andreae Callanan's "The Xenotext's Woman Problem," winner of this year's CanLit Crit Essay Contest. Nick Mount writes on CanLit's beginnings, Anna Porter shares memories of McClelland & Stewart as it was in the 'seventies, and Jim Polk looks at fifty years of the House of Anansi. In "Will Anyone Care?" Mark Sampson lays bare his obsession to preserving his work. The issue is rounded out by contributions from Seth, Pierre Nepveu (translated by Donald Winkler), Robert Wringham, Mary H. Auerbach Rykov, Mark Bourrie, Kamal Al-Solaylee, Jason Dickson, David Huebert, David Mason, J.C. Sutcliffe, Rohan Maitzen, André Forget, Alex Good, Bruce Whiteman, Stephen Fowler.

More information can be found here at the CNQ website. And this link will take you to the subscription page, which will bring you issues 101, 102, and 103.

Every one special.