Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
They're in storage as we build our new home.
Patience, please.
I Found Cleopatra
Thomas P. Kelley
West Linn, OR: Fax Collector's Editions, [1977]
111 pages
Thomas P. Kelley was a regular in the early years of the Dusty Bookcase. From 2009 to 2012, his writing was the focus of a steady parade of posts, which included reviews of
No Tears for Goldie (1949),
Bad Men of Canada (1950), and two markedly different versions of
The Fabulous Kelley (1968), a loving memoir about his snake oil-selling father.*
All this came to an end my review of
'The Soul Eater', a lost world story Kelley published in the May 1942 number of
Uncanny Tales. Of all the things I've written on Kelley, it's my favourite. So what made me stop?
Something to do with the remaining Kelley titles in my collection, I suppose.
I wasn't much interested in taking time to separate truth from fiction in his books about
the Donnellys,
Simon Gunanoot, and
the Mad Trapper of Rat River. Things would've been different if I'd found a copy of this:
After
The Black Donnellys and
Vengeance of the Black Donnellys,
I Found Cleopatra is Kelley's most reprinted work. First published in the
Weird Tales (November 1938) – and again in
Uncanny Tales (July 1941) – the novel has appeared three times in book form, most recently in 1980 by Borgo Press. I found and bought my Fax Collector's Editions copy last summer.
It's now in a storage locker just outside the town of Merrickville, Ontario.
Wish it wasn't.
* Here I ignore my growing suspicion that Kelley was the author of No Place in Heaven, a 1949 News Stand Library pulp published under the name "Laura Warren."
Note: Not to be confused with
I Found Cléopâtre, the 1988 account of my discovery a Montreal drag bar with the longest and cheapest Happy Hour in the whole damn city.
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