contours provocations - 2005-1031

contours provocations
journal - 2005-1031 - mon 2100

Halloween; No Rain; TNY Covers; "Guilty Parties"

A surprisingly quiet Halloween. Not a trick-or-treater in sight. In fact I've not seen or heard one all evening. It may be because this is a fairly busy street with no sidewalks. Or it may be that everyone attends alternatives such as carnivals, hayrides or bonfires.

Another couple of days have passed without rain. How very odd. Or could it be that Mother Nature is too busy concocting hurricanes to worry about the need for rain for inland dwellers.

I've been dipping into "The Complete New Yorker." There are any number of methods for searching, one of which is browsing by cover by year. I looked through a number of years to see if I remembered any of the covers. But not a one looked familiar. I would have thought I had a decent memory of at least one.

Next, I tried to find a cover that I thought I remembered. But again no luck. I looked through a roughly ten year period without finding it. The cover I was thinking of was a park scene in early spring with kites and balloons.

No wonder eyewitnesses to crimes are not considered reliable. Somehow my brain took the original image and warped it. Or maybe I created a single image from multiple ones.

Last night I wasn't sure what new novel I wanted to start, so I picked up a book called "Guilty Parties." The cover says "A mystery lover's companion - a criminally enjoyable dossier of gunsels and gun molls, private eyes and femme fatales, lock ups and locked rooms, butlers who did it and mobsters who didn't."

It is a wonderful romp through crime fiction starting with Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and continuing to contemporary works. It covers not only American and British efforts but also looks at other countries.

It was intersting to note the many crime fighters whose books were popular at one time but are now almost unknown. Dr. Thorndyke, Father Brown, Philo Vance, Max Carrados, Inspector Septimus Finch, Peter Clancy, etc.

PAX!