100 American Crime Writers out - already in 2012!

I hadn't earlier noticed that 100 American Crime Writers, edited by Steven Powell, is out - has been actually already from 2012! The book looks good based on the Google Books page and some blog reviews I came across (here and here, for example). I was mentioned, and still I didn't notice!

I haven't received my contributor's copies, I'll have to get in touch with someone! Wonder if this is still doable. Now if only I'd remember if I wrote something for 100 British Crime Writers - I have a nagging feeling such a book was in the making at the same time...

Here's Steven Powell's interesting crime-oriented blog Venetian Vase.

Everybody Lies out

My newest book, the short story anthology Everybody Lies, is finally out. It's available here - and of course it's in Finnish and the actual title is Kaikki valehtelevat, which is the literal translation of James Reasoner's story in the book.

The book consists of some 20 criminous short stories from writers like Reasoner, Jason Starr, Kevin Wignall, Duane Swierczynski, Vicki Hendricks and Patricia Abbott. All of the stories came previously out in my mags Isku, Ässä and Seikkailukertomuksia (= Adventure Stories), that were self-published pastiches of old-time crime rags. All the translations have been edited and proofread carefully. It's a nice and varied collection of new hardboiled and noir writing, especially since almost none of these writers are available in Finnish at the moment. Most of the stories were translated by me, but some of them were translated by some of my talented friends, namely Antti Autio, Tapani Bagge, Sonja Lahdenranta and Lotta Sonninen. Thanks for them for the big help! 

The beautiful cover was envisioned by a friend of mine, Jenni Jokiniemi, who works as a designer. This was her first book cover, if I understood correctly. I hope to collaborate with her more in the future. 

Here's the table of contents. 

I'm actually doing another collection in the same vein, of the flash fiction stories I published in Ässä. I've been asking for permissions from writers, but not all have responded. If you read this and remember having received an e-mail or a Facebook message from, please do respond! 

Some sword and sorcery stories: Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, Manly Wade Wellman

A week ago I had a feeling I'd like to read something that wasn't work-related in any way. As usual, I had some trouble finding something suitable to read even though I have some 5,000 books in my shelves.

However, I picked up a Finnish anthology of old sword and sorcery stories, mainly from Weird Tales, but also from some other pulp mags. The book is called Mustan jumalan suudelma AKA Black God's Kiss after the story by C. L. Moore in the book. Of the stories I read, Moore's was the best. It's full of surreal images and still it moves with a breakneck pace. Very beautiful and thrilling. The story came out first in Weird Tales in 1934.

The other stories I read were Robert E. Howard's novella-length "The Black Stranger" (1934-1935, unpublished in Howard's life-time, published in 1953 in abridged form and in 1987 in original form) and Manly Wade Wellman's "Thunder in the Dawn" (Amazing Stories 1939). Wellman's story was a bit slow and dated, I didn't feel the thrill of adventure in this, even though the premise is pretty good: a stone age warrior is really the Hercules of the Greek lore and is the cause of Atlantis sinking in the ocean. Howard's story pits Conan against some pirates and settlers, in the story everyone deceives one and another. It's a great read, though I still preferred C. L. Moore.

The striking cover in the book was drawn by Jukka Murtosaari, a friend of mine, who's studied classical American illustration art for decades now - and it clearly shows. The editor of the book is one Markku Sadelehto, who's done a good day's work bringing American pulp fiction to Finnish readers, as he's edited tons of anthologies for different publishers for over 20 years now. His magnum opus is the edition of the collected stories of H. P. Lovecraft. The sixth and final volume came out just two months ago.

Alas, I didn't have time to read more of the stories from the book. I've read this when it came out some 20 years ago, but don't remember much of it.

Laura Lippman: The Innocents

I was looking for something easy to read between some work-related books and grabbed Laura Lippman's The Innocents I'd bought from a thrift store earlier. I'd read one or two of Lippman's Tess Monaghan novels and thought they were pretty good. I knew this wasn't part of the series, but I knew it was a stand-alone book, and thinking I'd read it in a jiffy started to read it. (Tess Monaghan makes a short appearance, though, giving the story an extra boost.)

Instead it turned out to be a serious mainstream novel, with an episodic and a bit labyrinthine structure, with people's lives mingling with each other's lives, criss-crossing in time and place. Lippman gives hints there's something bad in the past of people she writes about, but she reveals it a bit by bit, very slowly, but enticingly. I didn't read this in a jiffy, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit. It could've been shorter, but that's just me.

Seems like this was published in the US as The Most Dangerous Thing. I found a British edition that has an alternate title. (Explains why this can't be found from Lippman's site with that title.)

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla

It's been months since I last wrote an entry to this blog meme.

I don't know if anybody noticed, but yesterday marked the sixtieth birthday of Godzilla AKA Gojira. The first Godzilla film premiered on third of November in 1954 in Japan, and I helped organize the showing of one of the later Godzilla films, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, at the Finnish Film Archive screening here in Turku, Finland. It was shown on 35 mm film, in a Cinemascope picture.

The film is a hoot. It's very, very hilarious. It's fast-paced, it never slows down, which is a normal handicap for bad and campy pictures: they are slow. There's always something going on in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla even though none of it makes sense. Cigar-smoking space invaders in silver suits? Check. A huge cyborg pretending to be Godzilla? Check. An ancient Japanese god living inside a cave? Check. A woman singing praise to the said god on a beach with a nice orchestrated background? Check. A mysterious Interpol agent masquerading as a freelance journalist in a long coat trying very hard not to look suspicious? Check. Mysterious gangsters turning into monkeys when they die or even get hit? Check. Name it, and you probably have it in the film.

Highly recommended, lots of laughs guaranteed. More Overlooked Films coming up at Todd Mason's blog here.

Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and Dark Places

Some of you might remember I had some gripes about Gillian Flynn's bestselling chick noir novel Gone Girl (here's my short review, I wrote a more detailed review in Finnish). I liked Flynn's earlier novel, Dark Places, more, and it's out in Finnish in a good translation. It's darker and more believable and the seedy and unpleasant atmosphere is very well realized. The plot unravels slowly, Flynn knows how to make the reader turn pages without reverting to easy gimmicks. 

I ran into a good review of Gone Girl at the Rara-Avis e-mail list, written by Mark Nevins. I asked for Mark's permission to publish the review here and he complied. I think he is pretty spot on on some of the weaknesses of the novel. So, here goes. 

Gillian Flynn, GONE GIRL (2012) 

While I'm probably the last person in American to have finally gotten around to reading GONE GIRL, I'll still try to avoid spoilers in this review--which will be hard to do, so consider stopping reading now if you're planning to pick up this novel any time soon.

Gillian Flynn has written an incredibly clever novel in GONE GIRL, and it's worth reading the book just to see how she creates a complicated and layered narrative puzzle, somewhat along the lines of THE USUAL SUSPECTS or THE SIXTH SENSE. Nothing is what it seems in the "perfect" marriage of Nick and Amy Dunne, and the reader is forced to try to make sense of how the pieces of the story fit together via Nick and Amy's alternating first-person chapters, made more difficult by the fact that each of them has multiple "personas" as well.

Most readers seem to think GONE GIRL gets better after the "reveal" in the middle. While I saw the reveal coming, I nevertheless felt the second part of the novel was weaker than I would have hoped, given the fantastic set-up. When Flynn has to shift from narrative cleverness (and her construction of the narrative and all of its many moving parts is very very clever indeed) to real psychological depth, she comes up a bit short. While the first half of the novel promises something truly new, the resolution feels a little too much like the standard mass market thriller, including stock characters such as the creepy doting rich lover and the powerhouse slick attorney.

One of my biggest problems with the book is that I found neither of the two main characters in any way sympathetic: other writers working in the "doomed noir" space (e.g., the obvious candidate, James M. Cain) somehow make us root for bad people to succeed. My other big problem is that the overall tone of the book's prose is a bit too "chick lit" for me. GONE GIRL flirts with postmodern structure and unreliable narrators in ways reminiscent of Italo Calvino or Vladimir Nabokov, and it dances with dirty, twisted characters similar to those you might find in books by Charles Willeford or Jim Thompson, and yet the result is a book that falls somewhere in the comfortable middle, also known as the top of the NEW YORK TIMES bestseller list for fiction. (Which may have been the author's objective after all, and who am I to quibble with that?)

I would in the end genuinely recommend GONE GIRL--if only because it's such a phenomenon, and a clever construction--but I think readers well-versed in the classics of noir are likely to find it a little "lite." (On another note, I will be intrigued to see how the book will be adapted to film, since what makes the book so interesting can really only be achieved on the printed page.)

Richard Moore and Barry Malzberg on Donald Westlake's The Getaway Car

I spotted this nice mini-review of Donald Westlake's non-fiction collection, The Getaway Car, by Richard Moore on the Rara-Avis e-mail list and asked for his permission to republish it here. Richard, ever the gentleman, gave his permission. It was originally posted to the PulpMags e-mail list.

The Getaway Car by Donald E. Westlake and edited by Levi Stahl (University of Chicago 2014) is a fascinating collection of Westlake’s non-fiction. It is a must for Westlake fans but anyone interested in writing will find it worthwhile.

It includes Westlake’s “The Hardboiled Dicks” first delivered in a May 1982 lecture at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC and later published in The Third Degree. I was at that lecture and it is hard to believe it was over 30 years ago. I remember thinking the lecture was toned down in a couple of spots prior to publication but I will need to find what I wrote for a fan publication at the time for any specifics. It remains a great analysis of the work of the private eye.

One short piece that fascinates me is “Light” an unpublished manuscript found in Westlake’s files and apparently written in 1997 or 1998. His 40th novel “The Ax” was a departure that got great reviews, sold surprisingly well, and caught his publisher’s attention. His return to the world of Parker after a hiatus of more than 20 years in “Comeback” also created a stir.

Suddenly, expectations were raised. He had another novel finished but it was no longer deemed suitable as a follow-up to “The Ax.” He told his agent “It’s a little late for me to have second novel problems, but that is what this is.”

I noticed that the Wall Street Journal has just published an appreciation of Westlake and a nice review of Stahl’s fine collection by William Kristol, editor of the National Review. I rarely agree with Mr. Kristol on anything but I share his enthusiasm for Westlake. I would not go quite as far as Krystol, who said Westlake was “the greatest modern American novelist.”

Here's also writer Barry Malzberg's comment to Richard Moore, published here with Mr. Malzberg's permission: 

As I wrote Lawrence Block off-list a week or two ago, "I am being escorted however reluctantly to belief in Donald E. Westlake as the greatest 20th Century USA writer." A refugee for half a century now from the precincts of quality lit and its bias, I am perhaps unthrilled but also embraced by this inference. No writer alive or dead has given me more pleasure per capita than Donald Westlake. I wish he had not been such a nasty son of a bitch (at least to me) but as Murch's mother would point out, the best route does not usually parallel the most scenic route.

GET REAL shows a 75 year old writer going out at the top, his gifts not only undiminished but soaring. The two posth, the last novel, and the last published in Westlake's lifetime shows his gift not only intact but still growing. The posthumously published novels are sensational, in fact THE COMEDY IS FINISHED, dealing with the same essential national dilemma as AMERICAN PASTORAL outdoes Roth's great novel as social and literary document.

Errors circulating about Gil Brewer's career

I just spotted this blog post via the Facebook group for Gil Brewer fans. It's a review of The Vengeful Virgin, Brewer's novel that was reprinted by Hard Case Crime some years ago. (Mind you, I've never read it, maybe it's about time!) There are some glaring errors I want to point out.

First of all, Gil Brewer didn't start writing at the age of seven. He was born in 1922, so he couldn't have started out in pulp magazines in 1929! It was his father. I know where this originates from: the St. James to The 20th Century Crime and Mystery Writers, but I believe it's been corrected in later editions. Anyone should see it's plain wrong, but apparently not.

Second, Gil Brewer didn't hit the pages of Black Mask, but then again, his first novel was published in 1950, and Black Mask ceased publication in 1951! And as for someone not publishing in Black Mask, let me point out that Fredric Brown - whom we all consider a genius, right? - published only one story in Black Mask. And Manhunt that has been one of the most influential crime short story magazines in history was Brewer's mainstay for years.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: The Shining

Well, most certainly Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, based on one of Stephen King's best-known books, is not an overlooked movie. It is to me, though, since I have never seen it on big screen, and it's been years since I saw it on TV. The screening of the Finnish Film Archive last night remedied this, and I can say the film blew my mind. I've had some problems with Kubrick's films - maybe even all of them -, but they are very cinematic to the edge of maniacal perfection.

Almost everything in The Shining is honed to perfection: the camera drives (remember that Francois Truffaut said Kubrick started out copying Aldrich's camera drives!), weird shooting angles, Jack Nicholson's acting (I wouldn't blame him on overacting on this, as many have done, he's masterly at timing his bursts), the use of music... There are some problems in the film, though: the use of Scatman Crothers's character is mechanic and doesn't bring much to the thematics of the film, and the ending is a bit abrupt.

However, the biggest problem is this: who cares what happens to these people? As the French critic Jacques Rivette once said, Kubrick makes films about machines to other machines. Shelley Duvall's wife is irritating, always almost bursting out in tears, Danny Lloyd's little boy is fascinating, but I think Kubrick could understand his kind of autistic kids. And you never really know what makes Nicholson's Jack Torrance tick. It's of course the basic idea in the film: you never really know... but one would hope for some clues. The film and its story and people exist in a fictional maze that's closed from the other society. It fascinates only as a game, even though it's a really suspenseful game.

This is my first foray into this theme in months. Here's a link to Todd Mason's blog where all the things happen, and here's a link to the previous gathering.

King Vidor, the pulp writer?

Checking something else from the Fictionmags Index, I noticed this entry:

VIDOR, KING (chron.)
Southern Storm, (ss) Esquire May 1935
The Texas Rangers, (ms) Texas Rangers Dec 1936

Now, can this be the famous film director of Fountainhead, Ruby Gentry, War and Peace and other films?

Charles Beckman's short story "The Dancing Death"?

As many of you probably know, pulp writer Charles Beckman who specialized in hardboiled and noir crime stories and wrote also for the western market has been seeing a revival of his work getting into print. (Here and here Amazon links for the new collections of his old stories.) Beckman is still alive and I was able to ask him via James Reasoner if I could a small collection of his work that's been translated in Finnish.

The collection would be with two stories. There's an old story in an old Finnish pulp magazine called Seikkailujen Maailma (The World of Adventures), and then there's a called story "Class Reunion" that was translated by my friend, Tapani Bagge, that appeared in a late crime fiction magazine called RikosPalat (Crime Bits or some such in English). Beckman gave me his permission. (There are also some three or four stories in the old issues of the Finnish edition of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, but I don't have an easy access as to who translated them and where I could find them for a permission.)

After I'd typed "Class Reunion" I started typing the other story from the 1955 pulp mag. The Finnish title is "Tanssiva kuolema", which translates back as "The Dancing Death". The anti-hero of the story is one "Kippy Nikkeli" (I believe the name's been changed), who's on the run from some organized crime thugs, one of whom is called Pope (probably so, since his name is translated as "Paavi", which is the literal translation of "Pope"). In the beginning of the story Kippy finds himself in a junky joint trying to have a hamburger. It seems he hears voices in his head, and he also reminiscences another joint where he used to dance. He's also involving with Pope's mistress falling in love with another man. It's a moody noir-type piece where there no winners, only losers.

Now, there are several problems. Beckman himself didn't remember the story, nor did he find it in the pulp magazines he still has from his writing days. The story is not "Run, Cat, Run" that was reprinted in Beckman's Suspense, Suspicion & Shockers, nor is it "Should a Tear be Shed" in the same book, even though they share some similarities.

Googling the story's name with "Charles Beckman" doesn't give any clues. I don't have access to the crime fiction short story indices and I could check only the Fictionmags Index. There are some stories with the title "The Dancing Death", but none that match. Some of the stories listed therein did appear in a pulp magazine, but they seem to be a bit old or too long, i.e. serials. The story that I have at hand is more like a filler, even though it's a good story.

But there's a story called "Die Dancing, Kid" from Detective Tales, January 1947, and by Charles Beckman. Now, the publisher of Seikkailujen Maailma used lots of stories from the Popular Publications' magazines, such as Dime Detective and Detective Tales (and also Dime Mystery). I asked Beckman again if this could be our story. He said he doesn't remember writing that story and doesn't have a copy.

Now, does anyone have the issue of Detective Tales, January 1947, and can check the story out for me?

The photo accompanying this post is the illustration for the Finnish publication. For all I know, it could be the original illustration for Beckman's story.

Nic Pizzolatto: Galveston

This is a very good book: original, well-written and unpredictable, even though at times there are some elements that might be a bit too familiar.

That happens in almost any noir novel, though. I can't see how you could get away without adding any tough gangsters or any other clichéd material. At least Pizzolatto does a pretty good job with them.

The antihero of the book, Roy Cady is a man without a future. He's doubly that: he's got cancer in his lungs, and he works as a hired hand for a local crime boss who loves Cady's ladyfriend. Cady is a man without qualities, he's empty inside, were it not for the cancer.

Yet he speaks in a beautiful voice. Galveston is full of poetic touches, marvellous lines, quotable stuff on the seedy side of life. And still I don't feel Pizzolatto is over-doing this. Galveston remains believable and plausible almost throughout. (There's one thing plot-wise that didn't wholly convince me, but I won't go into that.)

By the way, I haven't seen any episode of True Detective. I'm pretty eager to see it, yet I'm too lazy to try look it up. (I know there's a chance of seeing it on HBO Nordic, but I'm still waiting for it come on proper TV channels.)

Quick update after the holidays

I've been trying get back to work on a regular basis after the long summer holiday. We did quite a bit of travelling, mainly in Finland, but we also paid a visit to Denmark (Copenhagen and Legoland), where we'd never been. We also bought a summer cottage, so we spent lots of time there. (It's not actually a cottage, but the long explanation might be too difficult.)

Even though July and August were supposed to be a vacation, I had to read work-related stuff: I've started doing a book on the history of Finnish western literature. I also reread lots of Tolkien, since I did a non-fiction book on Tolkien with a friend of mine. I finished it up late last week and sent it off. Now I'm finishing some other lesser books, such as a small anthology of western-themed horror stories by Finnish writers. Then I'm rushing off to finish a book on Finnish war-time photography. Then I'll be able to concentrate on my book on Finnish westerns.

Sounds like I'll be busy, eh? I'll try to get back to regular blogging, but don't expect much, since I'll be loaded with work. Our son went to a fourth grade and comes back home at two p.m., so the working hours are a bit short. Maybe some Overlooked Movies and Forgotten Books every now then.

Oh, I started Nic "True Detective" Pizzolatto's novel Galveston and it seems really, really good. I also read Gillian Flynn's Dark Places (came out in Finnish as Paha paikka) and I liked it a great deal. It's almost like a private eye novel in which the protagonist is herself in the middle of the mystery. Every move, every inquiry she makes affects her own life. Highly recommended, even more so than her celebrated Gone Girl.

James Reasoner's collection in Finnish

I just picked up my copies of a new book I was making. I compiled a small collection of James Reasoner's stories that had previously been published in my fiction magazines Isku and Seikkailukertomuksia and such, and a micropublisher a friend of mine runs published it. Here's more info on the book - it's in Finnish, but you can still read the original titles of the stories. "Red Reef" wasn't previously published in Finnish, it came out only in this book. It's a nice little book full of good old-fashioned pulp fun!

The striking cover is by Pertti Jarla, known for his humorous Fingergpori strip, but alas his name got dropped out at the last minute.

Charlie Huston: Already Dead

I'm still alive and kickin', though you wouldn't realize it by looking at this blog. I've been on holiday which has also meant not blogging. We've travelled quite a bit and been doing some renovations at our new summer cottage (I'll probably post about that something soon).

But here's something that's more in the vein of Pulpetti. Someone might remember I wasn't thrilled about Charlie Huston's vampire private eye novel Already Dead back in 2007, but I've now read the book in Finnish translation and I'm happy to say I liked it more this time. It's a fast-moving, cynical and very violent book about Joe Pitt, a guy who went vampire when being given a blow-job in a New York punk club in the late seventies and who now works as a private eye between the world of vampires and the real human beings. Highly recommended. And this also proves that translations are sometimes a good thing, even though books are usually best read in their original language. Not this time, for some reason or another.

Some e-books I read during the trip: Allan Guthrie, Peter Brandvold, Paul Levine, Gerard Brennan, J. David Osborne

That's a long subject line, isn't it?

We were on a smallish trip earlier this week: we went to Denmark, where we've never been. We visited Legoland, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (highly, highly recommendable) and the vintage Tivoli entertainment park in the centre of Copenhagen. It was a fun trip, for most part, but I'm not going to write about it. Instead, in the spirit of this blog, I'll say something about the books I read during the trip. I had nothing with me but my Kindle. I download only free e-books, since I don't have a credit card with which I could buy e-books, so I'm dependent on what comes free. Even with this approach, I've managed to accumulate a pretty good selection of new noir and hardboiled writing, with some westerns and horror thrown in. Mentioned should also be some classic noir stuff that's coming from publishers like Prologue Books.

Okay, to the books. Peter Brandvold's better known as a western writer, but I've never read any of his books in that genre, but they seem quite good. I read his short novel Paradox Falls that I think is mislabelled as horror. It's more like a suspense thriller, with a possible serial killer hunting some hikers in the Colorado mountains. The book reads pretty fast, but the ending is a bit abrupt. There was also some interesting stuff on being a writer that seemed a bit autobiographic, as the main character, a sympathetic young man yearning for his early love affair, makes his living writing sex westerns. Paradox Falls could've been published as a cheap paperback in the early eighties, and I mean this as a good thing.

Allan Guthrie's Kill Clock was even a shorter book, a novella-length tale of Guthrie's occurring character, Pearce. Guthrie tells his brutal tale with short sentences, but also manages to make Pearce a sympathetic character in all his bruteness and tendency to sudden bursts of violence. Kill Clock also has a good plot for a novella. Recommended quite highly.

Paul Levine's Last Chance Lassiter is the first Jake Lassiter story I've ever read, as I'm not very keen on courtroom thrillers. But this one was so funny and entertaining I'd be willing to try more of Levine's work. Very fluent writing, very smooth plotting, some quite funny wisecracking.

J. David Osborne runs Broken River Books that's a very interesting crime and horror fiction outfit specializing in edgy and bizarre neo-noir. Osborne's own short story collection Our Blood In Its Own Circuit is full with, well, edgy and bizarre stuff that's not easily labelled. I read the first three stories on our flight back, and two of them were very strong: the titular story is about Mexican cops who bathe in the blood of chickens, and the western story "Amends Due, West of Glorieta" is full of shocking violence and characters straight out of a Cormac McCarthy novel. Check out this free Broken River Books sampler!

I also started Gerard Brennan's novella The Point, a brutally realistic story about two brothers whose life goes to hell when they move to a small town on the seaside and the other one starts dealing stolen cars. The plot could be more original, but Brennan's clipped style makes it interesting. I'm only halfway in the middle, so there might be some surprises coming.

Me and my new book

Pulpografia Britannica just came from the printers! Here's me with a happy smile and my first book, Pulpografia that came out in 2000 and deals primarily with American crime pulpsters and paperbackers. You can see it's a worn copy. Hopefully this new book comes just as handy.

Patricia Abbott's short story collection – in Finnish!

Just when I finished my book on British crime paperbackers, I was notified that another book was ready to be picked from the printers. It's Patricia Abbott's Merenneidot (meaning "Mermaids") short story collection I edited and published with a small print run. The book collects six of Abbott's insightful, clever, cruel and empathetic crime stories, most of them are in the flash fiction length, but the longest story in the book is about ten pages long.

The stories are: "Mermaids", "My Hero", "How to Launder a Shirt", "Johnny Jinx", "Hole in the Wall" and "Initiation". Most of these were originally published in the web, but some were print publications. Most of the stories came out in Finnish in my magazines Isku and Ässä, but "Mermaids" and "How to Launder a Shirt" were translated for this book and were never before published in Finnish. "Johnny Jinx" and "Hole in the Wall" were translated by my friend Lotta Sonninen and I'm sure their translations are better than my attempts!

The cover is by Aapo Kukko as are my usual mini books. See the Ray Banks book here and the Ed Gorman book here. (Seems like I haven't blogged about the Gorman book, but it's a translation of his "Scream Queen".)

Most of the copies I'm selling are going to the libraries here in Finland, but this is also available through me for a measly three euros!

Pulpografia Britannica to the printers

Just sent my Pulpografia Britannica to the printers. Here's the cover by Ville Manninen who did spectacular job.

It was a 15-year work. This at least should prove I'm no ADHD person, even though the idea crosses my mind every once in awhile.

Here's the list of authors tackled in the book:

Ray Alan
Eric Ambler
W. Howard Baker
John Boland
David Brierley
Jonathan Burke
Peter Cave
Johnny Cello
Peter Chambers
Philip Chambers
Leslie Charteris
James Hadley Chase
Peter Cheyney
Hugh Clevely
Basil Copper
John Creasey
Paul Denver
Adam Diment
Rex Dolphin
John Drummond
F. Dubrez Fawcett
P. A. Foxall
Stephen Frances
Pete Garroway
Tudor Gates
John S. Glasby
Berkeley Gray
Sean Gregory
Leonard Gribble
Angus Hall
Roger Hamilton
Rex Hardinge
Edwin Harrison
Jack Higgins
Harry Hobson
Hartley Howard
John Hunter
Warwick Jardine
Hank Janson (the pseudonymous efforts of the unknown authors)
George Joseph
Harold Kelly
Arthur Kent
Bill Knox
H. L. Lawrence
Brian McDermott
Arthur MacLean
Wilfred McNeilly
James Moffatt
Stanley Morgan
James Munro
Victor Norwood
Flann O'Brien
Peter O'Donnell
D. J. Olivy
Anthony Parsons
Bryan Peters
John T. Phillifent
Hugh C. Rae
Desmond Reid
Colin Robertson
Angus Ross
Kenneth Royce
Jimmy Sangster
Julian Savarin
Frederick E. Smith
Gordon Sowman
James Stagg
Jack Trevor Story
Rosamond Mary Story
Frank Struan
Martin Thomas
E. C. Tubb
Walter Tyrer
Gerald Verner
John Wainwright
Vernon Warren
Ronald Wills

Some problematic Sexton Blakes

I've been posting some bibliographic puzzles here on Pulpetti for some time now. I'm finally getting my book on British crime paperbackers to print (hopefully at the end of the next week), but there are still some things I'd like to be more sure of. I have several Sexton Blakes translated in Finnish in the early sixties for which I haven't been able to find the original publishing info, as I don't have an access to original English stories.

Here's a lowdown, with the Finnish titles translated literally back to English (but do note that the English titles don't match any known Sexton Blake stories):

Edwin Harrison: "The Green Spider" (published in 1963): someone is coming to meet Sexton Blake at his office, but is hit by a car just in front of Blake's building and gets killed.
Edwin Harrison: "Spanish Blood" (1963): a matador is poisoned by syanide.
Anonymous (only Sexton Blake published in Finnish without the author's name): "The Disappeared Author" (1963): the promising writer of a great book gets lost.
Desmond Reid (a house name): "The Avenger from Dartmoor" (1962): the authorities let a a prisoner escape so that he can revenge and take out his former allies who let him down
Desmond Reid: "The Woman Is Dangerous" (1962): takes place in fictional state of Costa Barria, features also Huxton Rymer, but is still clearly from the post-WWII era
Desmond Reid: "The Trumper Killer": a jazz player makes extra money killing people
Desmond Reid: "The Angel of Death": an early story on animal rights movement, some young people are fleeing the circus animals
Jack Trevor Story: "Gold Means Death": Splash Kirby looks into the world of Italian immigrants and is kidnapped and taken to Italy
Jack Trevor Story: "Death Before One's Eyes": now, this is interesting: Blake is a first person narrator (the only time in the history of Sexton Blake?) and is approached by a former lover who asks Blake look into a mystery
Jack Trevor Story: "Love Under the Gallows": Sexton Blake vs. the teenage gangs

And also, is Jack Trevor Story's Invitation to Murder about someone killing models?