Robert Bloch is a legend. He is popularly known as a horror writer, but his production was wide and impressive. He wrote extensively in the ...

Robert Bloch, at least to the small but select audience of this blog, needs no introduction. He is one of the great writers to graduate f...

Michael Crichton was a writer who knew how to write, and what he chose to write seemingly meant something to him.  His later novels tende...

I have been reading an unusually high number of westerns recently, and older westerns at that. I continued the trend with an ACE Double—one-...

Fredric Brown is a writer I have heard much about, but a writer whose work I have only sampled. I have read a few short stories, and no more...

I’m a new arrival to the school of Robert Silverberg. I read The Book of Skulls in 2005 and I’ve made a point to read at least some Si...

Killer’s Choice was (I believe) a paperback original published by Berkley Medallion in 1965. The copyright date is listed as 1964, and ...

I’m a collector of words and the ideas those words convey. When I come across a passage I think is significant or a passage I like—for no o...

The Iron Tiger is the seventeenth novel published by Harry Patterson. It was originally released in the U. K. as a hardcover by John Lon...

John Lutz is an old school, in a very good way, crime writer whose first novel— The Truth of the Matter —was published in 1971. Since the...

Ed Gorman’s Sam McCain—small town lawyer and investigator—is at the top of my list for private eye serial characters. He is charming, sar...

Conquest of Earth was published in 1957 as a hardcover by Thomas Bouregy and Company. It was originally published as a four part serial ...

It has been a summer of great older stuff at my house, and one of the fascinations I developed is the work of Brian Garfield. I read a handf...

I generally don’t write much about nonfiction, but I recently read a slim volume about Chuck Yeager’s experience breaking the sound barri...

Stark House Press has released a two-fer of Ed Gorman’s private eye fiction. The titles are two of Mr Gorman’s best: The Autumn Dead an...

Jack Bickham died of lymphoma in July 1997 at the age of 66. He is best remembered as a teacher of writing. He wrote several successful, an...