ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

BOOK REVIEWS

  • Hardboiled Coffee Night

    The attendant filled my cup and made change without waking, moving as if his starched coat was holding him up. I sat at the shining enameled counter, slowly burning my throat with coffee and thinking with a chilly three o’clock brain. Ruth was clear, of murder at any rate. But the Schneiders’ alibi was at… Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “Rides a Stranger” by David Bell

    I have said here before that Bibliomysteries are one of many subgenera that are always in my wheel-house. Books, bookstores, libraries, book collecting make the perfect subject and setting for mysteries. David Bell’s stand-alone, short story, “Rides a Stranger” is a great example of the Bibliomystery sub-genre. Don and his father shared a love of… Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “The Euthanasia of Hilary’s Aunt” by Cyril Hare

    The Short-Story form allows writers to be more “playful” than they could be in a longer form. TExperiment, even cheat a little, if you will. All in the name of entertainment. Cyril Hare was the pen name of Alfred Clark a barrister and a member of the famous Detection Club. He wrote a number of… Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “Bread Upon the Waters” by A.A. Milne

    One of the most enjoyable things about reading short story anthologies is the number of pleasant surprises you get. In the Golden Age of Detective Fiction (the 1920s & 1930s) everyone who wrote in Britain tried their hand at mysteries. Even Winnie-the-Pooh’s famous creator, A.A. Milne. Milne’s short story “Bread Upon the Waters” is an… Read more

  • Hardboiled Coffee Morning

    I dressed quickly and followed her into the kitchen. She had coffee ready and handed me a cup, knowing by my face that something was wrong. She didn’t ask. She waited until I was ready. I said, “I had a friend who was killed last night. I know how, I know why and I know… Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: The Corpse in the Waxworks by John Dickson Carr

    I recently reviewed the John Dickson Carr novel Castle Skull here at ClimbingSky, which I liked very much. When I went online to my local library to find another book in the British Library Crime Classics Series to read this Carr novel, The Corpse in the Waxworks, immediately caught my eye. In The Corpse in… Read more

  • Some More Book Covers

    For the past few years I have been downsizing my various “collections” of books. Here are some of the great paperbacks I recently got rid of. Enjoy the great artwork! Read more

  • Hardboiled Coffee & Cigarette

    It wasn’t completely light when I woke up again, but the foggy, half-light that sometimes lingers along the coast in August. I got up and put some coffee water on and got under the shower. Pain leaped through my stomach and my head felt like a coconut that had fallen from a tall tree. I… Read more

  • Golden Age Detective Fiction

    For some reason I have been reading a lot of Golden Age Detective Fiction of late. The Golden Age of Detective Fiction is generally considered to be the kind of mysteries written in the 1920s and 1930s, primarily in Britain. What that means is that I have been reading novels by and short story collections… Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: Murder by the Book, ed. by Martin Edwards

    The Bibliomystery is a sub-genre of Mysteries that I greatly enjoy. Bibliomysteries, as their name implies, are mysteries deeply intertwined with books and the literary world. These stories might involve the theft of a rare edition, the murder of a bookseller, or shady dealings within a publishing house. The defining characteristic is a substantial connection… Read more