Movie Review: Black Jack: The Movie

The good doctor and a potential patient.

Movie Review: Black Jack: The Movie (1996) directed by Osamu Dezaki The Twentieth Century is still waning, but it looks like the people of the Twenty-First Century, the superhumans, have already arrived! At the most exciting Olympics in decades, record after record is smashed by athletes from around the world. They’re from different countries, so there… Continue reading Movie Review: Black Jack: The Movie

Book Review: The Shadow #61: The Triple Trail & Murder Genius

Book Review: The Shadow #61: The Triple Trail & Murder Genius edited by Anthony Tollin It’s time for more exciting pulp reprints of the mystery man known as the Shadow! “The Triple Trail” is by Walter B. Gibson, the original Maxwell Grant. Stanton Treblaw, collector of letters written by notable people, has been contacted by… Continue reading Book Review: The Shadow #61: The Triple Trail & Murder Genius

Book Review: Siege

Book Review: Siege by Victor B. Miller from a script by Robert Heverly The bank robbery itself went smoothly, but the getaway was a disaster due to fast police response. Two of the robbers panicked and drove off with the van, while the other four in the car wound up roadblocked and fleeing on foot.… Continue reading Book Review: Siege

Book Review: Wilderness Nurse

Book Review: Wilderness Nurse by Marguerite Moders Marshall Denise Burke is a nurse, and a good one. Despite her relative youth, Denise is skilled enough to be given assignments as a “special nurse” who provides round the clock care for patients who need the extra attention and can pay. However, one too many special assignments… Continue reading Book Review: Wilderness Nurse

Book Review: New Stories for Men

Book Review: New Stories for Men edited by Charles Grayson This 1941 anthology’s title is a trifle misleading, as some of the stories were up to twenty years old at the time of publication. It turns out it’s a sequel to Stories for Men by the same editor a year or two earlier, which became… Continue reading Book Review: New Stories for Men

Book Review: Mother of Detective Fiction

Book Review: Mother of Detective Fiction by Patricia D. Maida One of the joys of reading random biographies is learning about minor figures you might have heard about once in a long list of “these people existed.” In this case, it’s Anna Katherine Green, author of the first detective novel written by a woman in… Continue reading Book Review: Mother of Detective Fiction

Magazine Review: Water~Stone Review Volume 9: What Prevails

Magazine Review: Water~Stone Review Volume 9: What Prevails edited by Mary Francois Rockcastle It is time again to look at Hamline University’s annual literary magazine. This issue is from 2006. It’s dedicated to Frederick Busch, author of Girls, who had visited the university shortly before his death the previous year. The subtitle, borrowed from one… Continue reading Magazine Review: Water~Stone Review Volume 9: What Prevails

Book Review: In the Blood

Book Review: In the Blood by Delia Remington Most of what you know about Marie Antoinette is wrong. For starters, she was and is a vampire. The French Revolution wasn’t about taxes or food, it was about wiping out the vampires that had taken over the French nobility. The “Marie” that was beheaded was a mind-controlled double. The real Marie… Continue reading Book Review: In the Blood

Magazine Review: High Adventure #160: Ten Detective Aces Special

Magazine Review: High Adventure #160: Ten Detective Aces Special edited by John P. Gunnison Ten Detective Aces started publication in 1928 under the title The Dragnet Magazine and primarily featured gangster stories. Public interest in gangsters as a separate subgenre was fading, so in 1930 the magazine started featuring more general crime and detective stories under the title Detective-Dragnet Magazine, and in 1933 switched to Ten… Continue reading Magazine Review: High Adventure #160: Ten Detective Aces Special

Book Review: The New Adventures of Ellery Queen

Book Review: The New Adventures of Ellery Queen by Ellery Queen Ellery Queen was the shared pen name of Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee, as well as the main character of the mystery stories they wrote. Starting with The Roman Hat Mystery in 1929, they wrote many novels and short stories about a brainy mystery writer solving crimes (and then writing about them in the third… Continue reading Book Review: The New Adventures of Ellery Queen