 Bad news. Your husband refused to pay the ransom. He also wanted me to tell you it's not you, it's him. 
A while back we moved Jonathan Latimer from the decent bin to the mandatory bin off the back of his crazy thriller Solomon's Vineyard. We're returning him to the decent bin. The Dead Don't Care is an okay book, but not top notch. Latimer wrote it in 1938, and it was the fourth entry in a detective franchise starring a boozy dick named Bill Crane, and an equally boozy sidekick named Thomas O'Malley. The two engage in such shenanigans as ordering double-triple bourbons and generally pickling their livers at every opportunity—which we totally respect‚ but the actual mystery, divorced from its comedic elements, is overly talky and populated by characters that tend to blend after a while. Basically, Crane and O'Malley are called in when an upper crust woman is kidnapped, and someone is murdered. As usual in such books, the first murder isn't the last, and the second killing provides key clues to finally unmasking the eventual culprit. In all, it was meh. But it did well enough to spawn a film adaptation, 1938's The Last Warning, which we may watch at some point. We're in no way discouraged by The Dead Don't Care. We already know Latimer can write. But it isn't surprising he'd run into problems four entries into a series that would peter out after one more outing. We'll move on to his other books and do so eagerly. This MacFadden-Bartell paperback came in 1964, and the cover art is by Robert Schulz.
 I'm down to my last few bullets! Throw those egg salad sandwiches we brought for lunch! Maybe those will slow them down! 
When we first saw Eric North's 1955 sci-fi thriller The Ant Men the first thought we had— Well, actually, the second thought. The first thought was: “Oh, this is a must read.” Our second thought was: “Highly centralized, conscienceless, conformist hordes seeking to overrun everything in sight? Hmm, wonder what that's a paranoid metaphor for?” But the book doesn't really have the anti-commie thing. It's sci-fi played straight about six unfortunate people who stumble upon a city of giant ants in the dead heart of Australia. To make matters worse, there are more than just ants out there. It's reasonably fun at first, but North slowly drives his own narrative south with an impossibly annoying Aussie bush guide character who exclaims, “Mamma mamma!” probably fifty times. Five would have gotten the idea across. Before long we were hoping the ants would rip him to pieces and drag his sections down a hole to their queen. The fact that they don't is the book's biggest flaw. Aside from that it's decent, but certainly not among the better sci-fi novels of the period. This MacFadden-Bartell edition has art by Jack Faragasso.
 Aren’t you a little old for this sort of thing? 
Bernard Wolfe is known for several reasons, not least of them for being Leon Trotsky’s personal secretary in Mexico City, but he was also a novelist of wide-ranging interests. Come On Out, Daddy was his Hollywood book, about a New York author who moves out west to cash in on an easy screenwriting job. While making a couple thousand dollars a week for doing very little he runs into the usual assortment of jaded Tinseltown characters—from big stars to little wannabes—and trysts with an assortment of disposable beauties before of course meeting the woman of his dreams. It’s episodic due to it being partly cobbled together from short stories published in Playboy and Cavalier, but reasonably well regarded as a cultural satire. Life described it as “garrulously and surrealistically told by a huge cast of people in varying stages of corruption.” 1963 on the hardback, and 1964 on the above, with cool cover art by James Meese.
 It doesn’t look like much now, but slap on some paint, scatter some knick-knacks around, and we can open a bed & breakfast and make a fortune. 
Initially published in 1953 as House of Lost Women, Frank Haskell’s Boarding House acquired its new title in 1954 when re-published by Cameo Books, and retained the new name on the above 1969 edition from Macfadden-Bartell. Frank Haskell was a pseudonym for author Haskell Frankel, whose real name strikes us as a bit more literary sounding than his moniker, whereas the pen name sounds like it belongs to maybe a high school football coach or a union president. No artist info on this, but it’s unusual and we like it.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
2002—Mystery Space Object Crashes in Russia
In an occurrence known as the Vitim Event, an object crashes to the Earth in Siberia and explodes with a force estimated at 4 to 5 kilotons by Russian scientists. An expedition to the site finds the landscape leveled and the soil contaminated by high levels of radioactivity. It is thought that the object was a comet nucleus with a diameter of 50 to 100 meters. 1992—Sci Fi Channel Launches
In the U.S., the cable network USA debuts the Sci Fi Channel, specializing in science fiction, fantasy, horror, and paranormal programming. After a slow start, it built its audience and is now a top ten ranked network for male viewers aged 18–54, and women aged 25–54. 1952—Chaplin Returns to England
Silent movie star Charlie Chaplin returns to his native England for the first time in twenty-one years. At the time it is said to be for a Royal Society benefit, but in reality Chaplin knows he is about to be banned from the States because of his political views. He would not return to the U.S. for twenty years.
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