Nostalgia City Mysteries

Mark S. Bacon

Category Archives: mystery writers

9:12 am - October 15, 2015 -

Memo to Jeff Bezos

0

Dear Jeff,

Congratulations on the launch of Handmade at Amazon. This fills a small gap in Amazon’s broad offerings. In fact, Amazon is now positioned to provide nearly everything consumers need from household goods to nearly all forms of entertainment. Your acquisition last year of the comedy firm, Rooftop Media, even supplies your companies with laughs—let’s face it, something you could use after that nasty New York Times article. (I’m thinking the story was prompted by support from the big five.)

Looking at the vast Amazon countryside, I see but one area missing: coverage of murder mystery fiction. Americans devour mystery books. The top selling titles of all time are mysteries. And although Amazon does sell millions of mystery books—including mine for which I’m grateful—it appears you don’t have a separate website dedicated to the genre.

May I suggest Baconsmysteries.com. I’ve been writing about mysteries here for several years. I do reviews, include mystery flash fiction stories and occasionally discuss industry trends. Okay, so I do self-promotion, too. Every book writer does that. We have to. But that’s not a deal-breaker for me.

Acquisition would be simple as I’m the only employee. Certainly I would be glad to stay on for a short time to organize things. You can contact me at the email address listed on the “about” tab on my website.   I’m sure we can agree on a reasonable price.

Sincerely,

Mark S. Bacon

 

P.S. This really has nothing to do with the above, but I applaud your acquisition of the venerable Washington Post. Newspapers are far from money makers today, but keeping the fourth estate alive, if only for its government and business watchdog functions, is a noble project. And I see you’re working on its bottom line. I read the Post online regularly, but I’m now going to have to subscribe for the privilege. Good idea.

Categories: book publishers, Mystery novels, mystery writers, newspapers Tags:
8:10 am - August 24, 2015 -

Can you read three novels at once? I can’t

3

Ali Reynolds, a former TV news anchor who returned to her hometown in Arizona after a series of personal crises, is sitting the waiting room of a Phoenix hospital burn ward. She’s an undercover operative for a local sheriff, hunting for the person who stripped a woman bare, doused her with gasoline and set her afire. The woman’s husband walks into the room.

Sula Moreno, despite her phobias and family tragedies, is about to take on the powerful, cold-blooded CEO of a Eugene, Ore., pharmaceutical company. Standing outside a corporate conference room, Sula hears the CEO arguing with a VP about undisclosed dangers of an anti-depressant drug that is about to be launched—with possibly deadly results. She records the conversation, but the CEO spots her.Trial-by-Fire-Jance-Web-opt

It’s just another day in the life of Spenser and Hawk. Someone is trying to shake down the operator of a classy, upscale Boston whorehouse run by an old friend of Spenser’s. With expected aplomb, Spenser and Hawk dispatch two batches of thugs but find themselves in something much deeper than a simple protection racket.

Some people are comfortable reading more than one novel at a time. I’m not one of them. Frequently, I read nonfiction while I’m in the middle of a novel, but the thought of trying to keep track of characters and plots from two (or more?) novels at the same time takes the fun out of it. I like to live in novels, identify with characters, appreciate an author’s skill with words and, in the case of mysteries, try to solve the puzzle. Why would I want to do that with three crime books simultaneously? Continue Reading →

Categories: craft of writing, Mystery novels, mystery writers Tags: , , , , , , ,
3:21 am - July 14, 2015 -

Only the orange hat can save his life

0
Phantom Lady
Cornell Woolrich writing as William Irish
Introduction by Barry N. Malzberg
Centipede Press 2012
288 pages
Trade paper $18
Originally published in 1942

Hear the clock ticking? It’s counting down the minutes and seconds that Scott Henderson has to live. He’s accused of murdering his wife who, he admits to police, had refused to give him a divorce. But he didn’t kill her.

At least we don’t think he did, although his alibi is almost impossible to believe. He says he spent the evening with a lady he picked up in a bar. They attended a musical revue together, then parted after the show without ever exchanging names or personal information.Phantom-Lady-novel-cover

Fans of Cornell Woolrich will appreciate this new edition of Phantom Lady. It contains a unique, if rambling, reminiscence about the author by someone who was his agent a year before he died. It also includes color pictures of posters from the 1944 movie based on the novel and shots of various cover treatments of the book since its original release. This beautiful edition, on heavy stock, makes a great addition to your mystery library.

If you’ve just discovered Woolrich and are working your way through his substantial body of suspense work, Phantom Lady is not a bad place to start. Although it’s not my favorite Woolrich tale, it’s an edge-of-your-seat nail-biter until the end. But that was Woolrich’s MO for more than two dozen books. Continue Reading →

Categories: Cornell Woolrich, film noir, Mystery novels, mystery writers, Noir Tags: , , , ,