Tuesday, July 09, 2013

Cozzens's "Clerical Error" (1983).

In this April 1983 episode of Tales of the Unexpected, some shady booksellers attempt to extort a dead man's family—with unexpected results. Poirot's Hugh Fraser appears in this adaptation of James Gould Cozzens's "Foot in It" (Redbook Aug. 1935; repr. as "Clerical Error" in venues such as the June 1950 EQMM, Ellery Queen's The Literature of Crime, and Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini's Chapter and Hearse). Cozzens (1903–78), author of the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone novel The Just and the Unjust and the Pulitzer Prize winner Guard of Honor (admired by Raymond Chandler), was dubbed "the Garbo of U.S. letters" by Time magazine in 1957.

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