Upcoming classic thrillers, Library of America.

On January 3, the Library of America announced some of its fall 2023 releases, which included the following:

(1) Five Classic Thrillers 1961–1964 (The Murderers by Fredric Brown, The Name of the Game Is Death by Dan J. Marlowe, Dead Calm by Charles Williams, The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes, The Score by Richard Stark [Donald Westlake])

(2) Four Classic Thrillers 1964–1969 (The Fiend by Margaret Millar, Doll by Ed McBain [Evan Hunter], Run Man Run by Chester Himes, The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith)

Below are some critics' reactions to the works in these volumes.

Re Brown's The Murderers: Sgt. Cuff [John Winterich] in 30 Sept. 1961 Saturday Review dubbed it "highly amative."

Re Highsmith's Tremor of Forgery: Terrence Rafferty in the 4 Jan. 1988 New Yorker dubbed the book "nihilistic."

Re Himes's Run Man Run: Sgt. Cuff in the 31 Dec. 1966 Saturday Review regarded this as a "[t]aut, devilish, ably-written slice of life—and death."

Re Hughes's Expendable Man (Edgar nominee, Best Novel): Kirkus lauded its "savage momentum."

Re Marlowe's The Name of the Game Is Death: Anthony Boucher in the 11 Feb 1962 New York Times believed that Marlowe had reached "an impressive new high."

Online exhibition, Teaching with Mass-Market Paperbacks.

The Phantom of the Opera by
Gaston Leroux, part of the
UNC Libraries exhibition

The UNC Libraries online exhibition "Teaching with Mass-Market Paperbacks" draws on the paperback collection of UNC Chapel Hill to assist instructors who wish to use such works in their classroom. Some sample lesson plans are provided. Mystery books include assorted works by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler; The Blue Geranium by Dolan Birkley (aka Dolores Hitchens); The Couch by Robert Bloch; Honeymoon in Hell by Fredric Brown; Cassidy's Girl by David Goodis; A Taste for Honey by H. F. Heard; I Married a Dead Man and other works by William Irish (aka Cornell Woolrich); and Sorry, Wrong Number by Allan Ullman and Lucille Fletcher (as the cover notes: "She Dialed .. D-E-A-T-H").

"Age of Peril" (1952).

In this February 1952 episode of Tales of Tomorrow adapted from "Crisis 1999" (EQMM, Aug 1949) by mystery-sci fi author Fredric Brown, an agent (character actor Dennis Patrick) sets out to discover who is leaking classified defense secrets. Phyllis Kirk co-stars.

Fredric Brown's Crack-Up (1946).

Sci-fi and mystery writer Fredric Brown, who received an Edgar for The Fabulous Clipjoint, was born today in 1906 in Cincinnati. The film Crack-Up (1946, dir. Irving Reis), in which Pat O'Brien is convinced he has witnessed a train wreck that others say never occurred, is based on Brown's "Madman's Holiday" (1943).

Info on Harvard's sci-fi collection.

Cover from Nightmare Tales
(1892) by Helena Blavatsky,
part of Harvard's sci-fi
collection

Harvard has provided further details on the 3000-volume science fiction collection within Houghton Library's Modern Books and Manuscripts Collection. Two covers on the Web site are Anthony Boucher's Rocket to the Morgue (which has thinly disguised versions of Robert Heinlein, Hugo Gernsback, and L. Ron Hubbard) and Fredric Brown's What Mad Universe.

Also see this cover from Nathan Schachner's Space Lawyer (a joke must be lurking somewhere in there).

Vol 2 of Johnson's The Dark Page: Books That Inspired American Film Noir.

July's Fine Books and Collections looks at Kevin Johnson's The Dark Page: Books That Inspired American Film Noir, vol. 2 (covering the 1950s). Works mentioned in the piece include Fredric Brown's The Screaming Mimi (1949); Niven Busch's The Furies (1948); Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1925); Dorothy B. Hughes's In a Lonely Place (1947); Mickey Spillane's Kiss Me, Deadly (1952); and Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts (1933).

About the image: Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun, dir. George Stevens, 1951; adaptation of Dreiser's An American Tragedy.

Happy birthday, Fredric Brown.

Fredric Brown, Edgar winner for The Fabulous Clipjoint (1947) featuring the sleuthing Ambrose Hunter and his nephew Ed, was born today in Cincinnati in 1906. He was well known for his writings in the pulps, and a few of his works were adapted for the screen: "Madman's Holiday" became the film Crack-up (1946), The Screaming Mimi became a film for Columbia (1958), and "Arena" became an episode of Star Trek. He also wrote for Alfred Hitchcock Presents.