Nicks` Cabinet of Curios

  Mary Danby (ed) - Realms of Darkness ; Nightmarish Tales of the Supernatural and Macabre - Octopus - 1985 Published for St Michael/Marks and Spencer, presumably to be sold in their stores, in 1985, the same year as the first edition was published (by Heinemann, I think). With introduction by Christopher Lee 73 short stories by 73 authors, including Martin Amis, Dennis Wheatley, Agatha Christie, F Marion Crawford, J B Priestley, and Bill Pronzini. Mary Danby was an author in her own right as well as being noted as editor of numerous anthologies of supernatural fiction. She also acted as compiler of various humorous anthologies - books of jokes, cartoons, limericks etc, though these need not detain us here. This impressive collection brings together the modern and the classic, the obscure and the well-known. It`s true that other anthologists - Richard Dalby springs to mind - have done very much the same thing, but let`s not worry too much about that.  With such a range of auth...

   Bill S Ballinger - The Longest Second - Mystery Book Guild - 1958 An absorbing read, with a touch of the Ed McBains about it.  The principal story told in this novel is of a man who wakes up in a hospital ward suffering from amnesia. He has a severe cut to his throat and it is unclear if this was due to an assault or a suicide attempt. He is told by a detective that his name is Vic Pacific, an identity they have established by checking his fingerprints against army records as he served in North Africa during World War Two. The second story concerns two detectives investigating the case of a man found dead with very similar injuries to the throat. They too check his fingerprints man`s against army records and they too find their man is Vic Pacific ! The larger part of the story is given over to the first man`s search for his own identity and the things he learns about himself along the way.  For him, people seem to fall into two categories, those who are useful to ...

  Jonathan Goodman (ed) - Medical Murders - BCA  - 1992 (Book originally published by Piatkus the previous year) Contributors ; Jonathan Goodman, Edward H Smith, Harold Eaton, Joan Lock, Rev Evelyn Burnaby and 8 others This was a book I found on a charity stall at my local supermarket. Having proffered what I hope was a suitable donation I trotted happily home, ready to immerse myself in the world of murderous medics, dangerous doctors and poisonous practitioners.  The book was enjoyable, but a bit patchy. Most of the pieces were originally published  in other true crime collections, a couple seem to have been written specifically for inclusion in this volume and two were originally  newspaper articles. Some contributors have done their homework - Albert Borowitz has clearly made a particular study of the murder of Dr George Parkman at Harvard Medical College in Boston (1849) - but while I may be treating them unfairly,  others may not have drawn on such a ...