Night of Horror & Other Stories

Joel Townsley Rogers is best known for his classic thriller, THE RED RIGHT HAND, which has been in print since its first publication in 1945. But he was also one of the great short story writers of the pulp era and now, for the first time, Barry Warren has collected seven of his best stories. Most of the stories are about mystery writers and their struggle to get published -- or to murder someone and get away with it. The narrators in Rogers' stories are often conflicted that way. Read what a prominent mystery/SF author has to say about this book: "What a treat! Twenty-plus years after Joel Townsley Rogers' death, here is the first collection of his shorter works - and it's a beauty! Seven stories, mostly criminous, and it's hard to choose a favorite. I'm inclined toward "The Murder Plot" (1949), describing the fatal encounter of two writers, both of them, I imagine, representing two sides of Rogers' own personality. There's George Gribby, "a cent-a-word freelance writer of highly fantastic mystery stories," and muscular, well-developed Evans Dodd, he of the quiet but swank address, "one of the most spectacularly successful of the younger murder novelists." But then there's "Pink Diamonds" (1941), a surprising venture into ultra-hardboiled territory, a shocker that keeps on shocking. "Rogers wrote westerns, science fiction, mysteries, air adventures. He wrote for the biggest of the slicks and the humblest of the pulps. Please, Ramble House, please give us more collections of these marvelous yarns. Number One on my wish list - I'll send a letter to Santa this year, I promise! - would be "Enter Captain Death" (1932), a four-parter from Short Stories. Or maybe "Blood on the Moon" (1929) from Air Stories, or "The Eel Walks" (1935), a two-parter from Detective Fiction Weekly. There's such a wealth of mouth-watering stuff here, we could fill a five-foot shelf and never exhaust the treasure trove." Richard A. Lupoff


Genre: Mystery