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Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine - March 1965



This pulp mag has been issued every month for over eighty years now with only three editors. Ellery Queen is a character invented even earlier in the 1920s as a fictional detective who was then used as a writing and editing pseudonym for this mag and numerous anthologies.
I got it because it has a Gerald Kersh story not available in any other publication. The Kersh story is good and I was pleasantly surprised by the rest of the contents with quite a wide range of story types in a variety of styles. You could do worse than grab one of these mags if you see one at a car boot sale.

Chickamauga 1863
James R. Arnold 1992 (Osprey 1992)



"Osprey's examination of the battle at Chickamagua, one of the decisive campaigns of the American Civil War (1861-1865). By the Autumn of 1863 the Confederacy was in dire straits. In a colossal gamble, Confederate President Jefferson Davis stripped forces from all the major Confederate armies to reinforce the Army of Tennessee in a last ditch attempt to crush the Union. On 19th September the Confederates attacked the Union army along Chickamauga creek south of Chattanooga. On the second day of bloody fighting the entire Union right collapsed and the army retreated headlong for Chattanooga, all except General George H. Thomas' Corps who fought on doggedly until nightfall delaying the confederate advance, saving the Union and earning his fame as the "Rock of Chickamauga"."

The second bloodiest of the civil war battles with 35,000 casualties. The tactics were basically large lines of infantry mowing each other down at close quarters with muskets.
The book is ok: like the Austerlitz one it suffers from having a large number of units and commanders who are hard to keep track of. It could have done with more maps and places mentioned in the text are sometimes not on the maps but you get the gist of what is going on, and internet videos are available to get a better understanding of the manouvering.

The Phantom of the Opera
Gaston Leroux 1911, David Coward (translator) 2012 (OUP 2012)



"A mysterious Phantom haunts the depths of the Paris Opera House where he has fallen passionately in love with the beautiful singer Christine Daaé. Under his guidance her singing rises to new heights and she is triumphantly acclaimed. But Christine is also loved by Raoul de Chagny, and by returning his love she makes the fiend she knows as the Angel of Music mad with jealousy. When the Phantom is finally unmasked, will Christine see beyond his hideous disfigurement?
The twists and turns of Leroux's thrilling story have captivated readers since its very first appearance in 1910, and its outlines are known to many more who have seen it on stage or film. This new translation is as full-blooded and sensational as the original."

It has a shortcoming common to a lot of novels originally published in serial form in that it is too long and baggy. The pace picks up in the second half and it becomes quite exciting, particularly if, like me, you've never seen any of the films or stage productions. The huge opera house with it's hundreds of staff and thousands of rooms with the disfigured genius holed up in his secret lair makes for a great storyline; it's just a shame Leroux took too long to get to the nitty gritty.
Listed in "Horror: Another 100 Best Books"

The World, the Flesh, & the Devil
Gerald Kersh 2006 (Ash-Tree Press 2006)



"GERALD KERSH (1911–68) was a prolific story-teller, who wrote long stories, short stories, dramatic stories, bizarre stories, scientific stories, supernatural stories, historical stories, and Biblical stories. His subjects covered almost every type of person you could imagine meeting: wrestlers and boxers, drunks and gamblers, poets and artists, vagabonds and kings, soldiers and reporters, freaks and geeks; and in the course of a writing career which spanned more than thirty years, ending with his death in 1968, he produced more than four hundred stories, none of which have been in print for almost forty years.
For this first volume in Ash-Tree Press's series of The Fantastical Writings, editor Paul Duncan has selected twenty-five of Kersh's stories for your enjoyment and entertainment. Two of the stories are collected here for the first time.
So, settle back and enter the world of Gerald Kersh, where you will encounter the strong, long-living Corporal Cuckoo; the being who became known as 'The Brighton Monster'; the sad tale of Lalouette, the 'Queen of Pig Island'; the story of the final days of Ambrose Bierce; the madness of Dr Pelikan, who warns of the impending death of his colleague Dr Ox; and many, many more."

Production wise a very good quality book. It was expensive but with two stories not available elsewhere I had to have it.
It says Volume 1 in the title but no second volume has appeared in the subsequent 17 years. What I would really like to see is a reprint of Kersh's collection "More Than One Upon a Time" which will currently set you back £150 for the fifty year old edition.

Missee Lee
Arthur Ransome 1941 (Puffin 1973)



"Missee Lee is the tenth book of Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series of children's books, set in 1930s China. The Swallows and Amazons are on a round-the-world trip with Captain Flint aboard the schooner Wild Cat. After the Wild Cat sinks, they escape in the boats Swallow and Amazon, but are separated in a storm. Both dinghies eventually end up in the lair of the Three Island pirates—Chang, Woo and Lee—where they are held prisoner by the unusual Missee Lee, the leader of the Three Island pirates." (wikipedia)

Categorised as a metafiction in that, like Peter Duck, it is supposedly a story made up by the characters although there's nothing explicit in the text to indicate that this is the case.
Apparently it's one of the least popular S&A books but I really enjoyed it. Miss Lee the Pirate leader and latin scholar is the most interesting and complex adult character in any of the the books and there is an air of authenticity about the depictions of chinese culture. It has an exotic location and an exciting adventure element with the story bulding up to an rousing climax as they make their escape from the pirate islands.