In his Preface to Tales of the Impossible, Bill Pronzini cites Carter Dickson (aka, John Dickson Carr) collection of locked room and impossible crimes, The Department of Queer Complaints (1940), as the book that ignited his fascination with “miracle problems.”

Over his long and successful career, Bill Pronzini has published many stories involving locked room mysteries and impossible crimes. This new Stark House volume collects 19 top-notch stories in that genre.

My favorite story in Tales of the Impossible is one of Pronzini’s stories about his most famous character: the Nameless Detective. The Nameless Detective in “Booktaker” is hired by a bookstore owner to investigate the thefts of several rare and expensive items from his secure Antiquities Room. Despite locks and security monitors, valuable items have vanished. Kerry Wade, the Nameless Detective’s love interest, plays a key role in the solution of how the thefts were accomplished.

Also entertaining are the Carpenter and Quincannon stories set in the 1890s. Pronzini sets his stories in a mausoleum, a gold mine, a sawmill camp, a locked office, and in ghostly surroundings. John Quincannon, who thinks he’s “indisputably the foremost detective west of the Mississippi if not the entire nation,” proves this might be the case as he solves the eight crimes he’s investigating in Tales of the Impossible.

Tales of the Impossible displays the quintessence of Bill Pronzini’s locked room and impossible crime stories. The bizarre crimes, complex puzzles, the tantalizing enigmas make Tales of the Impossible one of the Best Books of the Year! GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

PREFACE: The Game of Miracles — 7

STANDALONES

The Arrowmont Prison Riddle — 12

Proof of Guilt — 31

The Half-Invisible Man (with Jeffrey Wallmann) — 40

The Terrarium Principle — 50

Vanishing Act (with Michael Kurland) — 54

NAMELESS DETECTIVE

Where Have You Gone, Sam Spade? — 70

Something Wrong — 97

A Nice Easy Job — 102

Dead Man’s Slough — 119

Ace in the Hole — 129

Booktaker — 139

CARPENTER AND QUINCANNON

The Horseshoe Nail — 172

Devil’s Brew — 192

The Chatelaine Bag (with Marcia Muller) –209

The Body Snatchers — 223

The Gold Stealers — 238

Smoke Screen — 255

It Couldn’t Be Done — 270

The Carville Ghost — 290

Bibliography — 312

Back in the mid-1960s, S. E. Hinton, a teenager, wrote The Outsiders, which became a surprise best seller. Now, over 50 years later, The Outsiders: The Musical is touring the country with a blend of West Side Story and Grease. The Broadway version won the Best Musical Tony.

The story is set in Tulsa in 1967. The city has two warring groups: the Greasers (poor teenagers) and the Socs (upper-middle class teenagers) (pronounced /ˈsoʊʃɪz/ SOH-shiz—short for Socials). The musical includes several fights including an epic battle in the rain.

 Ponyboy Curtis, a Greaser with aspirations, finds himself on the run after a vicious incident with the Socs. For a musical aimed at a younger audience, there’s a surprising body count.

While my favorite song is “Stay Gold,” I found many of the songs in The Outsiders merely passable. GRADE: B

MUSICAL NUMBERS:

Okay, this really isn’t my basement library…but it’s pretty close. What does your library look like? How big is it?

The 3-0 Buffalo Bills are celebrating their 31-21 victory over the Miami Dolphins on Thursday Night Football by taking this Sunday off. The Bills will be back next Sunday to take on Deb’s New Orleans Saints.

How will your favorite NFL team perform today?

Six seasons on PBS and three feature films later, the franchise of Downton Abbey looks like it’s coming to an end (unless this movie makes a ton on money).

The movie is set in 1930, a year after a stock market crash that threw the world into The Great Depression. The Crawley family is forced to tighten its economic belt but not so much that they’ve given up their staff of servants and their assorted holdings. Dower House, former residence of Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham (the late Maggie Smith, honored with a dedication as well as oil painting of the countess looming over the front hall) remains along with renovation plans to generate cash.

The family is visited by American businessman Harold Levinson (Paul Giamatti), brother of Cora Crowley (Elizabeth McGovern). Levinson’s brought another American, Gus Sambrook (Alessandro Nivola), a financier who, Harold says, helped keep the matriarch’s side of the family solvent after the crash. Unfortunately, Gus made bad decisions after that, depleting the nest egg that the Crowleys thought they could break open to renovate Downton Abbey and turn it into a rental property that could generate future income.

” Lady Mary is getting a divorce, the news ripples through the surrounding community, making her a pariah among the high society people she used to call friends (even though they really weren’t). Some levity is added by actor Guy Dexter (Dominic West, totally believable as a Clark Gable-style movie star), who was at the center of the last movie. Dexter is reintroduced as the star of a London play by Noël Coward (Arty Froushan, who is absolutely credible playing one of the most charming men who ever lived).”

If you’re a Downton Abbey fan, don’t miss this! GRADE: B+

John Brunner’s Science Fiction novels were a constant presence in ACE Doubles in the 1960s. Later, DAW Books reprinted many of Brunner’s works like Quicksand (1967) and a collection of his short stories in The Book of John Brunner (1976).

Quicksand follows the interaction of psychiatrist Paul Fidler with a mysterious woman who shows up in rural England naked and confused. Fidler has the young woman learn English and learns some incredible facts about where she might be from. As Fidler becomes more involved, he falls deeper in to the quicksand of circumstances surrounding the young woman and her incredible past. GRADE: C

The Book of John Brunner includes five of Brunner’s most unusual SF stories–none of them have previously appeared in paperback. Also included in this volume are five of Brunner’s most significant SF and futurological articles–none of which have ever appeared in book form before. If you’re a John Brunner fan, The Book of John Brunner is worth checking out. GRADE: B+

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Premumble — Crossword — Limerick #1 — A different kick, or how to get high without actually going into orbit — “Lullaby for the mad scientist’s daughter” — Bloodstream — Domestic crisis 2017 — Hide and seek = cache-cache / by Gérard Klein ; translated by John Brunner — Limerick #2 — The technological folk-hero : has he a future? — “The ballad of Teddy Hart” — Who steals my purse — Excerpt from a social history of the 20th century — Feghoot I — Die spange / by Stefan George — Limerick #3 — Them as can, does — “Faithless Jack the spaceman” — When Gabriel… — What we have here — Feghoot II — The Spartans’ epitaph at Thermopylae (from The Greek Anthology) — Limerick #4 — The educational relevance of science fiction — “The spacewreck of the Old 97” — Manalive (excerpt) — Matthew XVIII, 6 — Feghoot III — Corrida / by Rainer Maria Rilke — Limerick #5 — The evolution of a science fiction writer — “The h-bombs’ thunder — The new thing — The atom bomb is twenty-five this year — Epigrammata LXV / by Decimus Magnus Ausonius — Solution to crossword.

The 2-0 Buffalo Bills face the 0-2 Miami Dolphins in an AMAZON Prime Video extravaganza. No…not really. The Bills are favored by 12 1/2 points and the Dolphins look like a dumpster fire. Head Coach of the Dolphins, Mike McDaniel, may be fired soon. Many Dolphin players will celebrate that move.

The Bills beat the NY Jets 30-10, but lost three starters to injuries. Will that make a difference tonight? We’ll see…

The Eyes Still Have It, from 30 years ago, still stands out as one of the best collection of Private Eye stories ever collected. Bob Randisi provides a compelling introduction and adds comments before each story to put the authors and their works in context.

I was impressed that Randisi included TWO stories by Loren De. Estleman and Lawrence Block…both excellent!

If you’re in the mood for some superb P.I. short stories, don’t miss The Eyes Still Have It. GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction by Robert J. Randisi — vii

What you don’t know can’t hurt you / by John Lutz –1

Cat’s paw / by Bill Pronzini — 21

By the dawn’s early light / by Lawrence Block — 45

Eight mile and Dequindre / by Loren D. Estleman — 65

Fly away home / by Rob Kantner — 89

Turn away / by Ed Gorman — 105

The crooked way / by Loren D. Estleman — 117

The killing man / by Mickey Spillane — 139

Final resting place / by Marcia Muller — 165

Dust devil / by Nancy Pickard — 185

Mary, Mary, shut the door / by Benjamin M. Schutz — 203

The merciful angel of death / by Lawrence Block — 229

Kaitlin Olson‘s Morgan Gillory is back to solve crimes and provide fun. Taran Killam, who plays Morgan’s friendly ex-husband, Ludo, returns to help with the kids. Morgan juggles her three children while dealing with her complicated Life. The mini-skirt-wearing genius who has agreed to help the LAPD’s Major Crimes unit with their cases continually surprises in these episodes.

If you’r looking for mysteries and humor, check out High Potential! Premieres: Tuesday, Sept. 16 at 10/9c on ABC, streaming next day on Hulu. GRADE: INCOMPLETE but trending towards a B+