The Fantastic Detective Notebook by Gary Lovisi

As I've mentioned several times before, Stark House Press do a very good job of reprinting interesting and varied crime novels and short stories. They have also published some non-fiction titles, such as Rick Ollerman's Hardboiled, Noir and Gold Medals, which reflects Rick's wide reading and enthusiasm. A recent addition to their eclectic list is The Fantastic Detective Notebook by Gary Lovisi. This is a much-expanded and revised version of a reference book Lovisi first produced, in a very small print run, forty years ago. Lovisi happens to be a prolific fiction writer, and this experience is reflected in his concise but often insightful comments.    

A new foreword summarises the basic premise: 'When well done, science fiction, fantasy, or horror, melded with the private eye, crime and noir genre make for a fascinating mix of entertaining fiction.' Not everyone likes cross-genre writing, and it's not an area in which I can claim any great expertise, but I was interested to see that the many books mentioned include an anthology for which I wrote a story, The Mammoth Book of Future Cops. The story was called 'Mindstalker', and it represented quite a departure for me as a writer. Maybe one of these fine days I should have another go at a story of that kind.

One of numerous appealing features of this book is that there is a plentiful supply of full-colour illustrations of book covers. The choice of authors and books covered is eclectic, ranging for example from Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy novels to Len Deighton's SS-GB. This is not only a useful work of reference but also a good source of answers to the question: 'What should I read next?' A very worthwhile title indeed.

I'd also like to squeeze in a mention of another worthwhile Stark House Press title, Nothing Darker Than the Night, which focuses on hardboiled and noir fiction and collects essays by Curtis Evans that have appeared elsewhere in the past. Many of the authors featured, such as Hammett, Chandler, and Woolrich, have been discussed extensively before by leading critics, and the absence of an index is a shame, but it's good to see pieces about such writers as Fredric Brown, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, and Edna Sherry, all of whose novels I find very interesting, and all of whom deserve to be remembered.