A Lost Vintage Crime Novel!

Those of you who follow The Overnight Bestseller may remember that I'm a fan of vintage paperbacks. I have a shelf in the basement filled with Ace Doubles, Dell mysteries, and Pocket Book westerns. Almost all of them are reading copies, dog-eared and chipped. In fact, I just finished re-reading And Be A Villain by Rex Stout in a Bantam Book edition printed in 1950 that is so beat up the pages have all come away from the binding and I have to pick them up one at a time to read the story. That's how much I love these books and the stories they tell.

Imagine my surprise and pleasure when I had an opportunity to review the first-time publication of The Knife Slipped, a Cool and Lam mystery published by Erle Stanley Gardner writing as A. A. Fair. This manuscript was recently uncovered and published by Hard Case Crime. It was originally intended by Gardner to be the second novel in the series but was rejected by his publisher. While I was at NoirCon 2016 in Philadelphia I had a chance to meet Hard Case Crime publisher and editor Charles Ardai. We talked about the discovery of this lost gem, and he graciously provided me with a copy of the book when I mentioned my review copy hadn't yet arrived in the mail.

Read my review of The Knife Slipped in the New York Journal of Books here: http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/knife-slipped

Enjoy!