Books: 745

The Bell in the Fog
Lev AC Rosen
Forge
$27.99

Author of Lavender House, Rosen brings back Evander, “Andy” Mills, ex-cop, now  struggling PI in disgrace. It’s 1952 San Francisco; Andy’s been given lodging and office space above the Ruby, a gay bar well before Stonewall’s revolution. Shunned by some for his cop-taint, fearing to be recognized by the law, PI Mills has a fine line to walk. A knock on his door brings–a client!  His lover James from Navy days, who one day, disappeared without a word or trace, now returned, blackmailed over lewd photographs. Will Andy help, will he rejoin James? Andy plunges into the past, finding evermore layers of misdirection, violence, danger, and death. A thread of hope and romance trickles through,  the narrative, but will Andy survive to embrace it?

Mid-Century Type
David Jury
Merrell
$55

A book to be savored; skimming the surface, admiring its 500-some color illustrations, or studying its Introduction and 14 chapters that detail typography’s history and application in numerous fields, including Type Design, Corporate Identity, Advertising, Transport, Film & Television. Typography evolved dramatically following WWII, when new printing technologies opened the field to independent  printers, while upheavals wrought upon European economies along with changing social mores allowed greater use of humor, inuendo and sexiness. Collet Dickenson Pearce’s Olympus camera text for two known politicians trading snaps: “They obviously felt like shooting each other,” or a school-marmish lady’s first cool sip morphing her small, red hat into a lush, edible confection engulfing her delighted face as the caption purrs, “Heineken. Refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach.” 

The Mysteries
Bill Watterson and John Kascht
Andrews McMeel Publishing
$19.99

Calvin and Hobbes fans have waited for years now, for the reappearance of writer/artist Bill Watterson, and here it is; The Mysteries, co-created over a prolonged period with noted caricaturist, John Kascht. Dark, eerie, it leaves interpretation to the reader, though one summation might be, “Fearful, superstitious villagers capture a Mystery, shrug, become confident, over-grow to annihilation, vanish, as the Cosmos, unmindful, spins on. This was no collaboration between writer and artist, but an amicable, yet unyielding, confrontation between an ambiguist (BW) and a precisionist (JK). “At the end of the first year we had literally nothing.” “Surprise is the goal.”(BW) “Things clicked when we gave up.” (JK) Hint: No, these quotes are not from the book. You must hunt online. You decide. Good luck!

The Nightingale Affair
Tim Mason
Algonquin
$28

Mason’s second Inspector Charles Field mystery begins with a serial killer in 1876 London, then segués to Crimea, 1855, and Field’s earlier pursuit of a fiend stalking Florence Nightingale and her nurses, stitching victims’ mouths shut with rose-embroidered patches. Despised by male doctors and British military brass for her interfering insistence on cleanliness, nourishment, and comfort for the wounded, Nightingale and her staff–despite the grisly murders–were routinely ignored. Field, believing that case closed after the killer committed suicide, must now reconsider; young women are dying again, mutilated with identical rose patches. Field met his wife in Crimea, his daughter’s now studying nursing. Like many Mason characters, Charles Field existed, was Dickens’s model for Bleak House Inspector Bucket. Highly recommended also, Mason’s The Darwin Affair.