Thursday, September 15, 2005

Stark House Press Does Randisi

Stark House Press has another double volume in its continuing series. I've praised Stark House here several times, and Greg Shepard keeps doing great work. This new book reprints two novels by Bob Randisi, one of the most prolific writers of our time. It also has an introduction by Randisi and a bibliography what will astound you. (Well, it astounded me, and I thought I knew about everything Bob has written. I didn't.)

The book is worth its price for the intro and bibliography alone, but it also contains two novels, The Ham Reporter and The Disappearance of Penny. The first is a historical novel about Bat Masterson in the days when he was a sportswriter in New York City, where he teams up with Damon Runyon to look for a missing friend. This is probably my favorite of Randisi's books, but I also like The Disappearance of Penny, which was the first of his books that I ever read. It's about Henry Po, who works for the New York Racing Commission, and once again there's a missing person. It's Randisi's first published novel, which I have in a nice old paperback that's become fairly hard to find. Thanks to Stark House, you can now read it without having to search for it.

This new double volume isn't available until December. Put it on your Christmas list.

3 comments:

Mystery Dawg said...

Damn Bill,

I'm going broke with all these books.

Cap'n Bob said...

I have The Ham Reporter but have never seen a copy of Penny. Sounds like a great chance to fill that gap.

Juri said...

Is "Penny" really that rare? I once bought two of them at one euro (roughly 80 cents) at the same time. Gave the other one to a friend. (And this is in Finland.)