Friday, December 07, 2012

Forgotten Books: A Memory of Murder -- Ray Bradbury

This is Ray Bradbury week on Forgotten Books.  I did a post on a Bradbury book about one year ago, so I'm reprinting that post with a couple of small changes.

A Memory of Murder has been out of print since 1984, so I figure it's at least as forgotten as any Bradbury book. If there's a more recent edition, let us know in the comments.

This is a collection of Bradbury's very early crime stories, some of his first fiction sales. It comes complete with a short but revealing introduction that explains why the book is dedicated to Leigh Brackett.

One of the stories in the book, "Small Assassin," is likely to be familiar to a lot of readers, but that's the only one. The others, from places like Dime Mystery Magazine and Detective Tales, probably aren't. These aren't great stories, but they're interesting if you care about the development of a young writer who really hit his stride a few years after their publication. Not essential, but certainly worth a little of your time.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great minds think alike! You'll see my review is of the same book and I had pretty much the same reaction - good but not great, with "The Small Assassin" the most memorable story by far.

I do love the cover.


Jeff

George said...

I'm with Jeff: love the cover!

Stephen B. said...

I remember looking for this for a very long time (no mailorder) and within months saw it twice in used bookstores.
The other interesting part is in the book introduction Bradbury mentions his days with pulp-era writing and his mentor and friend - Leigh Brackett.