Ed Gorman & Friends: "Now to reviewers I like.
For me, Anthony Boucher is the patron saint of mystery reviewers. He wrote the stuff, he taught the stuff, he edited the stuff, he even had a local San Francisco radio show about the stuff. Those are difficult qualities to beat. And he truly did judge books by what they intended to do."
I feel the same way. When I was a kid, I loved Boucher's reviews in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Later on, when I was in college, I read his mystery reviews every week in the NYTBR. And when I got to grad school, I got the coveted "stacks permit" and immediately located the bound volumes of the NYTBR, going back to the beginning of Boucher's tenure there. Instead of doing the "serious" research I should have been engaged in, I'd be in the stacks every day, a big blue-bound volume opened in front of me and a notebook beside it for writing down authors and titles.
Which brings me once again to the good people at Ramble House Books. Mike Nevins has done the world a great service by collecting three volumes of Boucher's reviews and commentary, and Fender Tucker has done an even greater service by publishing them. No mystery fan should be without them.
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