Today only: 100 legacy mysteries for $0.99 each
Today’s Kindle Daily Deal is interesting:
100 Kindle mysteries for $0.99
It’s not only the Kindle Daily Deal, it’s the Gold Box Deal…Gold Box Deals usually aren’t Kindle items.
When I went to see which mysteries they were, I first checked for current, popular authors. That’s not what I saw (we’ll probably starting getting more of those in these sorts of deals when the Agency Model suit settles).
However, I also wasn’t seeing works by what might be called “nouveau authors”. Those would be authors who have only recently started having their books available for purchase, largely due to e-publishing.
These were older authors, although they may not be well-known.
I decided to go with “legacy” books…they are our legacy from the paper days, when they were first published.
Certainly, in some of these cases, they probably go back to pulp (not necessarily these specific works).
I like that term: “legacy books”, so I expect I’ll use it again in the future (although I’ll define it again…I know it bothers some people that I constantly define the terms I use, but I do that to accommodate people ho are encountering them for the first time, or who have forgotten).
A legacy book was originally published in paper (pulp, paperback, hardback) prior to 2005 (when e-books began to be really considered, although it was 2007 before the Kindle transformed the market).
The books in today’s deal s are all from a publisher called
I checked out that website: not every publisher/imprint has a curator! Here’s a short excerpt from that curator, Greg Shapard:
“A great story is a great story. Prologue has got some great stories for you—mysteries, thrillers, some dark, some comic; downbeat noir and frantic chases; subtle suspense and sophisticated tongue-in-cheek; some with wise-cracking detectives and scheming sexpots, some with average joes in a tight situation. These are stories that take you somewhere and take you quick. If you haven’t read these authors before, you’re in for a treat—a timeless treat.”
So, who do we have?
Fletcher Flora
Fletcher Flora was published in the 1950s and 1960s, both with novels and in magazines. Flora wrote three books as Ellery Queen. but I think you’ll get a sense of these novels from the titles. :)
Park Avenue Tramp
Wake Up With a Stranger
Leave Her to H*ll
Killing Cousins
The Hot Shot
Lysistrata
The Brass Bed
Skulldoggery
The Seducer
Whit Masterson/Wade Miller
Badge of Evil (This book was adapted for the Orson Welles movie, Touch of Evil)
William Campbell Gault
The Wayward Widow (Joe Puma)
End of a Call Girl (Joe Puma)
Night Lady (Joe Puma)
The Bloody Bokhara
The Hundred Dollar Girl
Day of the Ram (Brock Callahan)
Vin Packer/Marijane Meaker/M.E. Kerr
Girl on the Best Seller List
The Evil Friendship
Charles Runyon
Kiss The Girls and Make Them Die
Richard Deming
Peter Rabe
Ed Lacy
Ornie Hitt
Frank Kane
Robert Colby
Update: thanks to my readers wvstampman and adelaideb for comments which helped improve this post.
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
April 29, 2012 at 4:38 pm |
Take a look at some of the biographies of these authors on WikiPedia. Some were fascinating characters!
April 29, 2012 at 4:41 pm |
In your headline you might have added at the end “each.”
April 29, 2012 at 4:45 pm |
Thanks for writing, wvstampman!
Yes, that’s a reasonable point…I’ll change that.
I knew of some of these folks…I’ll probably flesh out the post a bit today.
April 29, 2012 at 7:27 pm |
Vin Packer, Marijane Meaker, and M.E. Kerr are the same person. (And she was Patricia Highsmith’s girlfriend for a short while. Gossip.) She was one of the first “lesbian pulp” writers and has a very interesting bio.
April 29, 2012 at 9:16 pm |
Thanks for writing, adelaideb!
That’s great information! I’ll combine the sections, even though I won’t get all the books linked before this promotion is over.
A quick look suggests she’s still around:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijane_Meaker#As_M.E._Kerr
April 29, 2012 at 7:33 pm |
While reading through the titles and looking at the covers, I was thinking “Pulp Fiction,” and “Paperback Writer” meet “Mad Men.” It appears that women, or “girls” were the inspiration for many of them. Does that mean I rejected them all? Actually, there was something about “Kiss the Girls and Make them Die” that looked familiar. I’m thinking maybe it was previously a “Book of the Month Club” selection that ended up on my mom’s bookshelf back in the late 60′s when I was too busy reading mind deadening books that almost destroyed my love of reading ( “Moby Dick” and “Life on an English Manor”) for my degree as an English teacher and didn’t have any time left to read books for entertainment. I’m going to risk 99 cents on it.
Which makes me wonder whatever happened to “Book of the Month” clubs. My dad belonged to one for outdoors and hunting books. My mom belonged to the general one. I belonged to the Literary Guild and Mystery Guild. I “Googled” them and apparently they’re still available except for the “Outdoor Life” Book of the Month Club. I guess the KOLL, Kindle Daily and Monthly Deals and the “freebies” are the e-book equivalent of those book clubs.
Sorry, we old fogies do tend to ramble;)
April 29, 2012 at 9:24 pm |
Thanks for writing, Lady!
Oh, I had a somewhat…strong thread with somebody in the Amazon Kindle Community about Book of the Month clubs.
One of the things that complicates them today is that the books were cheaper in part because they were printed on cheaper stock. As standard release books began to be printed on cheaper material, that made the economics harder to make work.
Found it!
Amazon Kindle community thread
By the way, I’m glad you wrote! I thought about you when I was reading an interview with the stars of The Avengers in Entertainment Weekly. Samuel Jackson said that after memorizing the lines, the actor couldn’t remember them when in character (and costume) as Nick Fury. It’s a great example of contextual learning…Jackson went back and relearned the lines…while wearing the eyepatch! That appears to have done it…Jackson couldn’t remember the lines when seeing with one eye that were learned when seeing with two eyes.
Interesting, huh?
April 30, 2012 at 4:43 am |
>>Interesting, huh?
Definitely. It fascinates me to find all the different ways people have of processing information and how one tiny little thing can make it all come apart or put it back together again. I don’t know if you’ve watched the TV show, “Awake,” but this week’s episode revolved around a game. In one reality one team won, in the other, another the other team won. The differences was a few inches in a field goal kick. It talked about how one small thing can make so much of a difference.