By their very nature, most newspaper columns and editorials are ephemeral. They are often written in haste to meet a deadline, and what excites interest today may elicit only yawns tomorrow or the next day. This is especially true of community newspapers, whose focus is on matters of interest to a smaller, parochial readership. This book is a collection of pieces that step outside that mold. The author's broad education (four degrees, including a Ph.D. and a J.D.) and wide range of work experiences (college professor, probation officer, prosecuting attorney, professional magician, novelist, editor, publisher, and grocery-store sackboy, to name a few) have provided him with a unusual perspective from which to observe and comment on the problems and pleasures of being a sentient being on Planet Earth in the twenty-first centuryand on how we got to this point in human history. Inspired by the example and encouragement of the newspaper editor who gave him his first job in journalism, the author has inflicted upon the readers of several newspapers his reflections on a broad and eclectic range of subjects, from religious and racial intolerance to UFO "sightings" and the beauty of a toad's eye. Throughout it all, the author has been motivated by one unvarying purposeto make his readers think. Not just about last week's school board meeting or next month's municipal elections, but about ideas and issues with a shelf-life longer than that of ripe tomatoes in your grocer's produce department. Here, then, are half a hundred of those pieces, rescued from dusty newspaper "morgues" and offered to a broader audience than the unsuspecting subscribers to whom they were originally addressed. The author will be pleased if you read them, but he will have failed in his purpose unless reading them makes you think.
AL SEARS had it all. Once a hot-shot criminal lawyer, he had a trophy wife, a fortune, and a respected position in local Memphis society. But he also had a drinking problem-- one that cost him everything: his career, his wife, his fortune, and his self-respect. Now sober, Al Sears is a licensed PI and part-time clerk in Ralph's coin shop, with a small apartment, an old car, and a chair at the Thursday-night poker game in the apartment above the shop. But even this peaceful existence is shattered when a shotgun-wielding intruder tries to knock over the game. The robber attempts to take Al hostage, but Al, sensing that this is more than simple theft, tackles him, narrowly avoiding a blast from his gun, and two of the other players shot the man to death. Already shaken by the experience, Al learns from the responding police officers that his intuition was correct-- this was no simple robbery. The dead man was a known hired killer-- one of the deadliest. Al has to face the truth that someone is trying to kill him. Given his past, any number of people could be to blame. Given the alcoholic haze in which he lived for years, he may not even remember the person who's now out to get him. Al must look into his own past, determine who is trying to kill him, and stop them before they succeed...
After losing his law practice because of alcohol, Al Sears of Memphis obtains a job in a coin shop, only to find himself the target of a killer. Is the killer after the coins, or is he a disgruntled former client?
The Mystery Fancier, March/April 1982, Volume 6 Number 2, contains: The Policeman: A Victorian Novel, by E. F. Bleiler; Gide's Vatican Cellars: The Popular Detective Novel Parodied, by Pierre L. Horn; Some Recent Hybrids, by George Kelley; and Spy Series Characters in Hardback, Part XI, by Barry Van Tilburg.
The Mystery Fancier, May/June 1982, Volume 6 Number 3, contains: Spy Series Characters in Hardback, Part XIi, by Barry Van Tilburg; Pirates in Candyland, by Bob Sampson; and Some Thoughts on Peacock Feet, by E. F. Bleiler.
The Mystery Fancier, July/August 1981, Volume 5 Number 4, contains: Peterman from the Old School, by Robert Sampson; Horror, Horror, and the Intellect: Giles Mont of Ruth Rendell's A Judgement in Stone, by Jane Bakerman; Runing Hot and Cold with Ron Faust, by George Kelley; and Speaking with Myself, by Billy Barton.
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