Cook's accounts of periodicals are consistently informative, clear, and penetrating: his sensitivity to much of what he discusses, is, at times, positively uncanny. Reference Books Bulletin

In this mystery from an Edgar Award–winning author, sleuth Peter Duluth is caught in “a succession of double takes and double-crosses” (Kirkus Reviews). Patrick Quentin, best known for the Peter Duluth puzzle mysteries, also penned outstanding detective novels from the 1930s through the 1960s under other pseudonyms, including Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge. Anthony Boucher wrote: “Quentin is particularly noted for the enviable polish and grace which make him one of the leading American fabricants of the murderous comedy of manners; but this surface smoothness conceals intricate and meticulous plot construction as faultless as that of Agatha Christie.” With his marriage to his wife on the rebound—but still precarious—Peter Duluth knows the last thing he needs now is more trouble. With Iris away making a movie, maybe he can finally get back to writing his next Broadway hit. Unfortunately, after the sultry Deborah Brand slinks into his car asking for a ride, things are about to get far more complicated—and dangerous. Because when his passenger ends up dead, Peter becomes ensnared in a conspiracy that will take him from the jungles of Mexico to the back alleys of New Orleans. And if Peter isn’t careful, it may take him straight to the grave . . .

"To understand the history and spirit of America, one must know its wars, its laws, and its presidents. To really understand it, however, one must also know its cheeseburgers, its love songs, and its lawn ornaments. The long-awaited Guide to the United States Popular Culture provides a single-volume guide to the landscape of everyday life in the United States. Scholars, students, and researchers will find in it a valuable tool with which to fill in the gaps left by traditional history. All American readers will find in it, one entry at a time, the story of their lives."--Robert Thompson, President, Popular Culture Association. "At long last popular culture may indeed be given its due within the humanities with the publication of The Guide to United States Popular Culture. With its nearly 1600 entries, it promises to be the most comprehensive single-volume source of information about popular culture. The range of subjects and diversity of opinions represented will make this an almost indispensable resource for humanities and popular culture scholars and enthusiasts alike."--Timothy E. Scheurer, President, American Culture Association "The popular culture of the United States is as free-wheeling and complex as the society it animates. To understand it, one needs assistance. Now that explanatory road map is provided in this Guide which charts the movements and people involved and provides a light at the end of the rainbow of dreams and expectations."--Marshall W. Fishwick, Past President, Popular Culture Association Features of The Guide to United States Popular Culture: 1,010 pages 1,600 entries 500 contributors Alphabetic entries Entries range from general topics (golf, film) to specific individuals, items, and events Articles are supplemented by bibliographies and cross references Comprehensive index

The spinster sleuth is out to rescue a young woman whose hippie adventure turns deadly in this classic mystery from the author of The Penguin Pool Murder. During a six-week college break, Lenore Gregory does what all the young girls are doing in the winter of 1969: She heads to Greenwich Village to protest the Vietnam War, painting flowers on her Volkswagen. And just as she’s starting to fit in, she disappears, becoming yet another missing hippie—and a problem for Detective Oscar Piper of the New York Police Department. Lenore’s last known whereabouts are New Mexico, on the road to Los Angeles, and there is only one person in California whom Piper trusts with the case. To find the missing girl, retired sleuth Hildegarde Withers is willing to go to the edge of consciousness and beyond. She has plenty of experience dealing with middle school children—can a flower child be any different? Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene is part of the Hildegarde Withers Mysteries series, which also includes The Penguin Pool Murder and Murder on the Blackboard.

The detective story, focused on inquiries, and in its wake the spy novel, built around conspiracies, developed as genres in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During the same period, psychiatry was inventing paranoia, sociology was devising new forms of causality to explain the social lives of individuals and groups and political science was shifting the problematics of paranoia from the psychic to the social realm and seeking to explain historical events in terms of conspiracy theories. In each instance, social reality was cast into doubt. We owe the project of organizing and unifying this reality for a particular population and territory to the nation-state as it took shape at the end of the nineteenth century. Thus the figure of conspiracy became the focal point for suspicions concerning the exercise of power. Where does power really lie, and who actually holds it? The national authorities that are presumed to be responsible for it, or other agencies acting in the shadows - bankers, anarchists, secret societies, the ruling class? Questions of this kind provided the scaffolding for political ontologies that banked on a doubly distributed reality: an official but superficial reality and its opposite, a deeper, hidden, threatening reality that was unofficial but much more real. Crime fiction and spy fiction, paranoia and sociology - more or less concomitant inventions - had in common a new way of problematizing reality and of working through the contradictions inherit in it. The adventures of the conflict between these two realities - superficial versus real - provide the framework for this highly original book. Through an exploration of the work of the great masters of detective stories and spy novels - G.K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle, John Le Carré and Graham Greene among others - Boltanski shows that these works of fiction and imagination tell us something fundamental about the nature of modern societies and the modern state.

For the first time in one place, Roger M. Sobin has compiled a list of nominees and award winners of virtually every mystery award ever presented. He has also included many of the “best of” lists by more than fifty of the most important contributors to the genre.; Mr. Sobin spent more than two decades gathering the data and lists in this volume, much of that time he used to recheck the accuracy of the material he had collected. Several of the “best of” lists appear here for the first time in book form. Several others have been unavailable for a number of years.; Of special note, are Anthony Boucher’s “Best Picks for the Year.” Boucher, one of the major mystery reviewers of all time, reviewed for The San Francisco Chronicle, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and The New York Times. From these resources Mr. Sobin created “Boucher’s Best” and “Important Lists to Consider,” lists that provide insight into important writing in the field from 1942 through Boucher’s death in 1968.? This is a great resource for all mystery readers and collectors.; ; Winner of the 2008 Macavity Awards for Best Mystery Nonfiction.