Bear Alley: Comic Cuts - 10 July 2015

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"The narrative is packed with action and I think readers will have a lot of fun with [Hercules, Esq.] and there are some genuine moments of laugh out loud humour. I can understand why the film rights for this book were snapped up and even today I could envisage it being a very enjoyable one-off TV series." — Cross Examining Crime.
"Although there’s some criminous stuff going on and Bill often finds himself vying against or working with various lawbreakers, the stakes are never really life and death in this book ... There is some slam-bang action, though, as well as a smart, really likable protagonist and a lot of really clever plot twists, but what really makes HERCULES ESQ. work is Evans’s style, which is consistently breezy, fast-paced, and funny." — James Reasoner, Rough Edges.

Friday, July 10, 2015

Comic Cuts - 10 July 2015

It started out as a rather unfocused week but I've managed to pull my act together to sort out some scans for an Italian publisher interested in putting together some war books along the lines of the titles I did for Prion a few years ago. The two volumes, each with four stories, concentrate on Italian artists Gino D'Antonio and Nevio Zeccara and will hopefully be the first of many books.

I think I spent all of last Friday cleaning up cover scans for the Mazo de la Roche piece that ran over the weekend, and much of the weekend setting up the Harry Sheldon bio. and cover gallery that appeared on Monday. Sometimes these blog pieces can take forever to piece together, but I must admit I enjoyed the change of pace following the frantic days earlier in the week.

I've been doing some little bits of research that will go towards a book I'm thinking about doing about the destruction of books in the early 1950s, possibly to be called Caught In The Act. I've been adding to my clippings files and trying to discover a little more about events in the 1930s that led to an explosion of activity in 1950, resulting in destruction orders being issued against thousands of books over the next few years and a string of prosecutions.

I may post a few odd bits and pieces over the coming weeks, research that I'm doing for the book into some of the back alleys that need exploring. Some of it might not be to all tastes, but they're part of the jigsaw that will eventually create the narrative of the book. I've had to touch on some dark areas in previous books—the murder of 5-year-old Miriam Gray had to be covered in The Trials of Hank Janson, for instance—and I believe we've managed to tackle some criminal subjects here in the past without being offensive. I've never been asked to censor a post here on Bear Alley and I'm always happy to correct errors.

Anyway, lets get the ball rolling with a lascivious pair (oo-er) of covers based on the life of 18th century sex mad Casanova, plus a clipping from 1997.