The Thinking Machine: Adventures of a Mastermind
by Jacques Futrelle.

Originally written during the first decade of the 20th century, the Thinking Machine stories introduced one of the first story-book scientist-detectives (alas, they don't really make them like this any more.) Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Deusen, a.k.a. The Thinking Machine, uses his great powers of logic and deductive reasoning to solve crimes and other problems.

These stories are great fun and although they require some stretches of imagination, they are on the whole well thought-out. The best puzzle was the secrety who was stealing company secrets by typing memos in such a way that her key strokes were Morse code translations of the memos she was typing. Awesome!!

These stories are written for grade schoolers, and are entertaining & thought-provoking. Interestingly enough, Futrelle went down with the Titanic. Lost with him were several unpublished Thinking Machine stories.

Crawlspace. Herbert Lieberman

Crawlspace
by Herbert Lieberman. McKay: 1971.

I read this book as a teenager and remembered it as scary. On this reading, however, the book is merely inane.

The flaw with this book is that the two 'adoptees' of the psychopath living in their basement do not behave within any boundaries of normalcy whatsoever. The novel is touted as one of "growing menace and terror" but is instead one of growing ridiculousness and boredom.

The psychopath is a fairly interesting character, however, although he's not really in the book too much as an interactive character. (Perhaps that's why he is good - the author didn't have a chance to wreck him.) The villain of the book (the corrupt small-town sheriff) is a boring stereotype who at best reflects the author's disdain of small towns.

The Woman Chaser
by Charles Willeford. 1991.

Richard, a used car salesan who thinks he's hot stuff, decides to make a movie with his step-father, an ex-movie director. He embezzles money from his boss to finance the thing which turns out to be 63 minutes long & brilliant (it's about people with dead-end lives but who can't see it.) But it's too short for the theatre and too long for TV.

His step-father sells him out to get his career back on track and Richard's pissed. He gets drunk, slashed step-dad's $100,000 painting, punches a knocked-up flame in the stomach, sets the movie studio on fire, and prostitutes a Salvation Army lady for $150, along with other bad things. Ends with his arrest.

Strange book, and strangely written: part script, part memoir, part story. Village Voice said: "Profound pulp with low sex and high energy." Not sure about the profound part, but still pretty good. I guess.