I finished two books during this week, as well as one pulp magazine issue.

Books

1. Towers & Tortures: A Double Dose of Dexter Dayle, by Dexter Dayle — a Ramble House collection that brings together two British “Piccadilly novels,” low-cost lending library thrillers by an apparently pseudonymous author. Neither novel in the volume is good: A lot happens in the space of each as the story dashes along, but the construction seems slapdash, with plenty of leaps in narrative or investigative logic, and it isn’t at all clear how the resolution is worked out. They were not wholly unentertaining, but I felt my time would have been better spent on better thrillers. Not recommended.
2. The Forgotten Planet, by Murray Leinster — the March selection for Roger’s Cheap Old Book Club, created by Youtuber Michael K. Vaughan, which I’ve decided to read along with. This fix-up novel from some previously published stories tells the story of Burl, one of the primitive descendants of a group of space travelers who crashed on an isolated world only partially adapted for human occupation through the seeding of lower forms of life (plants and insects). The hostile conditions of the planet and the gigantism of some of the plants and bugs led to the descent into timid savagery, but Burl breaks the generations-old patterns and begins leading his small tribe upward. His adventures are of interest, and if the ending is a bit convenient, it is nevertheless pleasing. Mildly recommended.

Continuing Reads

• A Laugh a Day Keeps the Doctor Away, by humorist Irvin S. Cobb — a collection of 366 amusing anecdotes published in 1923, which I’ll be reading at the rate of one per day.
• More Heart Throbs — the sequel to the similar Heart Throbs, an anthology of prose and verse selections, often sentimental in nature, submitted by the general public and famous people, published in 1911; I’ll be reading one or more pages (as needed for the selections) per day throughout the year.
• The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, translated by Sir Richard F. Burton in the late 19th century — I hope to read all ten volumes as well as the six supplemental volumes this year.
• Orlando Innamorato, by Matteo Boiardo, translated by Charles Stanley Ross — I hope to finish this Renaissance Italian epic this year.

Magazines

• Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction, September 17, 1927
  Overall, I found this a good issue of the long-running pulp magazine, with a mix of mysteries and thrillers that I mostly liked. For comments on each of the stories, see last week’s Wednesday Pulp post.