"The Fabulous Clipjoint" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabulous_Clipjoint?wprov=sfla1) (1947) by Fredric Brown won the Edgar Award for Best First Mystery novel. It's the story of Ed Hunter, a teenager whose father is murdered. He looks up his uncle, a traveling carny (carnival worker), and the two of them go hunting for the killer.
Incidentally, Brown did have experience as a carny, among many other jobs. He often used those experiences in his stories, along with his love of chess and "Alice In Wonderland". His sense of humor is memorable.
Although the book was written in 1947, it feels •remarkably• modern; it's an exciting and touching mystery that I highly recommend. In a way it has a bit of the same feel as "Catcher In the Rye", since the protagonist and narrator is of a similar age as Holden. He's not as cynical as Holden, but as young and a bit rebellious.
Brown wrote six more novels featuring the same detective duo, along with many other mystery novels. He also wrote a huge number of great short science fiction and mystery stories which were published in pulp magazines.
The short-short story in particular was a speciality of his. Many collections of his short mysteries have been published, but they’re hard to find these days. Brown is woefully neglected. If you can’t find his mysteries, some are available online in the Internet Archive.
https://archive.org/details/pulpmagazinearchive?query=%22Fredric+Brown%22&sin=
“I think so,” Bassett said. “You’ll get a look at him and a listen to him tomorrow, at the inquest.”
“Swell,” my uncle told me. “Look, you don’t know me at the inquest. Nobody does. I just sit at the back, and nobody knows who I am. They won’t want me to testify anyway.”
Bassett’s eyes unveiled a little, just a little. He asked, “You think you might want to run one?”
“I think maybe,” my uncle said. They seemed to understand one another. They knew what they were talking about. I didn’t.
#Books #Bookstodon #Mystery #QuasitBookRecs #BookRecommendations
Dennis Joiner
Dark Holme Publishing
damppebbles
Quasit
Rajiv Chopra
Jean Archambault-White
This Grandpa Blogs
