NewsBulletin of the Harry Stephen Keeler Society

No. 88 ..................................... August, 2017

Keeler News no. 882

No. 88, August 2017

On our cover:HSK by Steffen Winkler

(courtesy of Edition Phantasia)

The Mysterious Ivory Ball......................... 3The Magic Coin.......................................8Advertisements.......................................9Harry Goes Abroad...............................10Letters ................................................. 12Membership update .............................14A Sentence from the Master ..................14Books for sale ....................................... 14

Published when the spirit moves usby the Harry Stephen Keeler SocietyEditor: Richard Polt4745 Winton Rd., Cincinnati, OH 45232 USApolt@xavier.edu • 513-313-1221site.xavier.edu/polt/keelerISSN 1524-2323 • Founded 1997

Keeler News is free.If you receive this bulletin in digital form, print it for longevity.

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that you get the next issue.All issues can be downloaded from our website, and can be

ordered there on paper.Youmay copy this document and distribute it by anymethod.

When quoting it, please cite properly and give credit to theauthor.To join theHSKSociety andbe added to ourmailing list, ask

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Do you ever dream about Harry Stephen Keel-er? I confess that Ido. I find trovesof letters,unpub-lished manuscripts, or published novels that I’dneverheardof.According toa recentdream,Harryself-published a book in the late 1950s which gaveplenty of advice on composingwebworkplots andalso revealed intimate feelings and anecdotesabouthis life. I founditonashelf inanantiquemall.If only we could keep the things we find indreams….

✍Athought: there areplentyof books that feature

bizarre events and ideas. Consider Tim Powers’latestnovel,Medusa’sWeb, inwhich“acollectionofhypnotic eight-limbed abstract images inked onpaper allows theMaddens to briefly fragment andflatten time—to transport themselves into the pastand future in visions that are both puzzling andterrifying.” But what makes Keeler particularlystrange is not the catalogue of odd features in hisstories, buthis insistence (orpretense) that all theseoddities can somehow be accounted for. He nevergives us sheer fantasy and asks us to suspend dis-belief; instead, sooner or later we get “explana-tions” of everything. But somehow these rational-izations make the strangeness even stranger,maybe becausewe can’t decidewhether Keeler re-ally believes that they’re plausible or whether he’sjust pulling our leg. A paradox worth further re-flection.

✍Here's a dedication from a recently sold copy of

Sing Sing Nights. Note Harry’s modest quotationmarks around the word “author.” While certaincriticsmay heartily endorse thosemarks,we in theHSKS are happy to excise them!

Keeler News no. 88 3

Weall haveour favoriteKeelerism.Forme, it’shis coincidences, those intricate multilevelinterlocking skeins of incident, actionand fact thathe elevates from cheap gimmicks to pure genius.Give me something like three identical tripletswho’ve never met simultaneously walking intothe same room in Chicago, amurder identified bya date circled on a calendar, or the endless chainsof coincidence emanating from the aeronauticbaby strangler case, and I am in ecstasy!

So when Richard asked me to participate inthis group read, I thought I had a great angleworked out. I recently read Tiger in the Smoke byMargery Allingham, a so-called classic mysterythat hinged upon the British Army randomlyselecting a particular psychopath from amonggod-knows-how-many enlisted men they had in

WorldWar II for a secretmission that just happensto be led by the husband of his childhoodneighbor. By literary standards, atrocious. ByKeelerian standards, pathetic. Your assignment:compare and contrast Allingham’s use ofcoincidence versus Keeler’s and speculate if theformer’s novel could have been improved usingthe latter’s approach. A slam dunk, I thought as Iimagined improving Tiger in the Smoke with aweirdwill or two, a few circus freaks, and anothertwo or three dozen nutty coincidences. Now, thatwould be a classic!

But The Mysterious Ball of Wong Shing Li is noKeelerian concordance of coincidence—there isonly one, and it proves to be a red herring, albeit atypically Keelerian one. Other beloved Keeleriandevices are also present: theweirdwill, the idiotic

the mysteriousivory ball ofWong Shing L i :

a symposium

The third novel by Keeler to be translated aus demAmerikanischen by Joachim Körber and publishedinhisEditionPhantasia series is this 1957yarn thatfirst appeared in 1961, in Spanish translation. ARamble House edition was published in 2002.Joachim sent me a copy of his beautifully printed,hardback book alongwith the impressive portraitof HSK by Steffen Winkler that appears on ourcover. Winkler also painted this image of thevenerable Mr. Wong.In honor of this publication—and because I’d

never read the novel before!—I invited membersof theHSK Society towritewhatever they pleasedabout thestory.You'll find theresultsbelow.—Ed.

the man with the propinquity couchby John Marr

Keeler News no. 884

marriage pre-condition, and the incredibly rarebook. But the will isn’t that weird (at least byKeelerian standards), love interest MehitableMouse tellspluckyhero JarthKilgo that she’ll onlymarry a man who doesn’t have $100,000, and therare book, Lo Tsau’sMatter, Time, and Energy FromtheViewpoint of a 7-DimensionalCosmos, is but akeyelement in the aforementioned red herring. Thereare no midgets, no circus freaks, not even a singleskull (trepanned or otherwise). Even Jarth Kilgo’soccupation of an architect specializing in “freakbungalows” doesn’t merit so much as singlestrange floor-plan, much less the expected multi-page dissertation on oddball architecture. OnlyKeeler’s penchant for weird names remainsunabated (especially the nightclub duo of LouisHim and Sam I, billed as “Him and I”). What isgoing on here?

The story hinges around Jarth Kilgo’s attemptto prove that Wong Shing Li’s nightclubmentalism act called “The Spheres of Seng” doesnot involve any occult powers. If he can, heinherits $100,000 fromhisuncle.Keelerdevotesnoless than 1/3 of the book to detailing aperformancewhereMr.Wongandhis partner puton an impressive display of mind-reading,clairvoyance and related feats of “mental magic.”Ultimately, Wong takes pity on Jarth’s pickle anddescribes in typically Keelerian detail the

elaborate secrets behind the Spheres of Seng. Iteven sounds like it might work!

This surprisingly non-web-like narrativeleaves little room for coincidences. But Keeler stillpeppers the book with plenty of unique detailsthat could only come from but one pen. Myfavorite is the “love andmarriage couch” that is soknownbecause it is “guaranteed tomake anymanseated in it with any woman—both marriageable—becomemanandwife indue inevitable course.”Andsure enough,when Jarth andMehitable settleinto its “sardine-like propinquity,” Jarth thinks,“Oh well. It felt nice—you know?—nice littlewarm body she had—nice—hm?—what was thisanyway? Help!” Who says Keeler can’t be spicy?And the reconciliation of Jarth’s desire to inherit$100,000 and marry Mehitable with her intentionto never marry a man with $100,000 involves aChinese drug, tseng-ko, with unique propertiesandabizarre testguaranteed to leaveevenveteranKeelerphiles scratching their heads trying tofigure out just what the hell happened.

As for what Keeler is up to, darned if I know.Was he maturing into a new style? Playing trickson his Spanish readers? All I can say that whileTiger in the Smokemay have beaten TheMysteriousIvory Ball of Wong Shing Li in midgets by a score of1–0, my bookshelf space remains reserved for theman with the propinquity couch. N

Freak bungalows for buffalo!by William Poundstone

Page 7. First page gets off to a bangwith one ofmyfavorite Keeler gimmicks: the untelegraphictelegram. “Thewire in his hands, sent punctuated—andevenparagraphedunder the newestwiringregulations—without apparently any thought ofcost, ran...”Whoelsewould set the tale 20minutesin the future just so a telegram could have emdashes and incorporate lengthy asides?

Page 27. Freak bungalows for Buffalo! ArchitectJarth Kilgo plans to “specialize only in—ah—bizarre bungalows—outré bungalows… in short—freak bungalows…” This is another example ofKeeler’spenchant forprotagonistswithcock-eyedbusiness plans. Kilgo is from Buffalo, a center ofthe American bungalow movement.

I half-wonder whether Keeler copped the“individualist architect” angle from Ayn Rand’sThe Fountainhead (1943). The latter’s HowardRoark was based on Frank Lloyd Wright (whodesigned a subdivision of bungalow-inspiredhomes inBuffalo!). I have no reason to believe thatsocialist-leaning Keeler read Rand’s libertarianpaean.Buthemighthave takennoteof the fact thatThe Fountainheadwas rejected bymany publishersbefore becoming a bestseller. This demonstrated apoint dear to Keeler’s heart: the idiocy ofpublishers.

Page 57. A passage that’s a deal-breaker for somereaders describes Louis Him’s ethnicity: “about

Keeler News no. 88 5

the yellowest, most saffron-hued Chinese that he,Jarth, had ever seen…Thenewarrival’s eyesweremore than oblique, and his cheekbonesmore thanhigh!”This recalls someofKeeler’sdescriptionsofblack characters, “as black as any coal that evertumbled unburned out of a fireplace!” (said ofMadame Olivia Debrevois in The StolenGravestone). Keeler is not only moved to dwell onethnicity but to turn it up to 11.

Except, neither of the two Chinese charactersspeak in dialect this time. They speak Keeler’snotion of the neutral American vernacular(including the two-syllable we-ell and the breezyLatinate non est). But there’s a lot of dialect in thisbook: African-American, German, Italian,Southern White, and Arkansas hillbilly. I don’tfind the dialects funny, with one exception:German. Herman and Lena Schmidt’sspeechifying is amusing in ways the other dialectspeakers’ aren’t. I’m not sure why.

Page 72. Thirty-nine of the book’s 65 chapters areverbatim recitations of a nightclub mind-readingact. The bit where audience members blindfold aperformer merits its own chapter.

Page 109. There is a mention of French writer andmystic Romain Rolland (Keeler spells it Roland),winner of the Nobel Prize in literature for a largeand now mostly forgotten oeuvre. Rollandcorresponded with Freud on mysticism.

Page 38, 155, 155, 169. Not sure whether thesemisspelled names and misremembered facts areintentional. A department store is called SacksFifth Avenue and then Sachs, but never Saks. Adinosaur is assigned to the Paleozoic era, notMesozoic. Kilgo refers to a vaudeville act of plus-size women, “Billy Howard’s Beef Trust,” surelyintending the once-famous Billy Watson’s BeefTrust. [Vide my “The Beef Trust Enigma,” in KN#30. —Ed.] Are these typos, or is Keelerintentionally creating a parallel universe inwhich

small, inconsequential details are subtly off?

196. Least believable factoid: “Statistics show thatin 37 percent of cases where a lost ring has beenadvertised, it is returned…”

Page 212. Another long telegram from Kilgo’sattorney, with Keeler’s inimitable rendering oflegalese: “PULL YERSEL’ T’GETHER, M’BOY,AND CLAMBOR OFF YER HANDS ANDFEET…”

Parting thought: I would not recommend TheMysterious Ivory Ball to anyone as their first,second, or 50th Keeler. But it shows as well as anythe way Keeler defies genre expectations. There’sno crime and no villain. The Mysterious Ivory Ballfeints at being a tale of the occult, science fiction, aromance, and a nonfiction exposé. Yet it leavessome of these premises seriously unresolved.That’s Keeler’s own form of naturalism:Everything is connected—to a loose end. N

Chicago Chinatown, 1928

Keeler News no. 886

Is it possible for a book to resemble one of theobjects described within it?Halfway throughmy reading of Ball, as I was in

bed anddrifting into sleep—or alreadydreaming!—in a state of hypnotic obsession, I posed myselfthis question. And promptly answered: yes!No. I don’t mean the titular possibly-tusk-

derived spheroid.I mean a character: the girl with the fully

explicable name Mehitable Mouse.When protagonist Jarth Kilgo first meets

Mehitable, she is anunappealing, even forbiddingsight, due to her ugly glasses with stark blackframes. The rest of her is nondescript: no style,nothing distinctive, just a small body draped inbrown, unflattering, pre-flapper clothes. In short:mousy.But it turns out that Mehitable’s glasses aren’t

required (long story). And when it’s time forWong Shing Li’s performance, she dresses in a farmore colorful, modern, and revealing outfit. Jarthand Mehitable squeeze onto a tight divan. Andguess what? Romance ensues.Nowconsider:When I started to read thisnovel,

it was an unappealing, even forbidding prospect,due to the stark andugly caricature of a blackmanwho appears right away. The reader sees the herothrough the lenses of a “senegambian” local whodescribes Jarth in thick quasi-Ebonics, removinghimself from the plot only after snatching a tossedquarter from the air “like a trained monkey.”Keeler has framed his story as a racistgrotesquerie, and given its title, we are surelygoing to be given some Fu-Manchu-styleOrientalism. The pseudo-African-American evenwarns Jarth that Wong Shing Li is an ex-hatchetman who split many skulls in his tongdays.The story unfolds—or rather, lots of jocular

blather about the story—and as I waded throughit, I feared that this would be another late Keelerwithnothing todistinguish it.Of course,onlyHSKcould have written it: it has his obligatoryreferences to the square root ofminus zero, objectsthat are “non est,” names such as ShellabearRowbotham, and pre-flapper cultural arcana. Butthis all felt perfunctory and routine.

Nevertheless, I squeezed myself into the worldof this taleandsettled in towatch theperformance.It turns out that constant racism is not required:Wong Shing Li is an appealing gentleman whospeaks in what passes for fluent and culturedEnglish in the Keelerverse. And as I spent chapterafter mini-chapter in tight proximity to theprestidigitations of this “member of the RaceArtful,” I couldn’t help it: I fell for the story.Keelerhad me dreaming all night about possibleexplanations for the remarkable stunts presentedon his stage. (As it turned out, I wasn’t completelymistaken in some of my hunches.)But the real seduction camewhenKeeler shifted

to “Neo-Physics,” as colorfully revealed by aChinese genius in a book that exists in only fourcopies—complete with diagrams reminiscent ofEdwin Abbott’s Flatland and a theory about thespacetime-warping properties of any objectwhose function is unique. This is the richbizarritude that I crave inabookbyHarryStephenKeeler.Proposition proved: a book can resemble one of

the objects—or characters!—described within it.And the reader’s reaction to the text canmirror thereaction of another character to that text-likecharacter. Namely: falling in love despite himself.Next question: if book A contains object B, whichresemblesA, does B then inevitably contain objectC,whichresemblesB,andconsequentlyAaswell?And does C then ... I leave you to sink into thisabyss the next time you drift into sleep. N

Falling in love despite myselfby Richard Polt

Keeler News no. 88 7

keeler, wooster of the thrillsby Chris Mikul

It’s been awhile since I’ve read anyKeelers, andI haven’t readmany of the post-Ward Lock books,so I thought an interesting way to approach TheMysterious Ivory Ball of Wong Shing Liwould be totry to imagine I was someonewho had never readHSK and knew nothing about him. What would Imake of this book? What would I think about itsstyle and characterisation?Would it remindme ofanything else?Rather to my surprise, around 40 pages into it Iwas reminded of something else. For as ithappened, a couple of weeks earlier I had readP.G. Wodehouse’s 1921 novel The Indiscretions ofArchie, and thinking about that, I recalled a criticremarking (I’m paraphrasing here) that onceWodehousehithis strideasawriter, theonly thingthat a Wodehouse book resembled was anotherWodehouse book. This principle, of course,applies equally to Keeler.I’m pretty sure I’m the first person to draw a

comparison between Keeler andWodehouse, butas I thought about it, the similarities began tomultiply. They both had very idiosyncraticwriting styles which drew heavily on thevernacular and slang of the 1920s, and continuedtodo so long after anyone spoke like that.A Jeevesand Wooster novel from the 1960s is virtuallyindistinguishable from one written forty yearsearlier, and apart from a handful of references (toLana Turner and things beingmade of plastic, forexample),Wong Shing Li could have been writtenin 1927 rather than 1957. Wodehouse and Keelerwere both extremely prolific, producing acomparable number of books, andwrote until theend of their lives. Of course their aims in writingwere quite different:Wodehouse wanted tomakehis readers laugh, Keeler wanted to baffle them,but in achieving their respective aims they wereblessed with the same rare gift—the ability toweave wonderfully ingenious plots.Apart from this revelation, make of it what youwill, I’m afraid I haven’t got much to say aboutWong Shing Li. I think it’s a very minor work,sorely lacking the complexity and brio of thewebwork novels. Of course, there are things to

enjoy in it – I liked the ideaofKilgodesigning freakbungalows, and the business of the babybrontosaurus appendage and its alleged fourth-dimensional properties is intriguing. The endingis also as ingenious as we expect fromHSK, but itsure is a long time coming. So, not one of Keeler’sbest efforts by a long shot, but am I sorry I read it?Hell, no. N

Postscript: I stand corrected. Our esteemed editor,Richard Polt, has reminded me of the quote fromthe Daily Telegraph that appears on some WardLock editions, in which Keeler is called “a seriousWooster of the thrills.” This can only refer toWodehouse, so I’m not the first to make thecomparison. There goes my career as a cutting-edge literary critic!

Keeler News no. 888

Elizabeth Foxwell—editor of Clues, A Journal of Detection and author of No Man’s Land (a short storycollection) and the mystery blog The Bunburyist, among other things—draws the attention of the HSKSociety to the 1917 publication of “Quilligan and theMagic Coin” (under a slightly different name) inGrit.Itwas recently posted online byVillanovaUniversity as part of itsDigital Library. The story includes thesetwodepictionsof anattily-dressedMr.Quilligan.Youcan read the story itself inKeelerNewsno. 26aswellas in Strands of the Web, the indispensable collection of HSK’s short stories edited by Fred Cleaver andpublished byRambleHouse (www.ramblehouse.com/strandsoftheweb.htm). By theway: yes,Grit is stillbeing published today, a full century after this issue appeared. N

Keeler News no. 88 9

10-Story Book, January 1928

Keeler News no. 8810

Harry Goes Abroad

Another hot tip from Elizabeth Foxwellalerted me to a valuable bit of informationavailable through familysearch.org (run bythe Mormon church). U.S. governmentrecords have preserved HSK’s passportapplication from 1916, in the midst of theFirst World War. 26-year-old Harry wastraveling to England in search of newmarkets for The Arkansaw Traveler and 10-Story Book. Title pages of recent copies ofboth magazines were submitted as part ofthe application, and HSK is listed as editorforbothof them.Theapplicationrequiredanoath of allegiance and a sworn statementfrom another citizen who would vouch forthe applicant’s veracity (in this case,Harry’sfriend John Irving Pearce). Interestingly,Keeler affirms that his birthdate isNovember 3, 1889 (it is usually listed as1890). He is six feet tall, his forehead is“high,” his eyes are “gray and brown,” andhis hair is “light brown.”

Whetheranyone inEnglandwas temptedbythe magazines, I can’t say. But surely HSKgathered somevivid impressions of Londonthat would last him a lifetime. —Ed. N

Keeler News no. 88 11

Keeler News no. 8812

LettersIt’s hard to believe that twodecades have gone by

since I received the first copy of theKeeler News. Ihad always thought Harry S. Keeler a lost and for-gotten figure in crime fiction. Not so. It seems thata number of older readers remember him, and thatthere has been an arousal of interest in youngerones.ImighthavemissedKeelermyself if I hadn’tven-

tured intoa local second-handbookshop(nowlonggone) many, many years ago and bought a stack ofold mystery novels including Stand By—LondonCalling! A golden moment in my life, I guess.

Geoff MarriottMiddlesbrough, Cleveland, England

Congratulations (and thank you!) for publishingKN and keeping theHSKS going strong!Andwhata treasure trove the latestKN is—gorgeous covers,plus the secret link to Keyhole!

Ed ParkNew York City

Thank you for doing this good work and holdingonto a talented man’s artistic existence.Have you ever heard ofCarltonMellick III?He is

the21st-century (andPortland,OR)Keeler, onlyhisbooks all top out at 150 pages so far. And they aremore like Twilight Zone episodes.If youdon’t knowhim, absolutely checkoutCud-

dly Holocaust, The Terrible Thing that Happens, andSausagey Santa. (To name a few. He is getting upthere in the 45th/50th novel count.) Like Keeler, hewrites very goodprotagonists ... only they are pret-ty beatendownbynuclearwar andoutlandish nar-rative premises (like everyone in the world beingticks that feedon theearth,which is actuallyagiant,sad dog).I have a thing for prolific artists, as you can tell ...

my favorite band is The Legendary PinkDots, whohaveworked towrite at least one song aweek sinceSept. 1980, and so far have succeeded.Conversely, there are some amazing artistic sin-

gularities out there. Ulrich Haarburste’s novel RoyOrbisonWrapped inClingfilm isoneof thebestnovelsI have ever readaboutRoyOrbisonbeing endlessly

wrapped in clingfilm, and it is worth seeking outwith a desire perhaps halfway between finding abook and an inner worldview.Well!Now I’mgoing to kick backwithmyKeeler

PDF and my online version of the New Yorker, andthis gigantic beer that cost 45 cents ... ah, life over-seas!

Carl FosterOverseas

Meanwhile, I just discoveredSteveErickson,whose nov-elShadowbahn is one of the best about the reappearanceof the Twin Towers in the South Dakota Bandlands, in-habited only by Elvis’s stillborn twin brother.

I was up early this morning typesetting The BuffaloDemon, a dime dreadful by EdwardWheeler, 1884-ish. This Keeleresque passage popped off the page.

”I don’t purtickler like ter be so low down inther ‘arth,” observed old Jack. “S’posin’ ‘Pashshed happun ter antelope erlong thes way?They’d hev us in er trap, down thar.””Yas,” said theLeopard, reflectively; “butd’yesee them thar m-t-s., off thar, tew der sou’?””I jedge I hain’t blind; see’d ‘m heff an hour

ergo. W’at ‘bout ‘em?””Wal, I’ll enlightnin’ ye. Them thar discom-

bobberated heeps o’ stun an’ dart uster be therha’ntso’ thet o’neryold thief, Joaquim.Hegalli-vanted erbout thes kentry, afore hewent up terKaliforny, an’ got smotched! Now I’ve con-seeved ther ijee thetourgame,Mr.KlovenHuff,holds out thar, too, an’ ef sich ar’ ther kaise, hekensquint ritedownonterus, fromthempeaks.Tharfore, I argywe’dbettergitoutensight, interther gulch, an’ risk ther ‘Pash. We ken keep erguard posted on buth sides, an’ ef they diskiverenny bad signs, we kin sun ervackwate thergulch, an’ klime ter one side’r t’other!””Exactly. I don’t keer a hoss either way; so go‘lang, an’ do as ye think prackticable. You’reboss—I’m lewtenernt!”

Egad!I’ve read a handful of these Wheeler pulps,

and he usually keeps his dialect toned down to fiveor six. For these characters, he’s cranked it up toeleven.

Jim WeilerShreveport, La.

Keeler News no. 88 13

Keeler letters for sale, $207,500 each

The subject line is a bitmisleading since 4000 oth-er things (including Vincent Starrett letters) wouldbe included free with purchase. The letters don’tsound as interesting as the ones you published inKN 49. Lloyd Currey is selling an Arkham Housearchive that includes two Keeler letters:

The David Rajchel ArkhamHouse Archive is ahighly important collection of letters and docu-ments that compliment the papers held by theWisconsinHistorical Society. These papers andthose held by WHS are essentially all theArkhamHousepapers that survive.…HARRYSTEPHEN KEELER (1890-1967) 2 typewrittenletters to Derleth, 3 May no year [1947?] and 1July 1947, the latter providing biographical in-formation (Keeler states here that he was bornin 1894). …

Fred CleaverGreeley, Colo.

For a crime fiction buff like me, especially interest-ed in the history of and critical writing about thegenre, Taking Detective Stories Seriously is the mostexciting publication since Mike Nevins collectedand Fender Tucker published Anthony Boucher’sreview columns from the San Francisco Chronicle.It’s published by Tippermuir Books Ltd. of Perth,

Scotland (tippermuirbooks@blueyonder.co.uk) at £15, paperbound. There is a short Fore-word by Simon Brett, and a lengthy (46 pgs) intro-duction and commentary by Martin Edwards.Dorothy L. Sayers’ reviews are presented chrono-logically as they appeared in the SundayTimes. Shewould typically review three or four books per col-umn, andwould often group them together so as tocomment generally on some commonality of sub-ject or style. Her column appeared from 1933 to1935.Anyhow, HSK’s The Travelling Skull (Ward

Lock’s title) was reviewed in her column of 12August, 1934, grouped with three other books sheconsidered thrillers under the heading “What aThriller Should Be.” The others: Calling All Cars byHenry Holt, Death by the Mistletoe by AngusMacVicar, and The Ince Murder Case by E. J. Pond.She slated those three specimens prettythoroughly, but concluded her introductoryremarks by saying: “This week, Mr. Keeler’sthriller, ‘THETRAVELLINGSKULL’,hasgivenmegreat joy, but the other three give me nothing but apain in the neck, though it is only fair to say thatthey are noworse thanmanyothers andbetter thansome.”She saves Harry for the last:

And now for “THE TRAVELLING SKULL”,which is, in my opinion, exactly what a thrillershould be. Balderdash if you like, but balder-dash with a difference. It is extravagant, butwith a jolly, humorous, whimsical, unusual,chucklesome extravagance. It dances absurdlyalong and you follow riotously, wonderingwhere you will end up. The characters areamusing; onno accountmiss Legga theHumanSpider or Sophie Kratzenschneiderwumpel(the very names, you see, have a tang to them);the writing is crisp; everything is fresh and un-expected; and if the ending seems a little in-volved,whocares? itwas suchgood fungettingthere. From themoment that theherogets land-edwith theBarr-Bagwith theBillyBulgerBulgeand finds the silver-plated skull stuffed withsonnets—But there! likeagoodchairman, Iwillsit down and leaveMr. Keeler to entertain you.

She gets Keeler like we do, I think! A shame sheonly reviewed the one.

Art ScottLivermore, Cal.

Keeler News no. 8814

NewMembersCollins, Paul, Portland, Ore.Nikolau, Jacob, Berkeley, Cal.Pietsch, Greg, Fairbanks, AlaskaPyro, Howie, Los Angeles

Returning MemberLadage, K. David, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

ASentence from theMasterDuring all this interchange of pointers as toconnubial bliss, Wong Shing Li had movedon one chair rightwise to the Italian violinistwho was author of one question-recipientup front's being trussed up ocularly!

The Mysterious Ivory Ball of Wong Shing Li

See abebooks.com for details.

EL MISTERIOSO SEÑOR YO. Reus, 1950, €7.90.Alcaná Libros, Madrid.THE MURDERED MATHEMATICIAN.Ward Lock,1949, good in good dj, £65. The Bookstore, Belfast.

Is there a list of Keeler novels in first person? Ilooked throughmy library and only found three:TheRiddle of theTravelingSkull,TheMysteriousMr.I/The Chameleon, andWhen Thief Meets Thief.Since the first two are amongmyvery favorites

Iwanted tomake sure I haven’t overlooked someothers.It’s a shame that he has so few in first person, I

think his writing is best in that mode. Maybe itwas easier to move the puzzle pieces around inhis plots from a third-person perspective?

Dave MurrayOakland, Cal.

There’s alsoThe Skull of theWaltzingClown, largeparts of Finger! Finger!, and The Man with theMagic Eardrums. I think that’s it, but there may besomemore. I agree, this is a very enjoyable mode, sinceHSKgleefully exploits the device of the unreliable nar-rator.

I’ve been reading The Riddle of the Traveling Skulland just love it. I heard about the Harry StephenKeeler Society and would love to join and be in-cluded in your ranks.

Greg PietschFairbanks, Alaska

Though I hadheard ofHarry StephenKeeler, as amega collector of all things off beat (I have amas-sive library, movie poster collection, somewherearound 40,000 strange records which I feature onmy radio show Intoxica Radio, etc etc), I only justbegan getting around to actually reading (andreading about—a lot!) Mr. Keeler.I’m a musician & DJ. I’ve been in some very

popularbands (Danzig,D.Generation, andmanymany more...). I write for a very big blog calledDangerousMinds andwould love todo an articleon Keeler.All that said, I’d like to join the society!

Howie PyroLos Angeles

BY THIRD DEGREE.WardLock, 1948, 1st, £460 (!!).Glacier Books, Pitlochry, UK.THE STEELTOWNSTRANGLER.Ward Lock,1950, vg+ in near fine dj, $1200(!!!). Burnside Rare Books,Portland, OR.AMAZING STORIES, April1956, including “John Jones’sDollar.” $8. Books from theCrypt, N. Potomac, MD.