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My parents were READERS....not during the day; they were too busy for that; but there was always a stack of books on the nightstand on either side of the bed. Only much later did I realize how liberal, if not positively "Red" some of them were, and how all children did not necessarily read Sinclair Lewis, or the OZ books in the original or The Decameron or Ray Bradbury. One thing they both read was hardboiled detective novels of the 1930s. The famous ones of course, but also the more obscure names of the period. In hardcover because they predate the pocketbook, and often in first edition. In the next few weeks, I'll be listing the collection, starting with the detectives and murder mysteries. My sister is listing the other half of the collection....look for her offerings under 'cobwebb'.

WAS HE REALLY A SUICIDE? To a generation reared on conspiracy theory, the following tale stinks of murder-- A scientist under observation in a sealed room is killed during an experiment in the Howard M. Ward Laboratory where a research team is studying electroencephalography. Shortly thereafter a second murder is committed under circumstances as puzzling as the first. The murders are solved by Inspector Noonan, a "practical" Boston detective. BRAIN-WAVES AND DEATH was published posthumously under the pseudonym "Willard Rich" a few weeks after its author, William T. Richards, took his own life. Richards worked for Alfred Lee Loomis and his novel was a thinly veiled account of a real-life laboratory located about 40 miles north of New York City nicknamed "Tuxedo Park." This "secret palace of science" was founded and funded by Loomis, arguably one of the most significant and uncredited figures in the history of modern military science. Loomis, a world-class tinkerer in his own right, was a visionary who saw that technology would win the looming war-and indeed that an investment in "big science" would be the key to national strength in the future. Loomis went on to establish the MIT Rad Lab and later was instrumental in setting up the Manhattan Project. According to legend, Loomis had all copies of Richards' roman-a-clef bought up and destroyed. Obviously he missed a few copies, but the book is uncommon , especially in jacket. Hubin (1994), p. 678. Adey, Locked Room Mysteries. A RARE COPY OF THE AFOREMENTIONED NOVEL ON EBAY