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Alphabet Hicks
''Alphabet Hicks'' is a mystery novel by American writer Rex Stout, starring his detective, Alphabet Hicks, first published in 1941. Private investigator Alphabet Hicks was the protagonist of one novel and one short story written by Stout. Plot summary Another Stout detective comes on stage, a brilliant Harvard Law School graduate, now a disbarred lawyer, the energetic, brusque Alfred ("Alphabet") Hicks seems content to function as a cab driver until a woman passenger is plunged into difficulties. He then turns investigator and soon is up to his earlobes in intrigues within the plastics industry, and killings that are part and parcel of those intrigues. Hicks is encountered just once again - in Stout's short story "His Own Hand". Literary significance and criticism * Isaac Anderson, ''The New York Times Book Review'' — Rex Stout, turning temporarily from the slow-moving, subtle-minded mystery novel character, Nero Wolfe, has invented one called Alphabet Hicks, who is desc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rex Stout
Rex Todhunter Stout (; December 1, 1886–October 27, 1975) was an American writer noted for his detective fiction. His best-known characters are the detective Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin, who were featured in 33 novels and 39 novellas or short stories between 1934 and 1975. In 1959, Stout received the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award. The Nero Wolfe corpus was nominated Best Mystery Series of the Century at Bouchercon XXXI, the world's largest mystery convention, and Rex Stout was nominated as Best Mystery Writer of the Century. In addition to writing fiction, Stout was a prominent public intellectual for decades. Stout was active in the early years of the American Civil Liberties Union and a founder of the Vanguard Press. He served as head of the Writers' War Board during World War II, became a radio celebrity through his numerous broadcasts, and was later active in promoting world federalism. He was the long-time president of the Autho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Detective Novel
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, Kogoro Akechi, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades. History Ancient Some scholars, such as R. H. Pfeiffer, have suggested that certain ancient and religious texts bear similarities to what would later be called detective fiction. In the Old Testament story of Susanna and the Elders (the Protestant Bible locates this story within the apocrypha), the account told by two witnesses broke down whe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Farrar & Rinehart
Farrar & Rinehart (1929–1946) was a United States book publishing company founded in New York. Farrar & Rinehart enjoyed success with both non-fiction and novels, notably, the landmark Rivers of America Series and the first ten books in the Nero Wolfe corpus of Rex Stout. In 1943 the company was recognized with the first Carey-Thomas Award for creative publishing presented by ''Publishers Weekly''. History Farrar & Rinehart was founded in June 1929 by John C. Farrar (vice president) and Stanley M. Rinehart, Jr. (president), in partnership with Frederick R. Rinehart. In forming the company, Farrar and the Rineharts left the massive Doubleday, Doran publishing house, the result of a merger between their mutual employer, the George H. Doran Company, with Doubleday, Page & Company in 1927. Both Stanley and Fredrick were the sons of the famous playwright and author, Mary Roberts Rinehart. Mary Roberts Rinehart supported her sons and their company by leaving Doubleday, Doran ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Broken Vase
''The Broken Vase'' is a mystery novel by American writer Rex Stout, first published by Farrar & Rinehart in 1941, and later in paperback by Dell as mapback #115 and, subsequently, by other publishers. It is the last of Stout's three works featuring detective Tecumseh Fox. Plot summary The novel begins with backstage performance jitters just before a musical performance at Carnegie Hall in New York to be given by a striking young violinist, Jan Tusar and his on-again-off-again girlfriend and piano accompanist, whose father has died a few months earlier in a fall from his office window. Private investigator Tecumseh Fox is by no means a follower of classical music, but has been convinced by his friend Diego Zorilla, a former violinist whose fingers were mangled in an accident, to charitably contribute to buying a valuable violin for the young performer. Fox and his friend take their seats in the audience, but the concert does not go well, and it seems not to be the fault of eit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Silent Speaker
''The Silent Speaker'' is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by the Viking Press in 1946. It was published just after World War II, and key plot elements reflect the lingering effects of the war: housing shortages and restrictions on consumer goods, including government regulation of prices, featuring the conflict between a federal price regulatory body and a national business association, paralleling the conflicts between the Office of Price Administration and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. ''The Silent Speaker'' was Stout's first full-length Nero Wolfe novel since ''Where There's a Will'' in 1940. "Thereafter, though he would continue writing for another thirty years, his stories would all be Nero Wolfe stories," wrote biographer John McAleer. "He liked Wolfe and Archie. After all, they were an essential part of himself. 'During the war years I missed them,' he told me." Plot introduction The head of a Fede ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1941 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1941. Events *January 3 – A decree (''Normalschrifterlaß'') issued in Nazi Germany by Martin Bormann on behalf of Adolf Hitler calls for replacement of blackletter typefaces by Antiqua. *January 20 – Chittadhar Hridaya begins a six-year sentence of imprisonment in Kathmandu for writing poetry in Nepal Bhasa, during which time he secretly composes his Buddhist epic '' Sugata Saurabha'' in that language. *January 21– 23 – A failed " Legionary Rebellion" in Bucharest, opposing loyalists of the Ion Antonescu government to the radically fascist Iron Guard, doubles as a pogrom against Romanian Jews. Avant-garde poet Ion Barbu joins a rebel squad storming into the Ministry of Education; meanwhile, his colleague Ion Vinea protects a Jewish friend, the novelist Sergiu Dan. The destruction of Jewish life and property is documented from inside the Jewish community by the photojournalist F. Brunea-Fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plastics Industry
The plastics industry manufactures polymer materials—commonly called plastics—and offers services in plastics important to a range of industries, including packaging, building and construction, electronics, aerospace, manufacturing and transportation. It is part of the chemical industry. In addition, as mineral oil is the major constituent of plastics, it therefore forms part of the petrochemical industry. Besides plastics production, plastics engineering is an important part of the industrial sector. The latter field is dominated by engineering plastic as raw material because of its better mechanical and thermal properties than the more widely used commodity plastics. Companies Markets According to PlasticsEurope, the top three markets for plastics are packaging, building and construction, and automotive. Production Plastics production has been growing globally. The numbers include thermoplastics and polyurethanes, as well as thermosets, adhesives, coatings, s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New York Times Book Review
''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The magazine's offices are located near Times Square in New York City. Overview The ''New York Times'' has published a book review section since Saturday, October 10, 1896, announcing: "We begin today the publication of a Supplement which contains reviews of new books ... and other interesting matter ... associated with news of the day." In 1911, the review was moved to Sundays, on the theory that it would be more appreciatively received by readers with a bit of time on their hands. The target audience is an intelligent, general-interest adult reader. The ''Times'' publishes two versions each week, one with a cover price sold via subscription, bookstores, and newsstands; the other with no cove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Collins Crime Club
Collins Crime Club was an imprint of British book publishers William Collins, Sons and ran from 6 May 1930 to April 1994. Throughout its 64 years the club issued a total of 2,012in "The Hooded Gunman -- An Illustrated History of Collins Crime Club", by John Curran, both in the dust jacket, and in page 388 first editions of crime novels and reached a high standard of quality throughout. In the field of crime book collecting, Collins Crime Club is eagerly sought, particularly pre-war first editions in dust wrappers with their vivid and imaginative images. History Customers registered their name and address with the club and were sent a newsletter every three months which advised them of the latest books which had been or were to be issued. Collins' intention was to publish three new crime books on the first Monday of every month. All three books were supposedly picked by a panel of experts (only one of whom seems to have been named — Cyril Alington) and they chose for each m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dell Publishing
Dell Publishing Company, Inc. is an American publisher of books, magazines and comic books, that was founded in 1921 by George T. Delacorte Jr. with $10,000 (approx. $145,000 in 2021), two employees and one magazine title, ''I Confess'', and soon began turning out dozens of pulp magazines, which included penny-a-word detective stories, articles about films, and romance books (or "smoochies" as they were known in the slang of the day). During the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, Dell was one of the largest publishers of magazines, including pulp magazines. Their line of humor magazines included '' 1000 Jokes'', launched in 1938. From 1929 to 1974, they published comics under the Dell Comics line, the bulk of which (1938–62) was done in partnership with Western Publishing. In 1943, Dell entered into paperback book publishing with Dell Paperbacks. They also used the book imprints of Dial Press, Delacorte Books, Delacorte Press, Yearling Books, and Laurel Leaf Library. Dell was acqu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mapback
Mapback is a term used by paperback collectors to refer to the earliest paperback books published by Dell Books, beginning in 1943. The books are known as mapbacks because the back cover of the book contains a map that illustrates the location of the action. Dell books were numbered in series. Mapbacks extend from #5 to at least #550; then maps became less of a fixed feature of the books and disappeared entirely in 1951. (Numbers 1 through 4 had no map, although a later re-publication of #4, '' The American Gun Mystery'' by Ellery Queen, added a map.) The occasional number in the series between #5 and #550 contains no map, but some sort of full-page graphic or text connected with the book's contents. The artwork of the maps began with quite detailed maps, and later numbers contain more stylized ones. "The back cover map was very popular with readers and remains popular with collectors ... the Dell 'mapbacks' are among the most well known vintage paperbacks." "Dell's mos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels By Rex Stout
A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning 'new'. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval Chivalric romance, and the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel. Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, and John Cowper Powys, preferred the term ''romance''. Such romances should not be confused with the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
