28 June 2022 - THE MYSTERIOUS BOOKSHOP in MANHATTAN

 

THE MYSTERIOUS 

BOOKSHOP in MANHATTAN

G'day folks,

The world’s oldest and biggest bookstore stocking only mystery, crime fiction, espionage, and thrillers. 

Mysteries have always been around and always been popular, but they haven’t always been respected. Otto Penzler has had a significant hand in that transformation. He’s probably the most important figure in the history of mystery fiction who’s never written a mystery story. 

You get into Otto Penzler’s New York office through a door in the Mysterious Bookshop, the world’s oldest and biggest bookstore focusing on mystery, crime fiction, espionage, and thrillers. The door is roped off with a big X made of yellow police tape reading CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS. Down a flight of stairs, his office is a low-ceilinged basement cube with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on all four sides, stocked with anthologies and first editions as well as a random sampling of mass-market hardcovers and paperbacks. If the office was a store by itself, it would be the second-best mystery bookstore in the world. 

Penzler is the owner of the Mysterious Bookshop (founded 1979) as well as The Mysterious Press, a publishing imprint he founded in 1975, and mysteriouspress.com, his ebook publisher. He has published most of the greats of mystery and crime fiction: Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, James Ellroy, Ross Thomas, Patricia Highsmith, Ross Macdonald, Ed McBain. Any of the major authors he hasn’t published are probably at least good friends of his.

 

The Mysterious Bookshop itself. Today the store is down in Tribeca, on a block that doesn’t suggest anything important in the literary world. It’s next to a Le Pain Quotidien and a few doors down from a 7-Eleven. (It was first located on 56th Street in Manhattan, in a building Penzler owned because it was cheaper to buy—New York was different back then.) 

 

Inside, every square inch of walls leading up to what must be 20-foot ceilings are packed with any book in which someone violently dies. There is an entire section for Sherlock Holmes books, including the many spinoffs written by dozens of authors. There are copies of long-defunct detective magazines like Black Mask. There is an entire section for what Penzler calls bibliomysteries—mystery books involving mysterious books. Murdered librarians, valuable manuscripts, that kind of thing.

The bookstore is not twee. There are no props, aside from the caution tape; no pranks, no cute designs or artworks. This is a temple to the noble mystery, a place where people who can name all of Donald E. Westlake’s pseudonyms talk about one of the most enduring genres in the history of literature.

 

20 June 2022 - MYSTERIOUS FAIRY CIRCLES in NAMIBIA

 

MYSTERIOUS FAIRY 

CIRCLES in NAMIBIA

G'day folks,

Unexplained bald patches in the landscape grow and recede over time, as though they are somehow alive. 

Whether in the thickly tufted prairie grass of the southern plains or in the dry stalks of vegetation in the dusty foothills, something is happening in Southern Africa. It doesn’t really matter what the climate or soil conditions are, or who is there to see it or not, or what grazing pattern the local wildlife happens to follow. Rings are forming in the ground.

Perfectly round, almost too-good-to-be-true rings, in fact. But they are true, and they are naturally occurring, so far as anyone can tell. The small, circular patches of bare ground form like bald spots in the otherwise thick grass or fields in Namibia and South Africa, where humans often don’t set foot. Their mysterious origin has lead them to be called “Fairy Circles” colloquially, and legends ranging from local tales of god’s footprints to international recognition as a “UFO hot spot” have sprouted up in short order.

 

But the Fairy Circles are not grand designs like their distant paranormal cousins, crop circles, and bona fide scientific research has led to the conclusion that not only do they occur naturally, but they grow and shrink over time, as if they were alive. Examination of the soil in and around the circles reveals no abnormal insects or parasites, no unusual fungus to speak of. All science has discovered thus far is that they’re not a hoax.

Popular hypotheses about their cause include mold or spores that kill off the grass, the radiating pattern of growth of which would certainly explain the odd circular shape; or wind or soil erosion, which would do less to explain the patterns but has been observed elsewhere and found to cause “bald spots.”

For now, the odd formations are both intriguing and entertaining to nearby residents as well as botanists and UFO enthusiasts the world over. For all the predictable supernatural talk about the Fairy Circles occupying, representing or otherwise creating a path to another world, they do in fact occupy a strange and unreal dimension—that rare place and time after which a phenomenon has been discovered, but before it is blandly explained away like so many lights in the sky. For now, the only certainty is the mystery.

 

13 August 2016 - PIRATES AND BURIED TREASURE

PIRATES AND 

BURIED TREASURE

G'day folks,

We have all heard of buried treasure. But ...

Pirate lore is rife with tales of hidden treasure and maps where “X” marks the spot, but there are only a few reliable accounts of buccaneers actually burying their loot. One early example concerns the English privateer Francis Drake. After a 1573 raid on a Spanish mule train, he and his men interred several tons of gold and silver along the Panamanian coast to prevent it from being recaptured. Drake left guards at the site, however, and quickly retrieved the booty after rendezvousing with his ships. 

Another sea rogue who was not so fortunate was Captain William Kidd, the notorious privateer-turned-pirate who became a wanted man for plundering shipping in the Indian Ocean. In 1699, Kidd dropped anchor near New York and buried the modern equivalent of millions of dollars in gold and jewels on tiny Gardiners Island. He was soon arrested in Boston while trying to clear his name, and it wasn’t long before the authorities tracked down and confiscated most of the ill-gotten treasure. Kidd, meanwhile, was transported to London and executed by hanging. 

Like many other pirate myths, the concept of buried plunder was popularized by author Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 novel “Treasure Island,” which involves a hunt for a cache of gold hidden by a salty ship captain. Yet according to maritime historian David Cordingly, the buccaneers of old were rarely so frugal. Rather than turning a hole in the ground into a savings account, they were more likely to squander their spoils on women, rum and gambling as soon as they returned to port. 

Even though real life pirate hoards were rare, legends still abound about long lost riches squirreled away on deserted islands. One of the most famous tales concerns the so-called “Treasure of Lima,” a haul of Spanish gold, silver and jewels supposedly stolen by a British ship captain named William Thompson and buried on Costa Rica’s Cocos Island around 1820. The loot is rumored to be worth around $200 million, but despite decades of searching, would-be treasure hunters have yet to track it down.

 

Clancy's comment: Imagine what  treasures have never been found?

I'm ...

11 October 2015 - WHAT ARE THE CRYSTAL SKULLS?

WHAT ARE THE CRYSTAL SKULLS?

G'day folks,

Here is something that might interest you.

Beginning in the late 19th century, around a dozen carved skulls made of clear or milky white quartz—also known as rock crystal—made their way into private and public collections around the globe. Since then, the origins of these “crystal skulls” have been the subject of ongoing mystery and controversy. 

According to the people who claimed to have discovered the skulls, they date back thousands or even tens of thousands of years, to ancient Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Aztec, Toltec, Mixtec or Maya. Many of those who believe in the crystal skulls’ ancient provenance attribute supernatural powers to the objects, including healing properties and the power to expand a person’s psychic abilities in their presence. Some have linked the skulls to the lost city of Atlantis, or claimed them as proof that extraterrestrials visited pre-Columbian civilizations such as the Aztecs. The 2008 movie “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” capitalized on the ongoing mystery, as well as the passion the skulls’ believers bring to their side of the argument. 

Scientists and archaeologists, on the other hand, are skeptical. For one thing, not one of the skulls was recovered on a documented excavation. And while skulls were a common motif in ancient Mesoamerica, and particularly Aztec, artwork (several Aztec gods are represented by skulls), the style and technique of the crystal skulls do not resemble genuine pre-Columbian representations of skulls. Recently, scientists from the British Museum in London and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. conducted analyses of crystal skulls using electron microscopes. After finding markings that could only have been made by modern-day carving implements—rather than the stone, bone and wooden tools that would have been used in pre-Colombian times—they concluded that the skulls were likely fakes. The scientists believe they were probably manufactured in the late 1800s, in response to a surge of interest in the ancient world and its artifacts.

Clancy's comment: Mm ... Believe it or not.

I'm ...