The Case of the....

I've had a stack of Erle Stanley Gardner mysteries (in book club hardback with dust jackets) on the shelf for YEARS.... mostly Perry Mason mysteries, but a couple of the other series as well (one D. A. mystery).

Erle Stanley Gardner was the Louis L'Amour of the Mystery world (well, one of them at least) with not only masses of books published, but GOOD books to read, overall. I used to watch the Perry Mason courtroom dramas when the ran in re-runs -- showing a bit of my age here -- but they were fairly decent too.

The thing is, I think these books should have sold years ago. They've been on my shelves for at least five years, possibly more. All have dust jackets. All are generally in very good to very good+ condition. The prices are decent and in range.

So why is it that one or two have sold over the years and not the rest?

Who knows.

I do know that the time I had a 1st edition in nice condition of one of the titles, it sold in less than six months.


The book club editions.... that seems to be a different story.

Maybe I should read one this week. Maybe if I set my sights on keeping even one of the volumes out of the reach of customers for a couple of days by putting it on my to read pile, that will force the universe to react.

I don't know.

Even if they still don't sell in another year, or two, I'll probably hang on to them. The covers are cool, the stories are decent and Erle Stanley Gardner is a classic mystery author (well, you know, popularly classic. He's no Dashiell Hammet, even on a really good day).

In other news, I know I promised to start work on uploading my First's Magazine articles to my website this week.

First things first though.

I have to FIND the darned articles to put up.

THAT'S still on my list. It's do-able.

Watch me do...