Second Coming of Platt

It’s certainly been a very long while since I read any novels by author-cartoonist Kin Platt (1911-2003). My guess is the last book of his I picked up was The Body Beautiful Murder, one of his Max Roper mysteries, and that was probably in the early to mid-1980s.

So I was intrigued to receive a note today about Platt from my friend Matt over at Just Wondering. He began by explaining that “One of my favorite books when I was a kid--long out of print, a frustration to many of my contemporaries--was the children’s adventure/mystery Sinbad and Me [1966], about a kid and his bulldog who solve a decades-old mystery in their small coastal town. It turns out the author, Kin Platt, wrote many adult books under his own name and under pseudonyms.” Then he mentioned that “the following showed up today on the Facebook page that the author’s son [Chris] maintains:”

Wonderful news, all you Kin Platt fans. F+W Media, a hundred-year-old publishing house based in Ohio, will be publishing e-book versions of all of Kin’s previously published adult mystery titles. Included are: The Pushbutton Butterfly, The Kissing Gourami, The Princess Stakes Murder, The Giant Kill, Match Point for Murder, The Body Beautiful Murder, The Screwball King Murder, Dead As They Come, and Murder in Rosslare. The e-books will be created in formats for Kindle, Nook and Kobo. These books also will be available as P-O-D hardcovers.

Matt went on to mention, though, something else he learned in an e-mail exchange with Chris Platt: “Sinbad and its sequels have a huge cult following but publishers aren’t convinced they would sell profitably.” Oh, well. Maybe someday.

By the way, if you’re wondering why F+W Media sounds familiar, it’s because that Cincinnati-based publishing house purchased the crime-fiction imprint Tyrus Books earlier this year.