Mann, Oh Man

I am frequently amazed by J.F. “John” Norris’ breadth of reading experience within the crime-fiction genre. It seems that every week or so, his blog--Pretty Sinister Books--introduces me to a new but classic novelist. Recently, for instance, he wrote about prolific British editor-author E. Charles Vivian, who, in the early 20th century and under the pseudonym Jack Mann, penned stories about Gregory George Gordon Green, “a private investigator who had a habit of stumbling upon mysterious crimes and murders that had supernatural origins.”

I can pretty definitively say that I have never read a Vivian yarn; and though I’m not a big fan of supernatural stories, Norris makes Vivian/Mann’s work sound interesting enough that I shall have to keep my eyes open for one of his books. If not Maker of Shadows (1938), then something else.