I really have a tough time coming up with ideas about which to blog, as I have said before. I kept trying to think of something all weekend, and nothing came to me. So I gave up and read. (Always a choice for me.) Since I have one six shelf bookcase and two three shelf bookcases stuffed with TBR books, it is much easier to find a book to read than an idea to write about.

But one of the books I just finished, Close Quarters by Michael Gilbert, gave me the inspiration I need. Rue Morgue Press reprinted this classic, for which much thanks. It is Gilbert’s first book, written in 1938 but not published until 1947. The “Close” of Close Quarters is a cathedral close, almost as good as a locked room for limiting suspects. Diagrams are included and a crossword puzzle helps solve the mystery; two particulars of classic mysteries that add a lot of enjoyment to the genre, in my humble opinion.

I have long admired and read Gilbert, but I never found this first book until Rue Morgue reprinted it. The mystery world owes a debt of gratitude to Tom and Enid Schantz for their efforts to bring back to light some of the classic mysteries of the past. Thanks to them, authors such as Catherine Aird, Manning Coles, Stuart Palmer, Craig Rice and several others of the Golden Age of mysteries are available to new readers. (These are my favorites of those they have put back in print.) I hope they continue to make these writers available to us for many years to come; I have gaps in my collections of some of them, and they have introduced me to authors previously unknown to me, such as Joan Coggin, Constance and Gwenyth Little and Glyn Carr.

Since I like to read a variety of types of mystery it is good to have the classic sub-genre available when I want to escape to the twenties or thirties and to the intellectual puzzles set by masters such as Michael Gilbert. He wrote many forms of the genre so reading him can give the reader a variety: police procedurals, spy novels, classic detective stories, courtroom dramas and adventure tales. One could never say: “There’s a new Michael Gilbert out” and have fans know what type of book it would be, except that it would be well written and a great read.

He also wrote great short stories, and though I personally am not a short story fan because I like spending more time with a character and getting to know him/her through a longer format, Gilbert satisfies that need for me by having the same characters in the stories. His spies Calder and Behrens are featured in his collection Game Without Rules, and are developed enough even for me.

Gilbert wrote more than 40 books during his long life (he died at age 93), and won many an award, including being named Grandmaster by the Mystery Writers of America, receiving the Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievements from the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain and being honored at Bouchercon for his life of crime (writing, that is). ( I plagiarized this information from the introduction to Close Quarters written by Tom and Enid, by the way.)

In this world of Kindles and now whatever the Apple thing is called, I for one am extremely grateful to Tom and Enid for continuing to publish the old-fashioned way. I don’t think I’ll ever want to replace a real page turning book with an electronic version. It was Jean-Luc Picard’s love for real books that made me a fan of his during the Star Trek: the Next Generation shows, and I hope the future contains real books for many centuries to come. So here’s to Rue Morgue and St. Martin’s and Penguin and Berkley and whatever other publishers still making our world better by printing books! And of course, to authors who write them; live long and prosper.