Saturday, May 29, 2010

Fletcher Flora


Fletcher Flora is waaaay overdue to be rediscovered by some small publisher, don't you think? His work is hard to come by.
He has a story in the old Black Lizard Anthology of Crime Fiction, and his novel Park Avenue Tramp was published in an omnibus by Stark House a couple years ago. And the story "Heels Are For Hating" is available as a Kindle download... and that's it. There's nada else.
I knew him only from a couple of old, falling-apart Alfred Hitchcock story collections, and in each of those Flora's stories really stood out for me. He was dark and funny and clever, one of those old-school "twist at the end" writers like Bloch or Dahl.
Come on, small publishers. Someone, anyone, get the rights to a whole bunch of Flora stories and put 'em out! I promise, I'll buy it.

8 comments:

  1. He's new to me. another one to catch up on.

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  2. A Flora story also appeared in a 1999 anthology called Pure Pulp. In the editors' brief intro to the piece they ask the rhetorical question, "Has there ever been a bad story by Fletcher Flora?"

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  3. Paul, I'm sure you'd love him. If you have an e-reader you can download that above-mentioned story for a buck or two.
    Steve, I'm gonna have to find that anthology, then-- thanks for the tip!

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  4. and if the covers are all like that, i'm buyuing it too.

    n

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  5. You're right, Nigel, that's a great cover. Wish I knew who did it.

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  8. All right, let me try just one more time to post this successfully.

    Looks like your wish came true. I've turned into a bit of a Flora-head thanks to those Prologue e-book reissues. Most recently, I was knocked out by (and put up a blog post about) The Brass Bed.
    ================================
    Detectives Beyond Borders
    "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
    http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com

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