Hello, ma'am. I'm from the ACME home security company and I'm selling new and improved shorter door chains.
The Fabulous Clipjoint is the 1947 debut novel by Fredric Brown, published originally as Dead Man's Indemnity in Mystery Book Magazine in April 1946. This edition came from Popular Library in 1948. The basic idea here is a hapless alcoholic is murdered in Chicago and his son and brother decide to find the killer or killers. As their investigation unfolds, the son learns his father wasn't hapless at all, but rather had lived a full life that included adventures in Spain and Mexico, winning a duel, romantic entanglements, and more. None of it has to do with why he died. It merely serves to awaken his son to the possibilities of life, and helps convince him to run off to join a carnival. A clipjoint, literally speaking, is a nightclub or strip bar where customers are promised everything, delivered little, and cheated down to their last dime. The clipjoint of The Fabulous Clipjoint is figurative. It's the city of Chicago, perhaps even the entirety of life itself. As a metaphor it's grand, but the novel is less so. It's competent, but Brown would do better later in his career. The cover art here featuring the world's most useless security chain is by Ed Grant, and fits nicely into our collection of women confronting trouble at their doors. See that here.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission. 1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot. 1912—Pravda Is Founded
The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country's leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid. 1983—Hitler's Diaries Found
The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler's diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess's flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison.
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