SPIELS AND THRILLS

There's a sucker born every minute. And they die just as fast.

Fredric Brown’s Madball was hard as hell to get at anything approaching a reasonable cost but we finally scored a copy. It’s one of the more famous novels in the fertile carny niche, and had two amazing covers which you see above, the first by Griffith Foxley for the 1953 Dell edition, and the second by Mitchell Hooks for the 1962 Gold Medal edition. What’s a madball? It’s a gazing crystal. What’s Madball about? After an insurance settlement a carnival worker comes into a couple of thousand bucks. When he’s murdered his nest egg seems like the motive. But what nobody knows—or what nobody is supposed to know—is that he’d also been an accomplice in a bank robbery and possessed not just a couple of thousand dollars, but more than $40,000. That’s about $380,000 in today’s money—sufficient to inspire desperation and bloodthirsty viciousness. Madball is set apart by its weird backdrop, its odd carny denizens, its multi-pov narrative, and its sexual frankness. It’s a mad tale, improbably plotted, testing the limits of believability, but recommended. See more carny fiction here, here, and here.

Gold Medal Books, Dell Publications, Fredric Brown, Griffith Foxley, Mitchell Hooks, cover art, literature

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

January 25

1949—First Emmy Awards Are Presented

At the Hollywood Athletic Club in Los Angeles, California, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences presents the first Emmy Awards. The name Emmy was chosen as a feminization of “immy”, a nickname used for the image orthicon tubes that were common in early television cameras.

January 25

1971—Manson Family Found Guilty

Charles Manson and three female members of his “family” are found guilty of the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders, which Manson orchestrated in hopes of bringing about Helter Skelter, an apocalyptic war he believed would arise between blacks and whites.

January 24

1961—Plane Carrying Nuclear Bombs Crashes

A B-52 Stratofortress carrying two H-bombs experiences trouble during a refueling operation, and in the midst of an emergency descent breaks up in mid-air over Goldsboro, North Carolina. Five of the six arming devices on one of the bombs somehow activate before it lands via parachute in a wooded region where it is later recovered. The other bomb does not deploy its chute and crashes into muddy ground at 700 mph, disintegrating while driving its radioactive core fifty feet into the earth.

January 23

1912—International Opium Convention Signed

The International Opium Convention is signed at The Hague, Netherlands, and is the first international drug control treaty. The agreement was signed by Germany, the U.S., China, France, the UK, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Persia, Portugal, Russia, and Siam.

January 22

1946—CIA Forerunner Created

U.S. president Harry S. Truman establishes the Central Intelligence Group or CIG, an interim authority that lasts until the Central Intelligence Agency is established in September of 1947.

January 22

1957—George Metesky Is Arrested

The New York City “Mad Bomber,” a man named George P. Metesky, is arrested in Waterbury, Connecticut and charged with planting more than 30 bombs. Metesky was angry about events surrounding a workplace injury suffered years earlier. Of the thirty-three known bombs he planted, twenty-two exploded, injuring fifteen people. He was apprehended based on an early use of offender profiling and because of clues given in letters he wrote to a newspaper. At trial he was found legally insane and committed to a state mental hospital.