Nonfiction
The New Ray Bradbury Review, Number 6

by Jeffrey Kahan, ed. & Jonathan Eller, ed.
Kent State University Press, April 2019, $25

This irregular periodical celebrates a writer whose work spans multiple popular genres, primarily science fiction, fantasy, and horror, but also crime fiction. Bradbury contributed several stories to the mystery pulps in the 1940s, and in 1985 began a trilogy of detective novels narrated by an unnamed young writer struggling to succeed in 1950s Los Angeles who partners with a policeman friend. The first of these is the subject of Paul Donatich’s “The Horror of the Blank Page in Bradbury’s Death Is a Lonely Business.” The subsequent volumes were A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990) and Let’s All Kill Constance (2003). Donatich views the novel as fictionalized autobiography as well as detective fiction, noting Bradbury’s affinity with Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin tales and the impact of two events when he was 12 years old: the murder of his uncle and his encounter with a sideshow performer known as Mr. Electrico. The essay provides a fine introduction to one corner of Bradbury’s massive oeuvre.

Jon L. Breen
Teri Duerr
6524
Jonathan Eller, ed.
April 2019
the-new-ray-bradbury-review-number-6
25
Kent State University Press