"When did publishers get so smart about reissuing out-of-print mysteries? For the longest time, paperback reprints were just last year’s best sellers, but not anymore. Pioneers of 1950s American noir like Ross Macdonald are shown true respect when Vintage Crime’s Black Lizard imprint reissues their books in sturdy editions with properly sleazy covers. The classic English mystery of the 1930s and ’40s also lives on so long as Rue Morgue keeps the faith by reprinting master craftsmen like Nicholas Blake and Michael Gilbert. But it takes a special kind of wit to resurrect Charlie Chan, as Academy Chicago has done with THE CHINESE PARROT and THE HOUSE WITHOUT A KEY (paper, $14.95 each), ingenious puzzle mysteries written by Earl Derr Biggers in the 1920s. Another brainstorm, on the part of Felony & Mayhem, has brought THE PEKING MAN IS MISSING (paper, $14.95) back into print. This speculative novel was written by Claire Taschdjian, an amateur archaeologist who was one of the last people to handle the bones of Peking Man before they were lost — or stolen — during World War II. Last year’s best seller? Don’t make me laugh."
-- Marilyn Stasio - from CRIME - Revenge Theory
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