[.ca] Graveyard Rats and Others (ISBN 159224145X)

Detectives in the Pines:
This is an incomplete collection of Howard's detective and weird menace stories. The contents are Black Talons / Fangs of Gold / The Tomb's Secret / Names in the Black Book / Graveyard Rats / Black Wind Blowing About half of these have appeared in other, mass-market books; the others have been hard to come by, so the collection is welcome for that reason. However, the price is pretty steep for 6 stories, and lesser Howard ones at that. Can the rights to these stories have been that expensive? Baen managed to publish 7 mass-market paperback Howard collections, each of which has about twice as many stories as this, for about $6-7 per book. Wandering Star also publishes expensive Howard collections, but those are of the widely known characters, in deluxe editions with illustrations. No illustrations here, aside from the generic, apparently public-domain cover illo. There's also an introduction by Howard scholar Don Herron, but it doesn't add much, if any, value. If you're a Howard fan, you'll want this book. Even lesser Howard is better than some other people. But I can't see the general public wanting to spend this much money for so little.

A great read:
Certainly incomplete, but a great thumping read for fans and folks unfamiliar with Robert E. Howard. Black talons and others are terrific tales of the era. A tad pricey, but a durable volume of tales.