I am positively thrilled to report that "In the Fog" was every bit as good as I anticipated it, and while I won't give away the ending, I will say that it was one of those unexpected "O. Henry" moments that, for the life of me, I couldn't see coming.
You should definitely check this one out if you like good murder mysteries. I'm going to share some links to the best copies of this book I could find. This book is not in print, however, there are some archival reprints that you can buy on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. But please, stay away from them!!! (I'll explain why in my next blog entry very soon.) Below are some electronic editions that I personally recommend.
- Archive.org - This copy has been scanned and uploaded directly, and therefore, you will notice that the pages look exactly as they would if you had a physical copy of the book. This could work very well on a device such as an iPad or any other tablet. (The computer also displays these files pretty well.) However, don't try this on a smartphone or an iPod touch. These screens are very small and the pages will be shrunk to where you can't read them. They do offer plain text, and while that form can be adjusted to read better, I do not recommend it. The text is poorly reproduced and it's chock-full of grammatical errors and misspellings galore.
- Project Gutenberg - This is an excellent way to read this book, as the text has been copied from the physical and proofread so that it matches. Because this is digital text instead of a fixed page-scan, you can adjust the size on your device so that it's big enough to read. (If you're looking at the HTML, that might be hard to do, so if you have a tablet or smartphone, you should download the ePub file that they offer, and then you should be able to change things around so you can read it better.)
- Google Books - This is the same as the Archive.org version I just wrote about. For smartphone users, you have the option to download an ePub version. I had a brief look at it just now, and it seems fine, but it does have some flaws. You're probably better off reading the Project Gutenberg version if that bothers you.
- Amazon Kindle - This is the edition that I read, and it was perfect! (And I got it at the best price, too - FREE.) There were a couple of typos, but nothing major. The only thing I took any issue with was the fact that the text is interrupted periodically by captions for illustrations that were in the original edition, but for some reason are absent from this one. It's a tolerable annoyance when you consider what a treat this book is.
- LibriVox - While this isn't quite the same thing as the above, I thought I'd also include this audio edition for those of you who would rather listen to your books than read them. For what it's worth, these audio books are pretty good, even if, half the time, the volunteers who read them sound like mind-controlled robots. These are great for listening to on your smartphone when on a morning jog, or on your car stereo during a road trip. (I just had a brief listen to this version, and its reader, Bob Gonzales, does a good upper-class British accent. Just sayin'...) Also, I have noticed that these recordings often end up on YouTube, and that is also true of this one. Just do a search for it if that's how you want to listen, but I personally find that YouTube isn't really the best place to listen to audiobooks.
And if you do best with print editions, there are libraries that have their own copies. For a comprehensive list of the libraries that carry this title, click here.
And that's it for our first review. I will be posting more reviews and other miscellaneous articles relating to vintage novels very soon.
Until then, au revoir...
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