Book Description
Ambrose Bierce is well known to readers as the author of The Devil's Dictionary (1906) and numerous short stories, such as the Civil War tales gathered in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891) and the horror stories collected in Can Such Things Be? (1893). But, in his own day, he was best known as a prolific and fearless jounalist, and in the 40 years of his literary career he wrote thousands of articles for newspapers and magazines in San Francisco, London, and elsewhere. Most of the articles and poems that Bierce published in his own 12-volume Collected Works (1909-12) first appeared in his newspaper columns, as did his celebrated tales. With the growing scholarly interest in Bierce, these contributions are eliciting more attention. This bibliography is the first to attempt an exhaustive catalog of Bierce's entire body of published work. While the volume includes a chapter of separate publications by Bierce, such as individual books, its most important feature is a chapter listing entries for his contributions to books and periodicals. These entries identify the first appearances of his stories, articles, and poems. An additional chapter lists reprints of his works, and the volume also provides information about manuscript holdings. Joshi and Schultz demonstrate that in addition to being a master short story writer, fabulist, and epigrammatist, Bierce may also have been the leading American journalist of the 19th century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The most insightful Bierce criticism since Davidson
This book, which demonstrates the morality and compassion of a writer who has been offhandedly dismissed as a "cynic" by many critics, made me realize why I have always been so attracted to Bierce.
Bierce's personal stoicism, coupled with his literary romanticism, resulted in some of the most memorable stories in the history of American literature.
This is the best piece of Bierce criticism since Cathy Davidson's book about Bierce's influence on the postmoderns.
Highly recommended. ... Read more

Book Description
Oakley Hall’s Ambrose Bierce mystery series has gained an impressive list of devotees, from Richard Ford to Diane Johnson and Amy Tan to Thomas Keneally. The sights, sounds, and smells of 1890s San Francisco surround readers as larger-than-life Ambrose “Bitter” Bierce tracks California’s notorious criminal minds.

The fifth volume in the series, Ambrose Bierce and the Ace of Shoots follows the outspoken newspaperman as he and his associate Tom Redmond hunt down a celebrity shooter. When Colonel Studely brings his world-famous Wild West Show to town, he gets more than just a warm welcome. As the parade makes its way down Market Street, the colonel is shot dead. With clues and sinister motives—a trail of seduction, a vengeful train robber, a haze of opium— emerging from every direction, Bierce is stymied, but pierces the fog to reveal the true culprit. Ambrose Bierce and the Ace of Shoots is a rough-and-tumble romp through gritty old San Francisco. ... Read more

Book Description
An account of California journalist and wit Ambrose Bierce and his struggle with the railroad "octopus" controlled by "the Big Four" (Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins). This is the first book to look at Bierce's early muckraking campaign in depth through Bierce's acid journalism and the railroad's private and public reactions. After a brief literature review and biography of Bierce, one of America's greatest wits, journalists, and short-story writers, the study turns to his thirty-year battle with the Central Pacific Railroad, which controlled much of California's economy and politics, often through bribery of politicians and newspaper editors and publishers. Lindley looks at the initial funding of the railroad through the U.S. government, the development of railroads as symbols of hope and progress, and the eventual corruption of that optimistic outlook by railroad owners and politicians. Bierce attacked the railroads in his columns during his tenure at three San Francisco periodicals, the Argonaut, the Wasp, and the Examiner. His efforts culminated in a trip to Washington, D.C., in 1896 to cover the funding bill debate in Congress, during which railroad officials attempted to avoid repaying millions of dollars in government loans. Bierce did not consider himself a muckraker. He derided the generation of Progressive journalists who followed him a decade after he ended his campaign against the railroad. Yet, Bierce's journalism was a precursor of what is popularly known as the muckraking period, 1902-1914. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Well done, but not for everyone
This excellent collection of Ambrose Bierce's writing, organized to replace the autobiography he never wrote.

BUT, this is certainly not a biography. Bierce is not always fun to read. If you're looking for a fun biography, look elsewhere. If you've read enough of Bierce's writings to know what you're getting, give this book serious consideration.

Bierce in his own words
This is the first book where the reader is taken through Bierce's life in his own words.From his experiences in the Civil War until his mysterious disappearance into Mexico in 1913, "Sole Survivor" tells Bierce'stale through his stories, newspaper work, and personal correspondence.Amust-have volume for anyone interested in the great American journalist andauthor. ... Read more

Book Description
A compulsively readable historical thriller from "one of thecountry's finest writers." (Robert Stone)

An accomplished writer in several genres of fiction, veteran novelist OakleyHall has been praised as "a novelist who never seems to make a wrong move. . . .He is a writer to read again and again" (Richard Ford). The San FranciscoChronicle has included him—along with Wallace Stegner, John Steinbeck, andLarry McMurtry—in its "Western 100" list of the best twentieth-century works offiction written by an author from the American West.

Now, Hall unveils the riveting and entertaining sequel to his acclaimedAmbrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades. Once again the hero is thehistorical figure Ambrose Bierce—William Randolph Hearst's star journalist andSan Francisco's most celebrated writer. This time Bierce is investigating thedisappearance of a Hawaiian princess attached to King Kalakaua's entourage. Asthe aged king slowly expires in the Palace Hotel's Royal Suite, San Franciscoplays host to a throng of Hawaiian royal courtiers and counselors embroiled in aswirl of political intrigue surrounding the successor to the throne. As Bierceand his protégé, Tom Redmond, search for the missing princess, Hall weaves awonderfully tangled narrative of murder and mystery. Intelligent, gripping, andoften humorous, Ambrose Bierce and the Death of Kings will appeal to allreaders of mysteries,adventure tales, and historical novels. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Second Bierce mystery not up to the quality of the first
I admire Ambrose Bierce's work above all other 19th century writers, with the exception of O. Henry. I enjoy visiting San Francisco. So when I saw that Oakley Hall had written a sequel to Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades, I was eager to read it. Unfortunately, it doesn't live up to the promise of the first book.

Bierce was a short story writer and biting satirist who wrote newspaper columns and generally made a public nuisance of himself in the latter half of the 19th century. A Civil War veteran, his writings on the war anticipate much of the disillusionment and despair that characterizes later writings by Viet Nam veterans. He also wrote a considerable body of horror and ghost stories that are more modern than you might expect. He disappeared in the Mexican Civil War in 1914, and his fate has never been determined reliably. The movie Old Gringo speculated on this, and others have done so. One theory had it that he'd written The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which anyone who'd read Bierce would know was highly unlikely. He despised novels.

So here we have the second of a series of novels about him. In the first there was motivation for him to get involved in the mystery, but here there isn't. Instead we have a missing Hawaiian princess, a dying Hawaiian king, and Bierce looking for said princess. There's no explanation of why Bierce is doing the looking, and no explanation of why his friend Tom Redmond decides to help. They just do. And there's also no suspense: it becomes obvious that she's gone of her own volition, and a friend tells them she's safe. Half of the book slides by before we finally get to some suspense.

An elderly Hawaiian judge is killed, and his rooms set on fire. Bierce and Redmond three-quarters of the book insisting they aren't interested in who killed him, and then are reluctantly drawn into figuring it out. It's mildly entertaining, but no where near as suspenseful or intricate as the first book.

Redmond, meanwhile, has recently lost his wife to illness, and romances a half-Hawaiian lady of considerable stature (over 6') who apparently likes him, but is determined to marry someone prosperous (Redmond's a mere reporter). Redmond accepts this, and it somehow robs the romance of whatever fire it would otherwise have.

There are scenes in restaurants, bars, houses, and the city jail, and all read believably, and interestingly. Bierce and the other characters are well-drawn, and interesting, and I enjoyed the character and atmosphere of the book. Unfortunately, there isn't much of a plot.

Well written, fun, and interesting mystery
It is near the end of the 19th century and America's destiny seems to compell it to reach further west, to the independent kingdom of Hawaii, already largely dominated by the descendents of white missionaries now turned merchants and sugar barons. The King of Hawaii is in San Francisco, dying without clear indication of the succession. When a Hawaiina princess vanishes, poet and newspaper columnist Ambrose Bierce is called upon to find her. Bierce, in turn, asks for help from his friend Tom Redmond, the novel's narrator.

From the start, it is clear that there is more than a missing person. Bierce and Redmond run into the woman's sufferage movement, spiritualism, and the powerful force of Hawaiian magic. When a Hawaiian judge is found murdered, Redmond finds himself under attack from Hawaiian magic.

Author Oakley Hall has created a delightful view of America at the turn of an earlier century. Bierce, with his cynical, yet somehow optimistic, view of the world, makes an effective sleuth, doomed to be disappointed by those he attempts to save. Negative historical attitudes toward women and persons of color are integrated into the story without apology yet without any sense of approval either.

As Bierce explains near the end of the novel, all of the clues are available to the reader. Even those mystery readers who guess the killer will enjoy Hall's smooth writing, the depth of historical detail, and the insights into an important historical/literary figure in Ambrose Bierce, turn of the 19th century America, and the end of the history of Hawaii as an independent country.

A well written and completely enjoyable novel.

Hawaiian royalty, the Gay Nineties, and period atmosphere.
You can almost smell the literary mothballs as this very old-fashioned mystery, set in Gay Nineties San Francisco, unfolds and develops.Adhering faithfully to the tone and atmosphere of the time, and using much of the vocabulary and style of the period,Oakley Hall fills his pages with historical detail as he fleshes out a story of the death of King Kalakaua of Hawaii, including the rivalry for his throne, the influence of the sugar barons, and the pressure of the U.S. government for a lease on Pearl Harbor as a Pacific port. Despite the complex subject matter, Hall's style is surprisingly economical and restrained, and he advances the action quickly, presenting Ambrose Bierce, a real 19th century journalist and writer, as his clever, Holmes-like detective, with the narrator, Tom Redmond, as his much more sympathetic, Watsonian sidekick.

Old Hawaiian customs, sensitive issues of race and color, and America's imperialism all directly affect this plot, and Hall takes great care to depict these issues accurately.Unfortunately, the book gets bogged down in its own minutiae.Well over two dozen characters play roles here, some with similar names, and the reader, not knowing who may eventually become important in all the plots and subplots, must keep track of them all in order to understand the action.Additionally, the main plots regarding succession to the Hawaiian throne involve complex genealogies and political motivation, and there are innumerable subplots and digressions.These include the disappearance of a princess, mysterious and unavenged deaths from the past, blackmail and extortion, Haunani Brown's various love affairs, her search for information on her parentage, the women's suffrage movement, spiritualism and voodoo, white slavery, the introduction of leprosy and other diseases to the islands, and even a gay love connection in San Francisco, certainly enough to keep any reader fully occupied.

Still, if you are fascinated by Gay Nineties San Francisco and by Hawaiian history, this unusual mystery with its careful rendering of the atmosphere of the period should provide you with hours of pleasure.It is not quick or easy reading, but it is intriguing.Mary Whipple

Refreshingly unique mystery
In 1891 at San Francisco's posh Palace Hotel, Hawaiian King Kalakau lies dying in a suite.Apparently, much of the island elite, hanger-ons, and creditors have arrived not so much out of respect, but to gain an edge after His Highness dies.Most of the entourage and several local Americans like the Examiner's Ambrose Bierce debate whether the Unites States should annex Hawaii.

However, the beloved Princess Leileiha has vanished, leaving the royal party in disarray.Sugar king Silas Underwood asks Bierce to find the missing Princess.Chronicle reporter Tom Redmond assists Bierce on his investigation.However, several individuals who would prefer Leileiha to not reappear including Redmond's amazonian half-Hawaiian girl friend Hounani Brown.Plus several other cases slow down the inquiries and the half-Hawaiian girl Redmond has begun to romance is also affected.

The sequel to the highly regarded AMBROSE BIERCE AND THE QUEEN OF SPADES is an engaging historical mystery that is the Americanization of Holmes and Watson.The story line provides insight into the political and social climate of Hawaii and San Francisco during the early part of the Gay Nineties before the American annexation.The prime story line is exciting, but subplots involving unrelated scenarios to the missing princess theme slow down the novel even as it provides greater understanding of the era.Oakley Hall has written a pleasant tale that will satisfy sub-genre fans, especially those that prefer the historical setting to the mystery setting.

Harriet Klausner ... Read more

Book Description
The Morton Street Slasher has been leaving the corpses of his victims around San Francisco's Union Square. On the women's naked bodies are spade playing cards. The city's infamous newspaperman, Ambrose Bierce, blames the rash of murders on his old enemy, the Southern Pacific Railroad. A naive reporter at Bierce's Hornet pursues the case, uncovering conspiracy at every turn.
In a fast-paced novel that is a combination of murder mystery, historical fiction, and quirky biography, Oakley Hall draws the reader into 1880s San Francisco and the changing world that was California in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Local and state politics, the exploitation of the Chinese, the power of the mining and railroad barons, and San Francisco's colorful history provide a backdrop for this irresistible thriller.
The novel's chapters are introduced by appropriate excerpts from Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary and narrated by the young reporter Tom Redmond. Redmond is interested in the murders because of his attraction to a woman threatened by the Slasher, and Bierce encourages him because of his personal vendetta against the Big Four of the Railroad. Bierce's misogyny is an influence as well, which Hall uses to advantage in portraying the enigmatic journalist.
Hall knows his territory and his characters well. The sights and smells of late-nineteenth-century California are cleverly evoked, and the story's key players are refreshingly authentic. Bierce brandishes his famed cynicism with all the aplomb of the sharp-eyed, sharp-witted newspaperman he was. Cameo appearances by such California worthies as Ina Coolbrith and Joaquin Miller add to the novel's historical richness.
Intelligent, gripping, and often quite funny, Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades will satisfy any reader who craves adventure, mystery, romance, and fine writing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Mediocre mystery
AB & the Queen of Spades is a serviceable but not terribly engrossing mystery--a fast read for the plane if you couldn't find anything better. I picked it up because I love San Francisco in the Gilded Age and I enjoy historical mysteries. After a strong start, I found a surprisingly flat book. Hall doesn't really do much with his setting except describe it, and his characters and plot are weak.

I was unable to get interested in Bierce, who after a vivid first appearance does very little (all of it predictable) until he announces the solution to the assembled cast at the end. Tom Redmond, his idealistic and energetic sidekick, is more intriguing, but his love interest is never a believable character, and there's an lot of heavy-handed dialogue. Too much information about the railroad robber barons also bogs down the story.

A few flashes made me think Hall might once have been a better writer than this book reveals, but he doesn't seem interested in making the events meaningful to the reader or even creating suspense. Midway through I stopped caring about the mystery, but I would have given the book another star if its resolution hadn't been both wildly improbable and a triple-whammy cliché.

The real problem with this book is that others have done it better elsewhere. Karen Joy Fowler's novel Sister Noon brings the same setting to vivid life with a fraction of Hall's they-wear-this-type-of-hat details; her incisive writing brings greater insight to some of the same figures and events (notably the Sharon trial and the infamous Mary Ellen Pleasant), as well as race relations. On the historical mystery front, there are many more satisfying; my bet would be Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January books, set in New Orleans in the 1830s. Hambly uses the cultural clashes between American frontiersmen, an older colonial culture, and a minority underclass to great effect, and makes the question of whether the city's corruption will allow the guilty to be punished as suspenseful as the whodunit--two things Hall has every chance to do and never attempts.

If you're fascinated by Ambrose Bierce, the book would be worth reading, but I can't in good conscience recommend it to anyone else.

MARVELOUS HISTORICAL FICTION
Oakley Hall is easily one of the finest authors of historical fiction -- and historical mysteries -- in the publishing world. Too many writers who produce a series based on the same character quickly run out of fresh stories, fresh images, fresh characters.Hall never seems to rush or compromise in the marvelous Ambrose Bierce series, and the Queen of Spades is one of his best.The best mystery writers -- Raymond Chandler, Caleb Carr, Dashiell Hammett, Walter Moseley -- are able to create portraits of a people and an era that are as compelling -- often much more so -- than any historian.Hall's portrayal of Victorian-era San Francisco, its sophistication and barbarity, its charms and horrors, are seamless and masterful.I think he strikes as perfect a balance between history, plot, and character as any writer I have ever read.The use of Ambrose Bierce as the intellectual guide to the series' protagonist and narrator, the ambitious, puglistic young reporter, Tom Redmond, may be the finest coup.I find myself wanting more and more of the brilliant Bierce.The fact that Hall is able to write "Bitter" Bierce with the same acerbic humor and scathing insight with which Bierce himself wrote is an extraordinary achievement.Bravo, Mr. Hall, may Redmond and Bierce continue on their marvelous journeys through one of the most fascinating cities and periods in history.

Please don't compare this with The Alienist
To start, I liked this book, but not as much as I hoped to like it. It is a nice historical mystery, but it is not in the league of The Alienist, a work to which it is often compared. The narrator, Tom Redmond, is a likeable character, but just as he is confused with the many characters in this mystery, so is the reader.

The story searches for the Morton Street Slasher, but the reader who wants a plot similar to the Alienist (which follows the trail of the killer) will be disappointed to learn that this book is more about mining and railroad politics than the search for a killer. If you are interested in the backroom politics of San Francisco in the 1870's or really love the wit of Ambrose Bierce, then you'll probably love this book ... if you're like me, and you like Ambrose Bierce's dark humor but could do without the smoke-filled rooms, then you'll just find it an interesting diversion.

Entertaining, informative hystery\mistory
This book tells the story of young Tom Redmond, apprentice to the famous (or infamous, depending on how you look at it) Ambrose Bierce. Redmond and Bierce try to track down a Ripper-style killer of prostitutes and unravel a mystery that has ties to the California Gold Rush and the Railroad boom in California. All in all, the history is good (and you'll probably learn a good bit if you know nothing about mining or railroads) and the mysteries provide a nice little puzzle. Despite the title, Bierce is not the main character, Redmond is, and he's quite an interesting, well-developed and sympathetic one. Bierce is kind of a secondary character, although the book is peppered with his acerbic, sarcastic thinking (one of the things I enjoyed most of all, actually). This book is less Holmes-and-Watson than Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, which is a more satisfying arrangement, I think. I enjoyed it and I think most people who like historical mysteries will enjoy it also.

Ambrose Bierce, writer, curmudgeon, detective?
Using Ambrose Bierce as the detective in this mystery novel set in 1880's San Francisco is a clever concept. Acerbic and fiercely intelligent, Bierce makes a good protagonist. Told from the perspective of a young reporter, Ambrose Bierce and The Queen of Spades may be a bit convoluted as a mystery but as a look at a California that was in the control of the railroad industry it excels. Starting each chapter with a selection of Bierce's Devil's Dictionary sets the tone for the book well, and this a solid addition to the historical mystery genre. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Refreshing, well-told historical tale
1998 is the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Maine and the Spanish-American War, instigated, many still say, by William Randolph Hearst. "Yellow" (for yellow journalism) recounts the period leading to the Maine's sinking through the first-person fictional account of AmbroseBierce, the legendary American artist and writer, as he traveled to Cuba on Hearst's payroll. Fascinating for fans of true Americana. Lynch is a gifted storyteller. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (13)

Moving, Gentle Story of Two Gringos and a General in Mexico.
This is a quiet gentle story of an aging man who comes to Mexico to die by the hand of Pancho Villa and an American woman who eventually finds herself involved with a Villa general.Both have baggage in the US and are trying to find something in Mexico that has been missing from their lives.

Class Assignment
I would not have read this book on my own. My literature instructor at Santa Monica College assigned it. It took a while for me to get into the book.I would recommend it if you are looking for something totally different than a fast pace, exciting read.

I loved this novel.
I thoroughly enjoyed Fuentes' The Old Gringo. It constitutes everything a novel should be: love, death, war, sex, etc. It includes themes of brotherhood, colonialism, relations between the US and Mexico, freedom, love across national boundaries, and what it is to die. I found Fuentes' prose to be beautiful and diverse; an intersubjective consciousness flows through the characters, revealing as well that we are all only readers, and we will never know the real story. Beacuse of his style, Fuentes enriches the text, makes it stand out and vibrate with life. It's tactile. His characters are complex and story line great.

For anyone interested in Latin-American works, I would highly recommend this one. It takes the revolution and gives it the colors we would never see as outsiders.

Movie was bad, book is worse.
The story starts out very good, but the farther one reads the slower and more boring it becomes, I was only able to scan thru the second half, as other reviewers remarked the sex scene is really really laughable, avocados indeed. I felt as if I were wasting my time reading this when I could have been reading something good.

I'll Never Eat Guacemole Again.
Usually things I read don't bother me, no matter how absurd or disgusting they are. I'm an English major, and I've read enough to not be shocked by much. But then there comes The Old Gringo. What shocks me about The Old Gringo isn't really the events of the plot. As far as a story goes, this is just pretty dull and wouldn't offend. The writing, however, is shocking. I don't know if it's the translation or what, but there is some really absurd writing in here. The guy actually wrote the following image (I'm recalling this sentence, but I know this is still pretty accurate): "Arroyo's testicles were like furry little avocados." This isn't even the dumbest image in the book. The sex scenes throughout are similarly hilarious. Fuentes writes half of the book about sex, and the terms he describes it in are either cliched or are as laughable as the avacado image.

Anyway, I'm giving this book two stars because, even though the writing made me cringe when I read it, it makes me laugh now. There are probably a few things in the book that are profound, too. But I generally can't remember them for all the absurdity throughout. ... Read more