House on Lily Street, The-Jack Vance mystery novel, book review
House on Lily Street, The-Jack Vance mystery novel This novel was written in 1958 by the amazingly talented science fiction and fantasy writer Jack Vance. Vance also published fourteen “mystery” novels, but this is not one of his better ones and can only be recommended to the most devoted Vance fans. Published initially in 1979 but long out of print, The House on Lily Street was reissued by Spatterlight Press in late 2017 in an excellent, 181 page, high quality paperback. All Vance fans should be thankful to Spatterlight for reissuing these out of print Vance works which were previously only available as expensive collector's items. The setting of the novel is in Berkeley and Oakland, California in the 1950s when the beat generation was at its height. It involves the investigation of a missing welfare worker who seems to have been investigating extortion reports from his clients. The plot is weak and it has almost none of Vance's brilliant...