Double Jeopardy (novel)

Double Jeopardy

First edition dust jacket
Author Fletcher Pratt
Cover artist Whitney Bender
Country United States
Language English
Genre Science fiction
Publisher Doubleday
Publication date
 1952
Media type Print (hardcover)
Pages 214 pp

Double Jeopardy is a science fiction novel by Fletcher Pratt. It was first published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1952, and reprinted as a selection of the Science Fiction Book Club in 1953. The first paperback edition was issued in digest form by Galaxy Publishing Corporation as its Galaxy Science Fiction Novel #30 in 1957; a second paperback edition was issued by Curtis Books in 1967. The novel has been translated into Italian.[1] The book is a combination of two shorter pieces, the novellas "Double Jeopardy" and "The Square Cube Law," originally published in the magazine Thrilling Wonder Stories in the issues for April, 1952 and June, 1952, respectively.[1][2][3]

Plot

The story features Pratt's detective hero George Helmfleety Jones in two adventures dealing with the ramifications of a newly discovered matter-duplication process. The first concerns a case of industrial espionage involving the bootlegging of duplicated drugs, and includes Jones's marriage to a duplicated woman. The second is a locked-room mystery in which a fortune is somehow stolen from a sealed, pilotless cargo plane.

Reception

Groff Conklin called the book "a slick, fast-paced science fiction detective story, one of the best-integrated combinations of its kind." He rates the second part "considerably better than the first," with its "twist on the locked-room school of murder mysteries ... a highly effective one."[4] The book was also reviewed by Noah Gordon in Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader, January 1953, an anonymous reviewer in Weird Tales, January 1953, and P. Schuyler Miller in Astounding Science Fiction, April 1953.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Double Jeopardy (novel) title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
  2. ↑ Double Jeopardy (novella) title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
  3. ↑ The Square Cube Law title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
  4. ↑ Conklin, Groff. "Galaxy's 5 Star Shelf," in Galaxy Science Fiction, November 1952, pp. 122-123.


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 8/21/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.