its continued appeal decades after the first printing. Critical reception Russell H. Greenan's work was regularly reviewed in the New York Times by critics such as Newgate Callender and Christopher Lehmann-Haupt. Other writers include David Rowbotham writing in The Courier-Mail, Anne Tyler in the Washington Post, David L. Ulin in Bookforum and Peter S. Prescott in Look magazine. Anne Tyler selected It Happened in Boston? for her contribution to a series of articles titled Rediscoveries that appeared in Book World, the reviews section of The Washington Post, concluding that the book had “the power to reawaken our sense of life's possibilities.” At the time the book was out of print, but as a result of her article, Bantam Books brought out a new paperback version simultaneously with The Secret Life of Algernon Pendleton and the first edition of A Can of Worms. All of these featured distinctive cover illustrations by the artist Stephen Hall. The crime writer Lawrence Block includes references to Greenan's novels in several manuals that he has written on the craft of fiction writing. Telling Lies for Fun & Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers and Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print. Literary style I get the feeling that through some oversight or taxonomical confusion (Mr. Greenan's books are difficult to classify, therefore hard to explain) not enough readers are aware of what delightful fun he is poking at the notion that human beings are superior to skunk cabbages. Greenan's work explored the parameters of crime fiction and was often described as macabre. While for a time he was a member of Mystery Writers of America, his stories did not fall regularly into the genre of mystery fiction. On occasion the novels were actively marketed as horror fiction, for example when Nightmare was subtitled A Contemporary Tale of Horror and Queen of America was introduced as “Meet Miss Psycho. She's the shock experience of your life.” on the cover a US paperback. But while all of Greenan's work depict murderous acts, the publishers' use of the label horror contradicted reviewers’ characterization of the author's oeuvre as charming gothic fiction However these works were also consistently praised as black comedy. A recurring theme raised by reviewers is the difficulty of categorizing this author's work. In his study titled The Birth of Death and Other Comedies: The novels of Russell H. Greenan, the writer Tom Whalen draws widely