The Curse of Capistrano (Dodo Press) [Paperback]

Johnston McCulley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 24, 2008

Johnston McCulley (1883-1958) was the author of hundreds of stories, fifty novels, numerous screenplays for film and television, and the creator of the character Zorro. Many of his novels and stories were written under the pseudonyms Harrison Strong, Raley Brien, George Drayne, Monica Morton, Rowena Raley, Frederic Phelps, Walter Pierson, and John Mack Stone, among others. He started as a police reporter for The Police Gazette and served as an Army public affairs officer during World War I. An amateur history buff, he went on to a career in pulp fiction and screenplays, often using a Southern California backdrop for his stories. Aside from Zorro, McCulley created many other pulp characters, including Black Star, The Mongoose, and Thubway Tham. Many of McCulley’s characters-the Green Ghost, the Thunderbolt, and the Crimson Clown-were inspirations for the masked heroes that have appeared in popular culture from McCulley’s time to the present day.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Dodo Press (October 24, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1409944344
• ISBN-13: 978-1409944348
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,071,623 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Lamentable typos and missing text., January 27, 2010

By 

John A. Sigmon (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Curse of Capistrano (Dodo Press) (Paperback)

This printing of "The Curse of Capistrano" is the most expensive, and is of terrible quality. I don't mean the story itself--the story is a classic with cultural significance. You may like it or not.

But the quality of the printed material in this edition is AWFUL! There is not a paragraph without a typo or scanning error. Spelling errors run throughout. The text was obviously scanned by a text interpretter into Microsoft Word. Somebody ran a spellcheck, and that's all the proofreading it got. Common scanning errors are throughout, like "die" for "the", or a sudden period where there shouldn't be one. The tilde is almost always missing from the Spanish word "Senor" (I can't put it here, either!), but it's there enough times to let you know that they knew it should be there.

Also, the style is straight out of Microsoft Word. Paragraphs are not indented, but are double-spaced apart (like this review). It makes reading a bit uncomfortable.

Any of these errors are, in my opinion, forgivable when not too frequent. But they are WAY too frequent.

The most unforgivable error, however, is that the beginning of Chapter 2 OMITS A PAGE AND A HALF OF TEXT! Chapter two starts in the middle of a sentence! The entire introduction of Don Diego (a central character), and the nature of his friendship with Sergeant Gonzales (another central character), is missing! I looked up the story (which is available online for free at [...]), and was able to read the missing page and a half.

This error, combined with the others, makes this a chore to read. And I have no confidence that the rest of the story is intact. I would recommend reading this story online, or downloading it as a PDF and saving the $17 you would spend on this attrocity.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Too many typos, January 2, 2010

By 

Kevin Hocker - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Curse of Capistrano (Dodo Press) (Paperback)

Great story, but too many typos. There were so many typos I couldn't possibly count them. It made for difficult reading. I suggest that you find a copy of this book that is published by a company with a competent editing department.

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ZORRO ROCKS, November 23, 2005

A Kid's Review

This review is from: The Curse of Capistrano (Hardcover)

this is a great book with lots of action and an intriguing storyline. Captain is marvellously stupid, and zorro is a true hero! yaay!