Crunch & Des: Classic Stories of Saltwater Fishing

Crunch Adams, skipper of the trim cruiser Poseidon , and his partner Des Smith entertained readers of the Saturday Evening Post from 1939 to 1954 in these 22 tales about a charter-boat fishing business off Florida's coast. A unique treat for fishing enthusiasts, Wylie's jaunty stories are full of iridescent charm and rhapsodic prose that captures the tribulations and imponderables of fishing. While many are period pieces, the best of these romantic idylls have a timeless quality. Wylie ( Generation of Vipers ; Finley Wren ) is adept at quick, incisive sketches of Crunch & Des's customers, illuminating their foibles, dreams and the pressures they're trying to escape as they ply the indigo waters from Miami to the Keys. He also evinces sympathy for ``fishing widows,'' like Crunch's sensible wife , women whose husbands are ``at sea'' in more ways than one. (Nov.)