"You See, My Health Altered"

"Change of Partner."
By Donald Shoubridge (?-?).
First appearance: Tit-Bits, March 24, 1951.

Short short short story (1 page).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

     "Was a time when even a gun wouldn't have kept you sitting in a chair."

For most of us the absence of familiar people and places might make the heart grow fonder, but in Charlie's case the absence of his partner just makes him angrier—mad enough, indeed, to kill . . .

Resource:
- All we could find about Donald Shoubridge is FictionMags's story listing from the '30s and '40s (HERE), nothing later.

The bottom line:

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"There'll Never Be Anyone Else but You"

"Death Before Dishonor."
By Dobbin Thorpe (Thomas M. Disch, 1940-2008).
First appearance: Fantastic, February 1964.

Short short story (6 pages).
Online at SFFAudio (HERE; PDF).

     "Rena Arblest was, perhaps, no better than she should be. But she was no worse, either. And therefore deserved less than she received."

If, like Rena, you take a vow, you'd better be prepared for what happens if you don't keep your promise; unfortunately, she wasn't . . .

Resources:
- For over forty years Thomas Michael Disch, a suicide, generated SFF on a consistent basis; see Wikipedia (HERE), the SFE (HERE), the IMDb (HERE), and the thorough bibliography at the ISFDb (HERE).
- "It was a for-real tattoo"; see Wikipedia (HERE) for more about the practice.

The bottom line:
  "If I decide to get a tattoo, it'll be a map of where I live on my chest in case I ever get amnesia."
  ― Stewart Stafford
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"Just What Are You Worried About—Your Life or Somebody Spoiling Your Night Club Act?"

LIKE MANY OF ELLERY QUEEN'S adventures, today's story began as a radio script which the author later converted into a short story . . .

"The Case of the Squealing Duck."
By George B. Anderson (1908-85).
First appearance: Mutual Radio Network, April 18, 1944.
First text appearance: Mammoth Detective, July 1947.

Short story (16 pages).
Online at Luminist Archives (HERE).

 

    "Danny Dole tried to put them in the aisles as a comedian, but the Crime File of Flamond said something about murder—and it wasn’t funny . . ."

For Danny the apocryphal story about the terminally ill comic on his deathbed should have a special meaning: "Dying is easy," the moribund comic confesses to a concerned friend, "it's comedy that's hard . . ."

Characters:
~ Danny Dole:
  "And then I remembered the old adage: never shoot into a flock of ducks 'til you can see the whites of their—eyes. I wait. The ducks get closer. The time is ripe. I pull the trigger."

~ Flamond:

  "A gun is a sign of weakness. It's an admission that you aren't able to handle things with your head. It—"
~ Sandra Lake:
  "Flamond’s scared to death of firearms."
~ Sheila Ray:
  ". . . if it wasn’t for her—uh—curves, her voice wouldn’t get her a job callin’ trains in Winapausaukee, North Dakota."
~ Gus Klumb:
  "I’ve got some wonderful friends. They think the world of me. They don’t like people 
who give me bum deals. Sometimes they get sore about it. And when they get mad, 
they do funny things—a lot funnier things than you do in your act."
~ Josef:
  "And it was not attached to any wire, m’sieu."
~ Lieutenant Riordan:
  ". . . of the homicide squad could never have held a job as a movie detective. He simply didn't look the part."

Typos: "nobody could proved it"; "over a Josef's face".

References:
- A few then-current allusions crop up in our story:
  ~ When Danny Dole says, "My problem, Mister Ant’ony, is—aw nuts, it ain’t funny," he's referring to a popular personal advice radio program, the Good Will Hour; see (HERE) and (HERE).
  ~ Gus Klumb mentions "bank nights," a Depression-era attraction that ended with the advent of the Second World War (HERE).
  ~ "just like Jolson": That's Al Jolson, a household name at the time (HERE).

Resources:
- FictionMags lists only two Flamond stories by George B. Anderson, this one and "Case of the Perilous Party," Mammoth Detective, August 1947. Flamond was already known to some readers for his "appearances" on radio; the Chicago Tribune's obit for Anderson is (HERE), from which we quote:

   "In his spare time, Mr. Anderson wrote radio shows. WGN bought his idea for a radio show about a magician turned rackets detective. The hero was Mike Trent and the show was Easy Money, in which Mike beat gamblers and cheats at their game. The successful show, which Mr. Anderson helped write, moved to NBC.
   "He also wrote for such shows as Mystery House, Country Sheriff, Nick Carter and The Crime Files of Flamond. He said he wrote more commercially sponsored mystery shows than any other writer in the world.
   "HE RECEIVED writing credits on hundreds of radio and television shows, including Garroway-at-Large and Welcome Travelers, for which he was chief writer for three year[s]. He also created numerous dramatic shows."

- Old Time Radio has a log of Flamond's adventures (HERE), which debuted in January 1944; note that "The Squealing Duck" was the 16th episode broadcast. OTR also has the original show archived (HERE; MP3; 29 minutes 47 seconds), as well as 8 other shows (HERE) and (HERE).

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"I Played on His Madness to Make Him Do the Things I Wanted Done"

IT'S POSSIBLE THAT not every fan of Perry Mason knows that in his early days as a pulp writer the infallible lawyer's creator, Erle Stanley Gardner, produced several pulpy stories which can easily be considered science fiction/fantasy (SFF); certainly the Internet Science Fiction Database (ISFDb) classifies them as such, with one in particular being . . .

"The Human Zero."
By Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970).
Illustration by Virgil Finlay (1914-71) (HERE).
First appearance: Argosy, December 19, 1931.

Reprinted in Fantastic, January 1962.

Reprints page (HERE).
Collected in The Human Zero: The Science Fiction Stories of Erle Stanley Gardner (1981; reviewed HERE).

Novelette (45 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).
(Parental caution: Violence.)

     ". . . he leaped back, just as the panels of the door splintered under a hail of lead which came crashing from the muzzle of a sawed-off shotgun."

Caged mice are disappearing—too bad for them—but the same thing is happening to uncaged people, victims who leave behind only their empty clothes . . .

Chapter 1: "A Mysterious Kidnaping"
Chapter 2: "Who Is Albert Crome?"
Chapter 3: "Into Thin Air"
Chapter 4: "A Madman's Laboratory"
Chapter 5: "A Fantastic Secret"
Chapter 6: "Still They Vanish"
Chapter 7: "A Fiend Is Unmasked"

Characters:
~ P. H. Dangerfield:
  ". . . a millionaire member of the stock exchange . . ."
~ Arthur L. Soloman:
  ". . . [had] a dry, husky voice that was as devoid of moisture as a dead leaf scuttling across a cement sidewalk on the wings of a March wind."
~ Bob Sands:
  "What has the bank got to say about how much kidnapers demand?"
~ Sid Rodney:
  "I may have a hunch that's worth while. Will you give me a break on it, captain, if it's a lead?"
~ Captain Harder:
  ". . . nodded wearily."
~ Ruby Orman:
  "Scene one of greatest consternation. Men glanced at each other in an ecstasy of futility."
~ Charles Ealy:
  "Dramatic scene enacted in office of Captain Harder at an early hour this morning."
~ Detective Sergeant Selby:
  "Keep sober."
~ The servant:
  "When I count three, sir, I shall shoot."

Typos: "strength of the mortal"; "that shoes"; "The officer was pined"; "termperature"; "I dont know"; and several lines were chopped up on page 39.

Resources:
- If you're interested in absolute zero see Wikipedia's article (HERE).

(Click on image to enlarge.)

- Empty suits are also a prominent component of one of Anthony Boucher's stories (HERE).
- We recently revisited uberpulpster Erle Stanley Gardner (HERE).
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"I Happen to Know That Someone Plans to Kill You Before Morning"

"Murder Magic."

By Robert Wallace (W. T. Ballard, 1903-80).
First appearance: G-Men Detective, Fall 1944.

Reprinted in G-Men Detective (U.K.), Winter 1944.
Short short story (5 pages).
At the Pulpgen Archive (HERE).

     "The Great Gadsden Famous Magician Is Suddenly Confronted by a Grim Murder Mystery Far More Baffling Than His Stage Tricks!"

The show must go on, even if there's a dead body backstage . . .

Characters:
~ John Carter:
  "I know he was stabbed here for there are still a few drops of dried blood on the floor."
~ Froggy Taunton:
  "I wouldn’t use that grease paint. It is probably poisoned."
~ Nancy Gardner:
  ". . . opened the door of the dressing room clad in her costume for the show and there were police behind her."
~ Tony Fairmont:
  ". . . the high wire act."
~ Fred Buckley:
  "That may be why he was killed."

Resources:
- FictionMags tells us that "Robert Wallace," our author, could have been any one of these writers: W. T. Ballard (1903-1980), Robert Sidney Bowen (1900-1977), Edwin Vernon Burkholder (1895-1965), D. L. Champion (1902-1968), Anatole Feldman (1901-1972), Charles Greenberg (fl. 1920s-1960s), W. Ryerson Johnson (1901-1995), or C. S. Montanye (1892-1948). As we've since learned, the author was Ballard.
- FictionMags also informs us that the magazine in which our story appeared ran under the title G-Men "for 53 monthly issues until February 1940 at which point the decline of interest in 'G-Man' stories caused a slight change in title (and emphasis) to G-Men Detective and a shift to a bimonthly schedule (occasionally falling to quarterly), which it maintained for a further 59 issues until the magazine folded in Winter 1953."

The bottom line:
   "It's still magic even if you know how it's done."
      — Terry Pratchett
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"If This Is Your Idea of Detective Work, You Need a New Job"

NOW THAT SPRING is here, let's wind back the clock a few months to a tough case of murder dumped on a not-so-jolly old elf . . .

"Claus of Death."
By Michael M. Jones (born 1974).
First appearance: Slipstreams (2006).

Reprinted in The Dragon Done It (2008); reprints page (HERE).

Short short story (7 pages).
Online at Baen Books (HERE).
(Parental caution: Strong language.)

     "Within a heartbeat, I knew exactly how she'd been nice, and how she'd been naughty. I knew if she'd been bad or good, and what she'd have gotten
in her stocking . . ."

A lump of coal isn't always enough; at such a time only a lump of lead will do . . .

Resources:
- Our author's homepage is (HERE) and his ISFDb listing is (HERE).

The bottom line:

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Miscellaneous Monday—Number Thirty-one

BACK IN THE middle of the 20th century one of the editors of The Strand compiled into a book the notes he made of the time that he had spent with the magazine; while it's of interest to general readers, several chapters do briefly offer some tidbits about crime and detective fiction authors . . .

Mirror of the Century: The Strand Magazine, 1891-1950 (1950; 1966 reprint) (full text HERE).
By Reginald Pound (FictionMags HERE).

Chapter Five: "Enter Sherlock Holmes" (8 pages; HERE).

. . . "the greatest short story writer since Edgar Allan Poe" . . . "a gift from Heaven" . . . "the great defect of most detective fiction" . . . "of infinitely wider appeal than Poe's Dupin and Gaboriau's Tabaret and Lecoq" . . . "the Holmes of Paget's imagination rather than of Conan Doyle's" . . . "Why, there's Sherlock Holmes!" . . . "the deerstalker cap which assisted the fixation of Sherlock Holmes in the public mind" . . . "he bravely tried to restore the historical novel to the popular favour" . . . "as a writer he was unique" . . . "You won't! You can't! You mustn't!" . . . "Poor Holmes is dead and damned" . . . "You brute!" 
. . . "a literary cult of exceptional vitality" . . . "I am weary of his name" . . . "Doyle had devised a new fiction form" . . . "He appeared drained of gener-osity".

". . . he was unique . . ."

. . . . . . . . . .

Chapter Ten: "Famous 'Strand' Story Writers" (17 pages; HERE).

. . . "'Let's Keep Holmes Alive' clubs were formed" . . . "outlying groups dedicated to the perpetuation of Holmes as a figure of awesome regard" . . . "The Turks in 1920 believed him capable of being up to no good" . . . "a vitality that has passed from the surprising to the inexplicable" . . . "to the bookstalls with the fierce resolve of shoppers at the January sales" . . . "credulous and uncritical" . . . "ineptitude in certain matters of scientific detail" . . . "a Holmes furore over there" . . . "closing time at the library was extended by half an hour" . . . "any immediate anxiety for money soon disappeared" . . . "content with the surer profits".

The last story.

. . . . . . . . . .

Chapter Thirteen: "Conan Doyle and the Fairies" (13 pages; HERE).

. . . "he had not distinguished himself as a war historian" . . . "a thinner magazine became inevitable" . . . "foiling the machinations of a German villain named Von Bork" . . . "the sense of humour, concerning which Englishmen tended to behave as if they held the world copyright" . . . "Plots sprang up at a wave of his ridiculously long cigarette holder" . . . "the peak of a fame that eclipsed Conan Doyle's with the new reading public" . . . "He was not so fastidious about firearms as James Bond" . . . "a society for the extermination of unpleasing individuals" . . . "grades of living beyond our dimension" . . . "Conan Doyle's latest psychic obsession" . . . "I can only write what comes to me".

. . . . . . . . . .

Chapter Fourteen: "Farewell to Sherlock Holmes" (11 pages; HERE).

. . . "Wonderful is the atmosphere of war." . . . "the most absurdly memorable fiction character of our time" . . . "The last of the fifty-six Sherlock Holmes stories published in The Strand through thirty-six years appeared in the issue for April 1927." . . . "a sterling example of the patience and loyalty of the British public" . . . "Despite many inducements, he had remained faithful to The Strand" . . . "as formula-ridden as their commercial counterparts" . . . "it is inconceivable, incredible and fantastic" . . . "he settled down to write two novels a year by dictating an average of 4,000 words a day, four days a week. He kept it up for thirty years" . . . "the fecundity and inventiveness of Simenon".

. . . . . . . . . .

Resources:
- For more about The Strand, see Wikipedia (HERE).
- Our last Miscellaneous Monday took a sharp turn into thespian territory (HERE).
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