Checking Into Hilton (and An Announcement)

TODAY'S AUTHOR is almost exclusively remembered for his work in the mainstream (leading to at least three Major Award-winning or -nominated film adaptations of his 
novels), so it may come as something of a surprise that he dabbled in crime fiction 
before hitting it big; one of his earlier efforts, known to the cognoscenti of our favorite 
genre as an "inverted," is . . .

"The Perfect Plan."
By James Hilton (1900-54).

First appearance: Britannia and Eve, September 1933.
Reprinted in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, March 1946 and July 1960; EQMM ("Overseas Edition for the Armed Forces"), March 1946; EQMM (Australia), November 1947 and September 1960; EQMM (U.K.), February 1961; and Ellery Queen’s Anthology #13 (1967) and #60 (1989).

Short story (15 pages).

Online at Roy Glashan's Library (RGL; HTML; HERE).

     "He had always, since his school days, been interested in the science of crime, and never for a moment did he doubt his own capacity to do the job; 
it was merely a question of waiting until the perfect moment offered itself."

There's absolutely no mystery about who kills who or how or why, but there remains the looming question of will he get away with it? After all, "it was a comfort to realize that, by such simple means, he was fabricating an alibi that could be vouched for afterwards by hundreds of thousands of worthy folk all over the country" . . .

Characters:
~ Sir George Winthrop-Dunster:
  "A well-known figure in the City" and victim of a bullet to the brain in the country.
~ Richard Winthrop-Dunster:
  Sir George's brother.
~ Inspector Deane:
  ". . . of the local force . . ."
~ Scarsdale:
  The personal secretary.
~ Fanning:
  The gardener.
~ Wilkes:
  The butler.
~ The announcer:
  . . . says more than he knows.

Comment: Another instance of an author employing a double in his plot, just as Dame Agatha did on more than one occasion.

Resources:
- Three of James Hilton's short stories have seen republication in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (EQMM) over the years (FictionMags data):

  (1) "The Mallet," Hutchinson’s Story-Magazine, July 1929
      Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September 1942 and April 1988
      EQMM (Australia), July 1947
      TV adaptation (1950; SPOILERS: IMDb HERE).
  (2) "The Perfect Plan," Britannia and Eve, September 1933 (see above).
  (3) "The King of the Bats," Collier’s, July 3, 1937 (as "The Bat King") (online HERE)
      Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, March 1953
      EQMM (U.K.), April 1953
      EQMM (Australia), May 1953. 

- James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon (1933; filmed in 1937; SPOILERS: Wikipedia HERE, HERE, HERE; IMDb HERE) crossed the mainstream and fantasy divide, earning him listings with the Science Fiction Encyclopedia (SFE; HERE) and the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb; HERE).
- Roy Glashan's collection of James Hilton's works is (HERE).
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AN ANNOUNCEMENT:
   Due to pressing personal situations beyond our control, we'll have to reduce our postings to (we hope) no less than one and no more than two per week at irregular intervals in the near future. You might have noticed that we've been doing three posts a week for quite a while now, but it simply isn't sustainable.
   We don't express our appreciation often enough to you regular ONTOS readers; we know you're out there even if you don't communicate with us much. We're a lurker on a good many other websites as well, so we can't complain.
   This weblog takes no advertising (time, effort, and money are entirely out-of-pocket), it answers to no one, and whatever we recommend (or criticize) is based purely on our own personal preferences.
   With that out of the way, as Number Six would say, "Be seeing you."
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