"Lips Lie, but Eyes Don't"

"The Eyes Have It."

By Joseph F. Hook (?-?).

First appearance: Ten Detective Aces, May 1948.

Short short story (4 pages).

Online at The Luminist Archives (HERE; go to text page 73).

(Note: Very faded text.)

   "He didn't seem much like a dick, this mild, soft-spoken little man. But he knew that to ferret out larceny . . . the eyes have it."

DIDN'T Sun Tzu say (and we're paraphrasing) that the acme of military skill is to win a battle without firing a shot? Since it's without firing a shot that our unprepossessing detective solves a crime, you could say that he displays the acme of detectival skill . . .

Principal characters:

~ Unnamed narrator ("The wife and I were lucky enough to find a furnished house, and that's how I came to meet Jim Clark"), Jim Clark ("I confessed that he was not my conception of a detective"), Matilda Clark ("Howdy neighbor"), Calvin Dupree ("cashier in the Crosby depart-ment store"), and Mrs. Calvin Dupree ("She was a young, well-dressed, stunning blonde and, quite naturally, extremely nervous").

Typos: "A cartain"; "an abrurt end".

References and resources:

- "pheasants":

  While the birds have been around forever, the Anglophonic word for them is of a more recent origin:

  "According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word 'pheasant' ultimately comes from Phasis, the ancient name of what is now called the Rioni River in Georgia. It passed from Greek to Latin to French (spelled with an initial 'f') then to English, appearing for the first time in English around 1299." (Wikipedia HERE.)

  "Pheasant hunting is very popular in much of the U.S., especially in the Great Plains states, where a mix of farmland and native grasslands provides ideal habitat. South Dakota alone has an annual harvest of over 1 million birds a year by over 200,000 hunters." (Wikipedia HERE.)

Pheasant Survival Tactics

- According to FictionMags, Joseph F. Hook started out his short fiction writing career wobbling between Westerns and crime fiction.  Between 1922 and 1956, he was a consistent contributor to pulp mags like Two Gun Western, Detective Story, and others of the era, transitioning almost exclusively to Westerns in 1936, making "The Eyes Have It" something 

of an exception. This is our first meeting with him.

The bottom line:

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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