MORE TALES TO TREMBLE BY.
Edited by Stephen P. Sutton.
Whitman.
1968. 210 pages: 8 stories.
For sale HERE.
In an earlier posting we figured why wait for Christmas to enjoy Yuletide mayhem? Similarly we've decided not to tarry until Halloween, that time of year when tales of the uncanny seem to captivate what's left of the reading public.
Most call them "horror" stories, but we like Boris Karloff's preferred term "tales of terror." Karloff's distinction is much more useful and descriptive: "Horror" is the "gross out," physical, and literal aspect of this genre of fiction, of the kind one sees (and often has to endure) in movies and TV; whereas the term "tales of terror" emphasizes the psychological dimensions of encounters with the uncanny. After a career of depicting the macabre, Karloff knew that what happens in the mind is often far more exquisitely terrifying than anything we might experience in mundane reality.
Here, then, are eight terror tales that are worth seeking out.
(1) "The Red Lodge" by H. Russell Wakefield (1888-1964) (more about Wakefield HERE):
When an artist rents a cottage with his wife and six-year-old son, they all find out how "The Permanent Residents" of the lodge really feel about it:
. . . And then I suddenly found myself at the end of the garden, attempting desperately to hide myself behind a rowan tree, while my eyes were held relentlessly to face the door. And then it began slowly to open, and something which was horridly unlike anything I had seen before began passing through it, and I knew It knew I was there, and then my head seemed to burst and flamed asunder, splintered and destroyed, and I awoke, trembling, to feel that something in the darkness was poised an inch or two above me, and then drip, drip, drip, something began falling on my face. Mary was in the bed next to mine, and I would not scream, but flung the clothes over my head, my eyes streaming with the tears of terror. And so I remained cowering till I heard the clock strike five, and dawn, the ally I longed for, came, and the birds began to sing, and then I slept.
(2) "Sredni Vashtar" by "Saki" (1870-1916) (more about the author HERE and the story [SPOILERS] HERE):
A sickly child feels unfairly put upon and confined, and so he creates his own means of escape:
. . . And then of a sudden he stopped his chanting and drew closer to the windowpane. The door of the shed still stood ajar as it had been left, and the minutes were slipping by. They were long minutes, but they slipped by nevertheless. He watched the starlings running and flying in little parties across the lawn; he counted them over and over again, with one eye always on that swinging door. A sour-faced maid came in to lay the table for tea, and still Conradin stood and waited and watched. Hope had crept by inches into his heart, and now a look of triumph began to blaze in his eyes that had only known the wistful patience of defeat. Under his breath, with a furtive exultation, he began once again the paean of victory and devastation. And presently his eyes were rewarded: out through that doorway came a long, low, yellow and brown beast, with eyes a-blink at the waning daylight and dark wet stains around the fur of jaws and throat. Conradin dropped on his knees. The great polecat-ferret made its way down to a small brook at the foot of the garden, drank for a moment, then crossed a little plank bridge and was lost to sight in the bushes. Such was the passing of Sredni Vashtar.
(3) "Thurnley Abbey" by Perceval Landon (1868-1927) (more about Landon and the story [SPOILERS] HERE):
A haunted house in this modern age of electricity? Surely not:
. . . I switched on the bedside lamp. The sudden glory dazzled me for a moment. I felt under my pillow for my book with half-shut eyes. Then, growing used to the light, I happened to look down at the foot of my bed. I can never tell you really what happened then. Nothing I could ever confess in the most abject words could even faintly picture to you what I felt. I know that my heart stopped dead, and my throat shut automatically. In one instinctive movement I crouched back up against the headboards of the bed, staring at the horror. The movement set my heart going again, and the sweat dripped from every pore. I am not a particularly religious man, but I had always believed that God would never allow any supernatural appearance to present itself to man in such a guise and in such circumstances that harm, either bodily or mental, could result to him. I can only tell you that at that moment both my life and my reason rocked unsteadily on their seats.
(4) " 'God Grant That She Lye Stille' " by Cynthia Asquith (1887-1960) (more about Lady Asquith HERE):
A doctor falls in love with a beautiful woman who claims she doesn't really exist:
. . . Beneath the transmuting moon the crowded tombstones looked more sharply outlined, far less merged into the green quiet of the long grass. In the daytime the atmosphere breathed a sense of acquiescence, as though the oft-repeated text, "Thy will be done," had been instilled into the very air. But now the peace of buried centuries seemed disturbed, the consecrated ground to quiver with insubmission. Even the yew trees seemed to bristle. Starkly black, they stood like mutinous sentinels.
As I turned my eyes to the eastern side of the churchyard, I heard myself gasp. In the uttermost corner something white glimmered on the ground. I knew at once what it was. Ten strides brought me to where Margaret, in her long nightgown, lay outstretched across a flat tombstone. Her arms, the hands tightly clenched, were flung out in front; her slim, protesting body writhed. It looked as though she were struggling to rise, but had no power—almost as though some force were drawing her down. I heard a low, piteous moaning and knelt to examine her pale, twisted face. The eyes were closed. Her tormented body rolled over to one side, leaving the inscription on the gray lichened stone exposed. As I knelt I involuntarily read the brief words:
Here lyes the bodye of Elspeth Clewer.
God grante that she lye stille.
(5) "The Voice in the Night" by William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) (more about Hodgson, a World War One casualty, HERE):
A three-man fishing boat is becalmed in the Pacific, miles from anywhere they know of, when they hear a voice:
. . . Suddenly I was called to myself by a queer hoarse sound on my left. Turning quickly, I saw that there was movement among an extraordinarily shaped mass of fungus close to my elbow. It was swaying uneasily, as though it possessed life of its own. Abruptly, as I stared, the thought came to me that the thing had a grotesque resemblance to the figure of a distorted human creature. Even as the fancy flashed into my brain, there was a slight, sickening noise of tearing, and I saw one of the branchlike arms was detaching itself from the surrounding gray masses and coming toward me. The head of the thing—a shapeless gray ball—inclined in my direction. I stood stupidly, and the vile arm brushed across my face. I gave out a frightened cry and ran back a few paces. There was a sweetish taste upon my lips where the thing had touched me. I licked them and was immediately filled with inhuman desire.
(6) "The Extra Passenger" by August Derleth (1909-71) (more about Lovecraft collaborator Derleth HERE):
An egotistical man commits what he thinks is the perfect crime, but he fails to allow for the uncanny:
. . . The match went out. Mr. Arodias was afraid to light another. For one cataclysmic moment the stuff on his fellow traveler's hands and shoes had looked like blood! Mr. Arodias swallowed and told himself that he was having hallucinations stemming from some rudimentary conscience which had not died with the rest of it in that long-ago time when he had entered upon his life of dubious practices and crime.
(7) "Casting the Runes" by M. R. James (1862-1936) (more about "the originator of the antiquarian ghost story" HERE):
When people start to die inexplicably, can a piece of paper be responsible?
. . . I suspected—as I told you—that Karswell had borne ill will to my brother, even that he was in some way responsible for what had happened; and now his book seemed to me to be a very sinister performance indeed. One chapter in particular struck me, in which he spoke of 'casting the runes' on people, either for the purpose of gaining their affection or of getting them out of the way—perhaps more especially the latter. He spoke of all this in a way that really seemed to me to imply actual knowledge. I've not time to go into details, but the upshot is that I am pretty sure from information received that the civil man at the concert was Karswell; I suspect—I more than suspect—that the paper was of importance, and I do believe that if my brother had been able to give it back he might have been alive now.
 |
| M. R. James in 1900 |
(8) "The Book" by Margaret Irwin (1889-1969) (more about Irwin, normally a historical novelist, HERE):
A stockbroker, a family man, encounters evil in the form of a book that writes itself—and which urges him to do something no decent person would consider:
. . . But presently, interspersed with these commands, were others of a meaningless, childish, yet revolting character, such as might be invented by a decadent imbecile.
He at first paid no attention to these directions, but found that his new speculations declined so rapidly that he became terrified not merely for his fortune but for his reputation and even safety, since the money of various of his clients was involved. It was made clear to him that he must follow the commands in the book altogether or not at all, and he began to carry out their puerile and grotesque blasphemies with a contemptuous amusement, which, however, gradually changed to a sense of their monstrous significance. They became more capricious and difficult of execution, but he now never hesitated to obey blindly, urged by a fear he could not understand.
By now he understood the effect of this book on the others near it and the reason that had impelled its mysterious agent to move the books into the second shelf, so that all in turn should come under the influence of that ancient and secret knowledge.
Category: Tales of terror (or horror stories, if you wish)
"The Lemon Drop Kid."
By Damon Runyon (1880-1946).
Short story.
First appearance: Collier's (February 3, 1934).
Damon Runyon used to be a household name. He was famous for two reasons: his reportage, often covering some of the most sensational stories of the first half of the 20th century, and his fiction, featuring thinly disguised real people in occasionally outlandish situations, written in a narrative style uniquely his own.
Nowadays Runyon's reputation rests almost entirely in his "Broadway stories," such as Guys and Dolls. In an introduction to The Bloodhounds of Broadway and Other Stories by Damon Runyon, biographer Tom Clark characterizes them this way:
Damon Runyon's Broadway tales are ironic mini-comedies based on the American outlaw code. It is the old Code of the West, transposed to Manhattan and the twentieth century. To live outside the law you must be honest, the saying used to go. Runyon rearranges it to read: To live outside the law you must be an interesting character, and anyway, no one is more honest than he has to be.
Moreover, Runyon possessed something indispensible to a professional writer:
One of Runyon's most remarkable faculties was his gift for preserving (and often himself adopting) the speech patterns of others. Throughout the 1920s he was able to sit around in speakeasies and record in his head the syntax and vocabulary of Broadway night life and underworld characters, much of which made its way into that crowning reporting job of his career, the "guys and dolls" short stories. "He has caught with a high degree the actual tone and phrase of the gangsters and racketeers of the town. Their talk is put down almost literally." So claimed one knowledgeable critic of the epoch, Heywood Broun. "To me the most impressive thing in Guys and Dolls is the sensitivity of the ear of Damon Runyon." That sensitive ear was the ear of a guy who was strictly asking for coffee at all times.
People who knew Runyon well claimed his hardboiled exterior concealed a cultured and sensitive interior. In any case, he was friends with the infamous (Al Capone was a neighbor) as well as the famous (in accordance with Runyon's wishes, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker flew low over Broadway and scattered his ashes over the district).
"The Lemon Drop Kid": Story
One of Runyon's "ironic mini-comedies" involves a racetrack tout named The Lemon Drop Kid. A tout, for the uninitiated, is a hustler who pretends he has inside information on an upcoming race (when, in fact, he has none), and who by getting some sucker to get in on the betting is able to clear a few "bob" for himself, the sucker usually being happy enough to cut the tout in on the winnings — but being very unhappy when the tip doesn't pay off as advertised.
This is called "telling the tale," and The Lemon Drop Kid is normally very good at it.
But on this particular occasion, The Kid accidentally misdirects his mark, and through a major misunderstanding takes it on the lam to escape what he mistakenly assumes will be retributive justice in the form of The Kid's tender flesh.
And so he literally runs away from the racetrack, with his mark in hot pursuit.
Eventually, The Kid will find love for the first time in his life, but the experience will prove bittersweet . . . .
"The Lemon Drop Kid': Films
Runyon's story has been filmed twice, once by Paramount in 1934 with Lee Tracy, Helen Mack, and William Frawley (remember the growly landlord in I Love Lucy?); and a second time by Paramount in 1951 with Bob Hope, Marilyn Maxwell, Lloyd Nolan, Fred Clark, and William Frawley again.
The 1934 version, we are told, adheres more closely to the original story. Those who have seen it say it starts out a comedy and ends up on a more serious note, very much like Runyon's tale. The claim has been made that Paramount suppressed this film in favor of the remake.
The 1951 edition takes the idea of The Kid misinforming someone about a bet and runs with it; the whole thing is played for as many laughs as possible (e.g., The Kid initiating a scam on little old ladies, Bob Hope in drag — you get the idea).
Hope's film also introduced a song that became an instant Christmastime standard, "Silver Bells."
To give you an idea of how much the 1951 movie differed from Runyon's story, get a load of this list of characters' names that never appeared in the original tale: Sidney Melbourne, 'Brainy' Baxter, Oxford Charley, Nellie Thursday, Moose Moran, Straight Flush, Gloomy Willie, Sam the Surgeon, Little Louie, Singing Solly, The Bird Lady, and Goomba. "Sidney Melbourne" was the moniker they gave The Kid and " 'Brainy' Baxter" was gorgeous Marilyn Maxwell.
Resources:
- You can read Runyon's "The Lemon Drop Kid" at the Project Gutenberg Australia site HERE. Just click on the link and scroll halfway down the page.
- If you've never heard of him, you can read about Damon Runyon on Wikipedia HERE.
- A Damon Runyon Radio Show premiered in 1949 and ran for several years. You should be able to find "The Lemon Drop Kid" audio HERE.
- The IMDb listing for the 1934 film is HERE, a listing for the 1951 version is HERE, and the IMDb credits list for Damon Runyon is HERE.
- TCM has a feature article about the Bob Hope movie (NO SPOILERS) HERE, while Rotten Tomatoes has their summary of the Hope version (SPOILERS) HERE.
- The 1951 film is available at Amazon.com HERE; The Bloodhounds of Broadway and Other Stories by Damon Runyon is also for sale on Amazon HERE, but it ain't too cheap.
Category: Crime fiction (softcore)
LONG WAY DOWN.
By Paul Carr.
Epress-online, Inc.
2009. 286 pages.
For sale HERE.
Sam Mackenzie lives on his boat in a Miami Beach marina; he's never formally identified as a private investigator or a freelance spy, but he will become both of those during the course of this adventure. Also, as we quickly learn, most of the time Sam prefers operating just the other side of the law. Indeed, official law enforcement never gets involved with the proceedings; we're walking on the wild side here.
Nevertheless, Sam has a code of ethics that includes chivalry towards damsels in distress and sticking it to corrupt fat cats. So, when a beautiful woman is gravely wounded by a well-heeled crook, Sam practically has no choice but to get involved in what he will later characterize as "this mess."
Since one thing inevitably leads to another, it isn't long before Sam is neck-deep in trouble. There are moments when he isn't sure of anyone, not even the people he's trying to help or those he has enlisted to aid him. The fact that there's a treasure boodle worth over $100 million at the bottom of all this feverish activity could explain that.
The persons Sam will have to fight, trust, and/or mistrust include but are not limited to:
- Candi, beautiful yet distant
- Jack, a friend with too many secrets
- Carling, sexy but always portending trouble
- J.T., a computer whiz who never has enough money
- two ruthless "businessmen" who won't stop at murder
- a homicidal one-legged psycho in a wheelchair armed with a rocket launcher
- a squad of commandos with heavy accents and submachine guns
- and Prince Alfred, a stray dog that just loves to chew on bad guys.
In Long Way Down, Paul Carr resonates with other writers — Ian Fleming, Michael Shayne, Clive Cussler, John D. MacDonald — while producing a story uniquely his own: part hardboiled detection, part espionage, part underwater adventure, part pulp, which all add up to an entertaining story.
Note: Concerned parents would do well to screen this story for younger readers. While there are scenes of violence and sex, it doesn't qualify as pornographic at all. Think of it as a James Bond-style adventure suitable for prime time network TV. Despite all the mayhem, there's no foul language to deal with.
Resources:
- There's more about Long Way Down and the author at Smashwords HERE and Keep Me in Suspense HERE.
Category: Crime and adventure fiction
MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS.
Edited by Thomas Godfrey with illustrations by Gahan Wilson.
Avenal Books.
1982. 465 pages: 26 stories.
For sale HERE.
Somehow criminality and Christmas have a perverse affinity for one another, as amply demonstrated in Thomas Godfrey's Murder for Christmas (1982; reprinted 2007). Some of the finest mystery authors regard the Yuletide season as the perfect opportunity for crime; real life criminals concur, since there is known to be a spike in property theft, including pickpocketing, whenever crowds gather at that time of the year.
Sadly, for some people this joyous season could prove so depressing that they contemplate more serious actions (e.g., "Back for Christmas," "Mother's Milk," "Christmas Party," "Death on the Air," "Markheim," and hilariously in "Ring Out, Wild Bells"); but more often the criminal impulse finds expression in simple theft—essentially stealing gifts instead of receiving them (e.g., "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle," "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding," "Dancing Dan's Christmas," "The Adventure of the Dauphin's Doll," and many others in this anthology).
The stories:
(1) "Back for Christmas" (John Collier): You've heard of "the perfect murder," haven't you? The killer here believes he's thought of everything—but he fails to allow for seemingly trivial, mundane matters . . . and love. Filmed for TV (Alfred Hitchcock Presents) in 1956 with John Williams.
(2) "Mr. Big" (Woody Allen): Existentialist private eye Kaiser Lupowitz gets hired to find God, and he does—on a slab in the morgue.
(3) "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle): Holmes and Watson get embroiled in what Holmes wrongly assumes to be "only one of those whimsical little incidents which will happen when you have four million human beings all jostling each other within the space of a few square miles" — but which finally proves to be of supreme importance. Filmed for TV (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) in 1984 with Jeremy Brett.
(4) "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding" (Agatha Christie): A reluctant Hercule Poirot is persuaded to spend "an old-fashioned English Christmas" at an old-fashioned English country estate—but, with what looks like murder and the theft of a red (not blue) carbuncle, the occasion proves to be anything but traditional. Filmed for TV (Agatha Christie's Poirot) as "The Theft of the Royal Ruby" in 1991 with David Suchet.
(5) "Dancing Dan's Christmas" (Damon Runyon): These three guys get the Christmas spirit the easy way—after several hours of downing Tom and Jerrys, which nobody is sure what is in them, and getting totally soused—and this one guy decides he will be Santa Claus and shower his favorite doll's grandma with sparklers, which nobody knows where they came from, but it is easy to see they cannot be legit. Filmed for TV in 1955 with Broderick Crawford.
(6) "Cambric Tea" (Marjorie Bowen): A young doctor must endure a harrowing Christmas in a gloomy mansion attending a man who insists that his wife is slowly poisoning him with his tea. Matters are worsened by the fact that this older man's wife was once the doctor's sweetheart and, despite the lapse of time, he still loves her. The existence of undated love letters, coupled with the strong possibility his patient could well die in his care, would make the doctor the prime suspect should the worst come to pass.
(7) "Death on Christmas Eve" (Stanley Ellin): In the long, dark night of the soul, time passes slowly—or not at all. Between them, a brother and sister share a memory of murder that will never, ever die.
(8) "A Christmas Tragedy" (Baroness Orczy): When there is a murder in Yorkshire and a young man is arrested on purely circumstantial evidence, Lady Molly of Scotland Yard sets a trap for the real killer.
(9) "Silent Night" (Baynard Kendrick): Blind private detective Duncan Maclain is enlisted by the F.B.I. to assist in a kidnapping case that involves national security. It's through Maclain's highly developed sense of hearing and a nice bit of logical inference that the kidnappers are thwarted—as well as the unwitting clues provided by the agreeable crooning of Bing Crosby and the incessant murmur of running water.
(10) "The Stolen Christmas Box" (Lillian de la Torre): Dr. Samuel Johnson, accompanied by his faithful biographer Boswell, is making most merry indeed during a country Christmas when a valuable diamond goes missing, and it falls to Johnson to recover it, a knotty cypher notwithstanding.
(11) "A Chaparral Christmas Gift" (O. Henry): The Frio Kid, as wanton and ruthless a man killer as ever lived, in a moment of weakness for an old flame succumbs to the Christmas spirit, with fateful—and fatal—results.
(12) "Death on the Air" (Ngaio Marsh): The body of Septimus Tonks — "a damned unpleasant sort of a man," attests his doctor — is found slumped over his wireless ("radio" to us colonials) on a dreary Christmas morn, prompting the presence of Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn, who in short order determines that the wireless itself is the murder weapon. If only it were as easy to determine the killer . . . .
(13) "Inspector Ghote and the Miracle Baby" (H. R. F. Keating): Ghote's latest assignment is one he dreads very much: to discover the true paternity of a child whose mother steadfastly denies she—well, you know. Unless he can resolve it soon, Ghote fears—as does his boss—that an eruption of religious fervor, closely followed by religious conflict, could result in multi-ethnic Bombay.
(14) "Maigret's Christmas" (Georges Simenon): As Sherlock Holmes had already discovered, seemingly trivial events can balloon into matters of the utmost importance; Inspector Maigret will come to appreciate this fact all the more when a bed-ridden little girl will witness Father Christmas bafflingly prising up the floorboards in her room, leading Maigret into a cold case of blackmail and murder.
(15) "To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt" (Charles Dickens): A murder trial with a difference: the ghost of the victim haunting the courtroom and influencing the outcome, always just beyond everyone's ken, except for the foreman, who for some reason is vouchsafed sight beyond sight.
(16) "The Adventure of the Dauphin's Doll" (Ellery Queen): Ellery matches wits with a master thief calling himself Comus. A child's doll worth over a hundred thousand dollars is to be displayed all day long in a crowded department store on Christmas Eve, and Comus anonymously lets Ellery know he intends to steal it. Unfortunately for EQ, while there are eight million stories in the naked city, that also means there are eight million suspects.
(17) "Markheim" (Robert Louis Stevenson): "Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows, and the black coffin."
(18) "The Necklace of Pearls" (Dorothy L. Sayers): What is it about missing gemstones and Christmas time? Only, in this instance there are twenty-one of them unaccounted for, a houseful of guests to suspect of stealing them, and but one Lord Peter Wimsey to nab the culprit.
(19) "Blind Man's Hood" (Carter Dickson): It's a long trip up from London for a young couple planning on spending Christmas with friends in the country. Upon their arrival they discover a house brightly lit but empty of people, save for a vaguely unsettling young woman with a story to tell of happenings here long ago, a story about unrequited love, of calculated cruelty, and murder.
(20) "Christmas Is for Cops" (Edward D. Hoch): Even at the best of times Captain Leopold's job isn't easy; but now that he suspects one of his men of being on the take, the Yuletide isn't quite as bright as usual. At the annual policemen's Christmas party, the crooked cop is found murdered, confirming to Leopold there's another man in the department who's also working with local criminals. Things are further complicated by the fact that somewhere in or around the Christmas tree lurks a vital piece of evidence that would break the case wide open—but just what form it's in is a mystery in itself.
(21) "The Thieves Who Couldn't Help Sneezing" (Thomas Hardy): An uncharacteristically light-hearted story from this author about a young man turning the tables on three highwaymen.
(22) "The Case Is Altered" (Margery Allingham): Albert Campion has been invited to spend Christmas amid a throng of guests at one of England's stately homes, his good friend Lance Feering, a hopeless romantic, being among them. As it turns out, Lance's presence will prove to be pivotal in Campion's efforts to thwart a scheme of national importance.
(23) "Christmas Party" (Rex Stout): Archie Goodwin, Nero Wolfe's brash but capable assistant, mortifies his boss with news that he's engaged to be married, and has the certificate to prove it. The loss of such an efficient legman would be incalculable to the corpulent and sedentary Wolfe, and he doesn't take it well. Meanwhile, Archie attends a Christmas party with his "fiancee," her boss, and several associates—but death is also present, when one of them drops dead from poison in his champagne. While everyone naturally falls under suspicion, Archie included, the prime suspect—Santa Claus, no less—vanishes not up a chimney but down an elevator.
(24) "The Flying Stars" (G. K. Chesterton): The holiday festivities are in full swing at the estate of one of England's wealthiest men. An impromptu pantomime is underway, yet no one suspects a theft of three invaluable precious stones is even now being carried out right in front of their eyes—no one except a nondescript little priest named Brown.
(25) "Mother's Milk" (James Mines): There's an old saying that if life hands you lemons, make lemonade. Chafing at being repressed, ignored, unappreciated, and subservient, one man decides to make warm milk—laced with poison—instead.
(26) "Ring Out, Wild Bells" (D. B. Wyndham Lewis): Everything has its limits, including Yuletide merriment, as the assorted guests at Merryweather Hall discover—but to say more would be a fruitless attempt at giving shape to the indescribable and comprehensibility to the irrational.
Note: The Mysterious Press released a mass market paperback edition in 1988, which was broken into two separate volumes; the second volume includes a story by Anton Chekhov that wasn't in the 1982 hardback or the 2007 reprint.
Resources:
- Thomas Godfrey is also responsible for editing the marvelous companion to Murder for Christmas, English Country House Murders, available on Amazon.com HERE.
- Two other books, both novels, of Yuletide mayhem that you might enjoy are Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot's Christmas (also known as Murder for Christmas) for sale HERE and Charlotte MacLeod's Rest You Merry available HERE.
Category: Crime fiction (Christmas department)
THE REVENGE OF THE HOUND.
By Michael Hardwick (1924-91).
Villard Books.
1987. 310 pages.
For sale HERE.
It is Coronation Summer 1902, and there has been such a lull in criminal activity that Sherlock Holmes is thinking about retiring. The fact that Dr. Watson has become engaged to a young American heiress also plays no small part in Holmes's thinking—without his "Boswell," The Great Detective's ego is threatened as well.
But soon come reports of a spectral hound haunting, not Grimpen Mire, but Hampstead Heath, the commons just north of London. The press goes crazy, the police are clueless, the public is just short of panic—yet Holmes is completely unimpressed and dismisses the whole thing as a hoax.
Soon enough his plate is full again: Lady Frances Carfax has disappeared on the Continent, an indiscreet letter with embarrassing potential for the new king (Edward VII) needs to be retrieved, the bones of Oliver Cromwell have just been disinterred (the Lord Protector's corpse had been decapitated, a fact of keen professional interest to Holmes), and Holmes and Watson narrowly miss witnessing a murder on a cross-Channel ferry. All in all, enough to consume the detective duo's time and attention.
But could any of these seemingly isolated events relate to each other? Need you ask? The terrible hound in Hampstead, Bertie's letter, Cromwell's bones, and the Channel stabbing all have something in common, with dire implications for the future of Fair Albion. Yes, the security of the Empire hangs in the balance, and only Sherlock Holmes can tie all the threads together in time.
Michael Hardwick was an eminent Sherlockian (or Holmesian) scholar, and it shows in The Revenge of the Hound, as allusions to quite a few of Holmes's cases thread their way through the narrative. For readers of "The Canon," these constitute delightful moments of recogni-tion; for others not in the know, however, the references should not prove intrusive.
Hardwick admirably captures Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's rhythms. The first-person narration filtered through Dr. Watson's limited perception of events is so well done that the reader entirely forgets he is reading a pastiche produced nearly half a century after Doyle's demise. (The main worry for a pastiche writer is avoiding slipping into parody, something that is all too easy to do, but Hardwick nimbly evades that pitfall.)
Pastiche writer or no, Hardwick could also produce engaging prose on his own. For instance, when Holmes first suggests that a revolution may be brewing in England, a horrifying prospect for Watson, the good doctor's thoughts stray:
I glanced out of the cab window. We were entering Baker Street from Portman Square. Respectable-looking couples were strolling arm-in-arm on their way to the park to listen to the band, or perhaps as far as the Serpentine, to join the line for a boat. A housemaid in her trim black and white was walking an immaculately clipped little dog. Down a side road, an Italian ice-cream-seller's cart was surrounded by bareheaded children, cheerfully waiting their turn. One of his compatriots was playing a barrel organ nearby. His scarlet-uniformed monkey was parading on top of the instrument like a midget soldier, holding out his tin can for pennies. Children gathered about, laughing and clapping, and two little girls twirled together in a dance to the jangling music.
We had had a glimpse or two during the South African war of the British populace in its rare state of frenzy. I could recognize no portents of trouble now.
"You sense something?" inquired Holmes, reading my mind.
"I can't say I do, Holmes. A few poor folk were put out over missing their Coronation dinners, if you count that. They will have them soon enough and have to look for something else to grumble about. It is a British trait."
"Then you would rule incipient revolution quite out of the question?"
What I took to be a mock-serious expression made me chuckle. Such a notion could only be a joke.
In several passages like this one Hardwick displays his powers of description, with the finale being as vivid as any the best pulp writers could manage.
Resources:
- Several more of Michael Hardwick's Holmesian books are still available on Amazon.com:
The Sherlock Holmes Companion (reference) HERE
Sherlock Holmes: My Life and Crimes (an "autobiography") HERE
Prisoner of the Devil (Holmes pastiche) HERE
The Complete Guide to Sherlock Holmes (reference) HERE
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (novelization of the film) HERE
The Man Who Was Sherlock Holmes (reference) HERE
The Game's Afoot: Four Sherlock Holmes Plays HERE
Four More Sherlock Holmes Plays HERE.
Category: Detective fiction (The Great Detective division)
FEN COUNTRY.
By Edmund Crispin (1921-78).
Walker Books.
1979. 224 pages: 26 stories.
For sale HERE.
Fen Country is fun and games, Edmund Crispin style. Just over two dozen stories culled mostly from a British newspaper (the EVENING STANDARD), a few from EQMM and WINTER'S CRIMES, most of them averaging five pages, and all of them entertaining. As Crispin noted in Beware of the Trains, stories of this length can only aspire to the depth of an anecdote, with characterization and emotion taking second place to plot; even so, the author rarely disappoints. Besides, reading Crispin offers the chance to learn new words (how about "esurient"?).
An enthusiastic blurb writer (his enthusiasm equally divided between the author and the people who write his paychecks) introduces us to Fen's country in remarks on the dust jacket flaps:
Here's riches! Twenty-six detective stories by the great Edmund Crispin—a splendid hoard, if sadly posthumous. Most of them feature his don-detective, Gervase Fen, and/or his almost equally sharp-witted friend and (unofficial) colleague, Inspector Humbleby of Scotland Yard. And all of the stories are as taut as a highly strung bow, and score a remarkable series of bull's-eyes.
They turn upon a fine assortment of clues—dandelions and hearing aids, Sunday pub closing in Wales, a bloodstained cat, a Leonardo drawing. There are devices and tricks of extraordinary ingenuity—murder by letter, a circular literary forgery. And cleverest of all, perhaps, there are the many variations on faked alibis and switched victims—the alibied corpse that gives the killer an alibi, or the faked alibi that breaks an alibi. There seems no limit to the intricacy of Edmund Crispin's invention or the sparkle of his wit. And certainly none to the sheer delight that his puzzles provide.
Fen Country is a bonus in the series of reprints of Edmund Crispin's earlier novels that Walker and Company is issuing for the growing number of enthusiasts of Gervase Fen and his playful, erudite creator. The author's last new work (after a twenty-five year hiatus), The Glimpses of the Moon, was published by Walker in 1978, shortly before Crispin's death. Since then, Gervase Fen has played several return engagements under Walker sponsorship and will continue to do so, but Fen Country's twenty-six stories are in book form for the first time, and only two of these have appeared in the United States at all. Riches, indeed—as every reader will agree.
About the author:
"Edmund Crispin," creator of nine detective novels and one previous book of stories featuring Gervase Fen, was a highly successful composer of music for motion pictures under his real name, Bruce Montgomery. A graduate of Oxford and at one time a schoolmaster (a fact to which he attributed, tongue-in-cheek, his knowledge of the criminal in human nature), he was also briefly on the stage. This varied background gave him the factual basis for the richly convincing framework in which he set the often fantastic detail of his stories; the combination places him in the thin ranks of those who have transcended the genre to produce works of genuine all-around excellence.
Here we go again with "transcending the genre." It's a good thing Shakespeare didn't try something like that.
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1. "Who Killed Baker?" (with Geoffrey Bush) (EVENING STANDARD: 1950):
Over walnuts, stuffed dates, and port—some of it deliberately spilled—Gervase Fen recounts "the case . . . solved by a very able Detective Inspector of the County CID, by name Casby," within a mere twenty-four hours. Fen's version—". . . it's a case in which the mode of telling is important—as important, probably, as the thing told . . ."—leaves Fen's annoying acquaintance, Wakefield, howling with rage; the reader may be moved to a similar reaction.
2. "Death and Aunt Fancy" (EVENING STANDARD: 1953):
George Gotobed travels to visit his dear Aunt Fancy, upon whom he has never clapped eyes; the old lady seems to be anxious about her companion, Miss Preedy. By morning, one of the women is dead, a large sum of money is at stake, and George, bewildered by the whole affair, returns to Oxford to consult his tutor, Gervase Fen, who quickly solves it and, characteristic-ally, tops it all off with a literary pun.
3. "The Hunchback Cat" (EVENING STANDARD: 1954):
"Let me tell you about the Copping case," Fen announces at a party. Clifford Copping, a highly neurotic individual, is discovered murdered—"There was a kitchen knife and a severed throat and an almost inconceivable mess of blood"—in a locked room inside a medieval tower. If one disregards the servants (and why do we do that?), three suspects remain: Isobel, Copping's only daughter; Peter Doyle, her husband; and "a handsome little high-stepping tortoiseshell cat." (Who can authoritatively assert that cats are always above suspicion?)
4. "The Lion's Tooth" (EVENING STANDARD: 1955):
Little Mary Merrill, daughter of a wealthy businessman, is kidnapped from a convent where she's staying while her father is in Italy; a ransom demand is duly issued, and the police are duly at a loss for clues. But never fear, Fen is here, called in by the reverend mother—and he's armed with an automatic pistol this time. Only Fen tumbles to the decisive clue—"Something yellow"—and within a few hours he is face-to-face with the culprit. Here is a case in which the solution is lost—and found—in translation.
5. "Gladstone's Candlestick" (EVENING STANDARD: 1955):
Gina Mitchell announces defiantly to her tutor, Gervase Fen: "I am NOT a thief." Believing her, Fen sets about proving her innocent of stealing an historic candlestick worth 400 pounds from her bedridden grandfather's manor house; apart from Lord Stretham and Gina, only two other people seem to have had the opportunity to do the theft: Humphrey Lister, her cousin, and Henry Challis, an acquaintance of Lord Stretham. Gina is especially distressed because her grandfather believes she did it. (Crispin does not play fair here, particularly with the powder clue on the mantelpiece.)
6. "The Man Who Lost His Head" (EVENING STANDARD: 1955):
Sir Gerald McComas enlists the aid of a reluctant Gervase Fen; McComas believes that his daughter Jane's fiancé, "a fledgling barrister by the name of Brian Ainsworth," has stolen "a small but valuable Leonardo drawing" from his study. To avoid public scandal, McComas wants Fen to determine where Ainsworth has secreted the sketch, not an easy thing for the young lawyer to do since he has spent the night in jail—where, as you know, inmates are searched. After asking two questions—and confirming the answer to one with New Scotland Yard—Fen has the solution to a case that shows chivalry is not dead.
7. "The Two Sisters" (EVENING STANDARD: 1955):
Percy Wyndham, just recovering from a nervous breakdown, eagerly accepts his aunt's offer to stay in her cottage, miles from anywhere, while she is in France; one further bonus is that her housekeeper, Mrs. Blench, is deaf and "Above all . . . tranquil." Percy's tranquility is greatly disrupted, however, by the appearance of Bessie, Mrs. Blench's money-hungry "disreputable sister"; Percy's aunt had also warned him that Mrs. Blench, distrusting banks, keeps large sums of money on the premises. An insomniac—even with medicine—Percy witnesses one night what he believes is a struggle between Mrs. Blench and Bessie on the edge of the woods; but it's only when he casually mentions this to Gervase Fen that Fen begins to realize Percy didn't witness merely a struggle, but the aftermath of a murder . . . .
8. "Outrage in Stepney" (EQMM: 1955):
Gervase Fen dabbles in international intrigue. Among other things, Fen must deal with Scotland Yard's Special Branch; a German Communist who mispronounces the American President's name; that old German folk-tune "Anchors Aweigh"; "a very large, very drunk young man"; and the problem of a would-be defector who is under constant surveillance—but with Fen's finagling, Auntie Beeb provides the breakthrough.
9. "A Country to Sell" (EVENING STANDARD: 1955):
More international intrigue: Christopher Bradbury, an American agent and Oxford graduate, consults Gervase Fen with his problem—"So what it comes down to . . . is just this: either the top guy in Washington is a traitor, or I am . . . . and I did NOT sell out." After Bradbury had communicated instructions by phone, "a valuable man was shot dead in Hampstead, and months of work collapsed in ruins, because those instructions were known." There's a spy in the woodwork—or should I say the copper wiring—all right; the irony is how a domestic squabble, a stymied romance, and the desperation of a dying man all converge menacingly on Christopher Bradbury. (And when he is congratulated on his Sherlockian deductions, Fen demurs: " 'Not deductions,' said Fen with some rancour. 'Intelligent guess-work—nothing more.' He is fond of compliments, but likes accuracy even better.")
10. "A Case in Camera" (EVENING STANDARD: 1955):
Detective Inspector Humbleby makes his first appearance—sans Fen—in this collection. Humbleby is induced to spend some leave time with his wife's sister and her husband, Pollitt by name, a superintendent in a village CID; Pollitt confides that he is about to be forcibly retired because he went against superiors' orders in the investigation of a murder case. A woman has been killed, evidently during the commission of a home break-in, but Pollitt's policeman's instincts tell him otherwise; he suspects the husband and a young female reporter because their alibi is a bit TOO neat, especially the photograph the young lady allegedly took of the husband at the time of the crime. Humbleby breaks their alibi in what could be called an earth-shaking event.
11. "Blood Sport" (EVENING STANDARD: 1954):
Another solo outing for D.I. Humbleby as he looks into a case of murder by rifle. An impoverished aristocrat named Ellingham—"one of what they call backwoods peers"—is the prime suspect in the death of his only remaining servant, Enid Bragg, who the autopsy reveals was "Five months gone, our Enid was." The motive is sound enough, but as Humbleby determines, the means—a rifle with a perfectly clean barrel—points away from the prime suspect and straight at the most unlikely person. (In just four pages, Crispin relates a story that a lesser writer could take 300 pages to tell.)
12. "The Pencil" (EVENING STANDARD: 1953):
Hard-boiled fans should like this crime story of a professional killer hired to infiltrate one group of mobsters by another crime group; he discovers that being in the middle of the road can get you run over. The titular pencil figuratively and literally writes an epitaph of someone's life that ends in ironic fashion. (No Fen or Humbleby in this one.)
13. "Windhover Cottage" (EVENING STANDARD: 1954):
A story featuring the detectival skills, not of Fen or Humbleby, but of Detective Sergeant Robartes of Scotland Yard. Wendy Cowen, married for only two weeks to Phil, has just returned from the States when Robartes comes to her door with grim news of a woman who has been found murdered in Windhover Cottage, their out-of-town residence; and Phil has no confirmed alibi. Robartes proves just how observant and thoughtful a policeman can be when he connects a sound motive and another unsupported alibi with the down-gear shift and odometer of a Jaguar.
14. "The House by the River" (EVENING STANDARD: 1953):
One cool October evening the strangled body of Elsie the servant girl is found in an outbuilding of Gregson's estate—"Gregson the widower, Gregson the pathetic, Gregson the bore," reflects the superintendent—which is just across the river from the chief constable's house. The superintendent has it all figured out even before the chief constable returns from London, and his solution does not make him at all happy; only the prospect of imminent retirement does that: "I'll be glad to be done with it, he said to himself now: my God, yes. I'll be glad to get away from it all." A somber meditation on responsibility and duty, innocence and guilt, and murder and suicide. (No Fen or Humbleby here.)
15. "After Evensong" (EVENING STANDARD: 1953):
The lifeless body of Mr. Soane is found in a churchyard; the police determine the time of death with an unusual degree of certainty. Mrs. Soane and their friend Oliver Masters had left him alone there, they say, in the pink of health, and went for a short walk, only pausing briefly upon encountering an old duffer, Colonel Rackstraw, as they crossed over a bridge, giving them all an alibi for their whereabouts at the time of the crime—or so it would seem. A wily inspector (unnamed) sorts it all out, breaking an alibi with a faked alibi and catching a killer who is too clever for his own good. (No Fen or Humbleby here, either.)
16. "Death Behind Bars" (EQMM: 1960):
This story is in the form of a ten-page letter from the Assistant Commissioner of the CID to the Home Secretary concerning the death of Dr. Harold Wynter, convicted on a shaky manslaughter charge, in one of HM's prisons; the cause of death was by nicotine poisoning, but the question is whether or not it was self-administered—and further, just how was it done? The AC assures the Home Secretary that an exhaustive investigation has eliminated all but one way for it to happen: "Despite the external appearance of what thriller-writers describe as an 'impossible murder' or a 'locked-room mystery,' the ingenious yet simple way in which Wynter had in fact been murdered was easily deduced from the facts I have given above." Perhaps. (Again, no Fen or Humbleby.)
17. "We Know You're Busy Writing, but We Thought You Wouldn't Mind If We Just Dropped In For a Minute" (WINTER'S CRIMES: 1969):
We've probably all had days like Ted Bradley is having: one interruption after another, after another, ad nauseum—the annoying phone calls from his creditors (yes, they want their money) and a petulant girlfriend; answering the doorbell for his deaf housekeeper, the meter-reader, a lost Frenchman. Ted is, after all, an author: ". . . forty-seven, unmarried, living alone, a minor crime-fiction writer earning, on average, rather less than 1,000 pounds a year"; and solitude is what writers crave most when they're working. But when the doorbell rings again and there stand Daphne and Stanislas, real-life crime enters Ted's life and refuses to go away . . . . (Saki could have written this one; still no F or H.)
18. "Cash on Delivery" (1979) (Previously unpublished):
Mr. Elliston wishes greatly to be rid of his wife; Max Linster, a professional killer, is willing to oblige Elliston—for a price: five thousand pounds. And so the plan is set; during what is supposed to look like a burglary Linster will strangle the lady, collect the lettuce, and abscond to the Continent. Unknown to Elliston, however, Linster has something else in mind, a nasty little surprise for the bereaved husband . . . . (Fen, Humbleby, where are you?)
19. "Shot in the Dark" (EVENING STANDARD: 1952):
The village of Cassibury Bardwell suffers an explosion—not of a gas main, but of erupting passions. Joshua Ledlow is smitten with Vashti Winterbourne, but so is Arthur Penge; to complicate things further, Joshua's sister Cicely is in love with Arthur, "thereby converting the original triangle into a sort of—um—quad-rangle," as Detective Inspector Humbleby puts it. Other problems linger, as well: When Joshua's body is found near a footpath, a gun with Arthur's fingerprints all over it nearby, it looks open-and-shut—but wait, witnesses can vouch for Arthur's and Joshua's whereabouts for most of the evening, and other witnesses near the footpath at the time Joshua should have died swear they heard no gunshots. It's quite a conundrum—until Gervase Fen suggests that it isn't Arthur who has an alibi, it's the corpse . . . . (NOTE: This story appears to be a cut-down version of "Otherwhere," which appeared in Beware of the Trains—or, conversely, "Otherwhere" is a greatly expanded reworking of "Shot in the Dark.")
20. "The Mischief Done" (WINTER'S CRIMES: 1972):
The REINE DES ODALISQUES isn't a who or a where but a what: a diamond, Humbleby informs Fen, worth well over 100,000 pounds—which, the Inspector ruefully admits, has been stolen "literally from under my nose, when I was supposed to be helping to protect it." Of course, stealing a diamond and unloading it for profit are two quite different things, the latter sometimes more difficult than the former; however, there is the possibility of insurance fraud, as Humbleby points out. The cast of suspects is quite impressive: Asa Braham, a jeweller and present owner of the REINE; Ben, Asa's phlegmatic brother; Shirtcliff, the sedulous Safeguard security man; Clyde Savitt, a Richard Burton-esque movie star and avid diamond buyer; a combination of these, perhaps; or could it be someone else? (The brief epilogue, steeped in irony, should not be missed.)
21. "Merry-Go-Round" (EVENING STANDARD: 1953):
D.I. Humbleby recounts to Fen a recent case of literary forgery, this at the expense of one of Scotland Yard's experts in that area, by name Snodgrass. Brixham, an Augustan period book expert and small press owner, has been offended by Snodgrass and effects an appropriate revenge on him. "No," says Humbleby, "it doesn't really do to play jokes on the police . . . . However, there has been just one instance, quite recently, of the thing's being brought off with impunity and, on the whole, justification." (No mystery here—or even a crime—but amusing nonetheless.)
22. "Occupational Risk" (EVENING STANDARD: 1955):
Humbleby has an embarrassment of riches—or, rather, rich MEN—as suspects to choose from: three knights, one of whom has committed murder. The body of an elderly gentleman, identity unknown, is found underneath a coffin in a churchyard in Belgravia by an understandably startled sexton fishing for his dropped pipe. By coincidence one of the local policemen had encountered and conversed with the victim in a pub the previous evening; the old fellow, his tongue loosened by excess drink, had confided much about why he was in town—to get an unnamed knight to own up to his responsibilities in regard to a servant girl who had been treated shabbily by this man. Gervase Fen suggests a little test of knowledge that, while not conclusive, would be an important first step in solving Humbleby's dilemma (or should that be TRI-lemma?).
23. "Dog in the Night-Time" (EVENING STANDARD: 1954):
In the Sherlock Holmes story, a vital clue concerns what SHOULD have been noticeable but wasn't, and the same holds here. One of Fen's pupils, Ann Cargill, approaches him with her suspicions about a valuable diamond owned by her recently deceased father. She not only suspects her father's estate executor, Mr. Spottiswoode, of fencing the stone but also her legal guardian, Uncle Harry, whom she characterizes as a "rather nice, inefficient, sentimental sort of crook who always gets caught sooner or later." But Spottiswoode has died, leaving a suspiciously lumpy bank account, and Uncle Harry—who has himself called in D.I. Humbleby—seems the embodiment of innocence. Like Poirot, Fen employs his little grey nose hairs to sniff out the malefactor.
24. "Man Overboard" (EVENING STANDARD: 1954):
D.I. Humbleby regales Fen with the Colonna case: two brothers from America, Saul and Harry, who take up residence in England. Harry, however, has a drinking problem severe enough to get him admitted to a sanatorium in South Wales; Saul, meanwhile, has managed to get himself discharged. Nevertheless, they buy a small sloop; and it's while they're out in mid-Channel during a gale that one of the brothers goes over the side and presumably drowns accidentally. But thanks to the unanticipated intervention of a blackmailer, the American system of document dating, and blood on top of new varnish, Humbleby collars a killer.
"Blackmailers? . . . although you may be surprised to hear this," declaims the Inspector, "in my experience they're generally rather nicer than any other kind of crook . . . . I don't care what novelists say. I like blackmailers. Salt of the earth."
25. "The Undraped Torso" (EVENING STANDARD: 1954):
As a photographer for a weekly magazine, Ericson has grown accustomed to people strongly objecting to having their picture taken; but he wasn't expecting such a reaction from a local resident here in sleepy little Dirlham-on-Sea, as he confides to Gervase Fen in a local pub. Fen summarizes the situation: "So what it boils down to is that here we have a man who doesn't mind having his face seen and photographed; and who doesn't mind having his body (on which there are absolutely no identifying marks) SEEN—but who's frightened enough to break an expensive camera when someone takes a picture of it." Fen's sleuthing instincts are aroused sufficiently so that he takes off for London and thence to the cottage of an elderly widow near Wycombe, returning to Dirlham with a reluctant Ericson and a greatly interested Detective Inspector Humbleby; for, you see, quite by accident Ericson's innocent black-and-white photograph has helped solve a twenty-year-old criminal case.
26. "Wolf!" (EVENING STANDARD: 1953):
D.I. Humbleby has reached a pons asinorum in a knotty case; as he tells Fen: "—but the fact remains that as between robbery with violence on the one hand, and a calculated parricide on the other, I can't for the moment see anything to choose." It involves the death of Tidgwick, "a rich old gentleman who got shot through the heart yesterday evening in his own sitting room"; Tidgwick, who was notorious for being an incorrigible practical joker; Tidgwick, father of Harold—"a successful businessman with an over-developed conscience"—and Mortimer—"a tubby, cheerful young fellow with big winking glasses, a research physicist . . . (who) has an appetite for material luxuries somewhat in excess of his income." So obviously we should suspect Cain rather than Abel, right? However (and there's always a "however"), it should be noted that both Harold and Mortimer have rock-solid alibis—Harold was on the phone with old Tidgwick when he heard the shot, and Mortimer was at home when Harold called him just after hearing the shot—hence Humbleby's indecision about the case. Gervase Fen is able to cut the Gordian knot with his simple knowledge of modern communications. Perhaps this clue will help: "Can you hear me now?"
Category: Detective and crime fiction
The man best known to posterity as O. Henry (1862-1910) was born William Sidney Porter in Greensboro, North Carolina and died in New York City, which he had come to love as a "Bagdad-on-the-Subway."
From his arrival in New York until his death roughly eight years later (sadly, from complications of alcoholism), he found more than enough material in that bustling metropolis for his stories. He once observed: "You can't write a story that's got any life in it by sitting at a writing table and thinking. You've got to get out into the streets, into the crowds, talk with people, and feel the rush and throb of real life—that's the stimulant for a story writer." (He should've taken his own advice.)
Porter was an acknowledged master of the clever twist ending, and his stories were in vogue several decades after his demise; it was only when revisionist critics began to deconstruct his works that his reputation went into eclipse.
Regardless of what the critics have said, however, the reading public has continued to demand O. Henry's writings, and most if not all of his more than 600 stories are still in print.
What's surprising about several of Porter's stories is how they veer from the soft optimism and sentimentality that he is most remembered for into outright farce and parody; you might think you're reading something by S. J. Perelman or Mark Twain rather than the author of "The Gift of the Magi."
We were able to pin down six of O. Henry's tales that aimed at both being funny and having criminal activity of the Perelman/Twain variety as their nuclei:
(1) "Tictocq: The Great French Detective, in Austin" (The Rolling Stone - 1894):
Mystery lovers may recall the exploits of Vidocq; certainly Porter had him in mind here. One of Porter's entrepreneurial enterprises was The Rolling Stone, a weekly humorous paper which he founded, wrote for, edited, and managed to run into bankruptcy within a year. (His troubles with the law, resulting ultimately in prison time, may have stemmed from his problems with it.) By this time, Porter was married to an Austin socialite, and his local color humor, like Twain, was aimed primarily at folks he knew; hence the appearance of "The Great French Detective" in Austin:
The professor [who has been playing the piano] looks around.
The room is empty.
Empty with the exception of Tictocq, the great French detective, who springs from a mass of tropical plants to his side.
The professor rises in alarm.
"Hush," says Tictocq: "Make no noise at all. You have already made enough."
Footsteps are heard outside.
"Be quick," says Tictocq: "give me those socks. There is not a moment to spare."
"Vas sagst du?"
"Ah, he confesses," says Tictocq.
You can read the entire story HERE.
(2) "Tracked to Doom; Or The Mystery of the Rue De Peychaud" (The Rolling Stone - 1894):
The Great French Detective resurfaces in Paris, hot on the trail of a master criminal known as Gray Wolf:
The horrified sans-culottes shrink back in terror as the Gray Wolf seizes Maria by the hair and cuts her into twenty-nine pieces, exactly the same size.
As he stands with reeking hands above the corpse, amid a deep silence, the old, gray-bearded man who has been watching the scene springs forward, tears off his false beard and locks, and Tictocq, the famous French detective, stands before them. Spellbound and immovable, the denizens of the cellar gaze at the greatest modern detective as he goes about the customary duties of his office.
He first measures the distance from the murdered woman to a point on the wall, then he takes down the name of the bartender and the day of the month and the year. Then drawing from his pocket a powerful microscope, he examines a little of the blood that stands upon the floor in little pools.
"Mon Dieu!" he mutters, "it is as I feared—human blood."
He then enters rapidly in a memorandum book the result of his investigations, and then leaves the cellar.
Tictocq bends his rapid steps in the direction of the headquarters of the Paris gendarmerie, but suddenly pausing, he strikes his hand upon his brow with a gesture of impatience.
"Mille tonnerre," he mutters. "I should have asked the name of that man with the knife in his hand."
The full story is HERE.
(3) "The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes" (New York Sunday World Magazine - February 1904):
It seems Porter wasn't finished with parodic stories of defective detectives just yet, and when he settled in New York he contrived an Americanized Tictocq/Sherlock Holmes knock-off:
I am so fortunate as to count Shamrock Jolnes, the great New York detective, among my muster of friends. Jolnes is what is called the "inside man" of the city detective force. He is an expert in the use of the typewriter, and it is his duty, whenever there is a "murder mystery" to be solved, to sit at a desk telephone at headquarters and take down the message of "cranks" who 'phone in their confessions to having committed the crime.
But on certain "off" days when confessions are coming in slowly and three or four newspapers have run to earth as many different guilty persons, Jolnes will knock about the town with me, exhibiting, to my great delight and instruction, his marvellous powers of observation and deduction.
The other day I dropped in at Headquarters and found the great detective gazing thoughtfully at a string that was tied tightly around his little finger.
"Good morning, Whatsup," he said without turning his head . . . .
You can read "The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes" HERE.
(4) "The Sleuths" (New York Sunday World Magazine - October 23, 1904):
Another case for Shamrock Jolnes involves the disappearance of a woman:
"I will undertake your case, Mr. Meeks," said Jolnes, finally. "The disappearance of people in this city has always been an interesting problem to me. I remember a case that I brought to a successful outcome a year ago. A family bearing the name of Clark disappeared suddenly from a small flat in which they were living. I watched the flat building for two months for a clue. One day it struck me that a certain milkman and a grocer's boy always walked backward when they carried their wares upstairs. Following out by induction the idea that this observation gave me, I at once located the missing family. They had moved into the flat across the hall and changed their name to Krale."
You can read "The Sleuths" HERE.
(5) "The Detective Detector" (New York Sunday World Magazine - March 26, 1905):
Things get turned on their head when the criminal goes looking for the detective:
"I've been on one or two false scents, doctor," he [the killer] admitted. "I know something of detectives' methods, and I followed out a few of them, expecting to find Jolnes at the other end. The pistol being a .45-caliber, I thought surely I would find him at work on the clue in Forty-fifth Street. Then, again, I looked for the detective at the Columbia University, as the man's being shot in the back naturally suggested hazing. But I could not find a trace of him."
This story is HERE.
(6) "Tommy's Burglar" (New York Sunday World Magazine - May 14, 1905):
Porter has some fun with fictional conventions when a 9-year-old kid encounters an intruder:
The burglar got into the house without much difficulty; because we must have action and not too much description in a 2,000-word story.
A little later:
"Aren't you afraid of me?" asked the burglar.
"You know I'm not," answered Tommy. "Don't you suppose I know fact from fiction? If this wasn't a story I'd yell like an Indian when I saw you; and you'd probably tumble downstairs and get pinched on the sidewalk."
The burglar has reason to complain:
"It's mighty little I get out of these fictional jobs, anyhow. I lose all the loot, and I have to reform every time; and all the swag I'm allowed is the blessed little fol-de-rols and luck-pieces that you kids hand over. Why, in one story, all I got was a kiss from a little girl who came in on me when I was opening a safe. And it tasted of molasses candy, too. I've a good notion to tie this table cover over your head and keep on into the silver-closet."
"Oh, no, you haven't," said Tommy, wrapping his arms around his knees. "Because if you did no editor would buy the story. You know you've got to preserve the unities."
"Tommy's Burglar" is HERE.
Resources:
- The Wikipedia article about Porter HERE is pretty good.
- The Best Short Stories of O. Henry is available on Amazon.com HERE.
- O. Henry's Full House (1952, 20th Century-Fox, 117 mins.) is also available on Amazon.com HERE. Reviewer A. T. Hurley describes it thus:
O. Henry’s Full House is a recently repolished cinema gem, a must for film fans and for those who love the short stories of O. Henry (born William Sidney Porter). This collection features five of O. Henry’s tales made into short films, and released in theaters in 1952 as a collection—an experiment in adapting short stories as simple short films, not padded out to theatrical lengths. The collection features a stable of 20th Century-Fox’s top contract players, including Anne Baxter, Richard Widmark, Farley Granger, and a dewy-cheeked Marilyn Monroe, and five topnotch directors including Henry Hathaway and Howard Hawks. The five stories include O. Henry’s signature tale of grace and selflessness, "The Gift of the Magi," as well as "The Cop and the Anthem" (in which a hobo literally can’t get himself arrested); "The Clarion Call" (a noirish crime mystery with loads of side-of-the-mouth cracks, like calling a guy "You clamhead!"); "The Last Leaf" (with a radiant Baxter and Jean Peters); and "The Ransom of Red Chief," a kidnap cautionary tale. The twists that O. Henry’s stories are famous for perhaps work better on the page than on film, and yet the acting and production values are so superb the tales are moving and their short lengths are just right.
The extras are another literary treasure trove. The stories are introduced and narrated by none other than a chain-smoking John Steinbeck, whose admiration for O. Henry permeates his speeches. Other features include a commentary by Dr. Jenny Lind Porter, a featurette on the life and writing of O. Henry (every bit as tragic as his most bittersweet fiction), galleries, stills, and two additional shorts from 1927, "Girls" and "Man About Town." — A. T. Hurley
Category: Detective fiction/Sherlock Holmes spoofs
