UPDATE: Louis Joseph Vance's SHEEP'S CLOTHING

Added a long-overdue Google Books link (HERE).

Miscellaneous Monday—Number Forty-three

"The Ellery Queen Mystery - Why Is the Corpus No Longer Alive?"

By Jon L. Breen (born 1943; Wikipedia HERE; the ISFDb HERE; FictionMags HERE; The West 87th Street Irregulars HERE; and

The Open Library HERE).

First appearance: The Weekly Standard, October 10, 2005.

Article (3 pages).

Online at Archive.org (HERE).

   "How did Ellery Queen fall so far? I’ll advance five possible explanations."

MYSTERY FICTION expert Jon L. Breen explains "the precipitous decline" and fall of a once-enormously-popular detective fiction character, coming to some grim conclusions about just who might be the culprit—or, should we say, culprits?

Random snippets:

  "Literary reputation is as fragile in crime fiction as anywhere else, but the precipitous decline of Ellery Queen may be unique, one of the most total, and in some ways inexplicable, cases of devalued stock in the annals of American letters."

  "Through the early 1930s, the team took the intellectual game that was the formal detective novel to greater heights than any American writer, arguably raising it from a craft to an art."

  "Through it all, they never renounced their allegiance to the pure fair-play puzzle that was their early hallmark. While they were quite capable of creating effective sequences of action, menace, and pursuit, they knew readers relished the intellectual pleasure of those extended scenes in which Ellery explained his reasoning in careful, painstaking detail."

  "Both cousins loved the English language, strove for the perfect word to convey their meaning, and wanted to reflect their times vividly and accurately."

Resources:

- Another popular sleuth also suffered a decline in popularity that was possibly more complete than EQ's; see John Loughery's "The Rise and Fall of Philo Vance" in the 

Winter 1987 issue of The Armchair Detective (7 pages; HERE).

- A listing of postings on Steve Lewis's Mystery*File that are by, about, or otherwise involve Jon L. Breen begins (HERE).

- Consult Book Series in Order for a list of EQ's HB and PB publications (HERE).

- Our encounters with Jon L. Breen's short fiction comprise his S. S. Van Dine spoof "The Circle Murder Case" (HERE) and his Ellery Queen pastiche-parody "The Lithuanian Eraser Mystery" (HERE).

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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UPDATE: Rodney Worth's "Homemade Murder"

Added a Pulpgen Archive link and the story headnote (HERE).

"I Looked Around, and There on the Deck Stood Two Guys with Masks on Their Faces, Holding a Couple of Guns That Looked Like Cannons"

"Weight of Experience."

By Leland Sherwood (?-?; no information about the author  available).

First appearance: Railroad Man's Magazine, April 1930.

Illustrator unknown.

Novelette (13 pages).

Online at Archive.org (HERE).

When he came to commenting on the value of experience, Mark Twain chose to forego a fancy aphorism and instead put it in more down-to-earth terms: "A man who carries a cat by the tail," he wrote, "learns something he can learn in no other way." We'll probably never find out about our young railroad detective's experiences with cats, but when it comes to catching train robbers, what he already knows about railroading will prove decisive . . .

Principal characters:

~ Stover ("I’m not much of a detective myself—just a railroader, and that’s why I saw it"), Cap Baldwin ("with this story to back me up, I’ve got him whipped before I start"), the engineer ("They scared me so bad that I didn't know what it was all about till it was over"), Jim Cotter ("I’m with you, if it costs me my job!"), Harper ("That sleuth stuff works out fine in books, but it's no good in real life"), Bennett ("No one around the station knows me from Adam"), and Morgan ("brought his gun hand into view").

References:

- "ordered for deadhead equipment":

  "A train or truck moved between cities with no passengers or freight, in order to make it available for service." (Wiktionary HERE.)

- "a plain-clothes bull":

  "(U.S., slang) A policeman; a detective; a railroad security guard." (Wiktionary HERE.)

- "in my flivver":

  "(colloquial, dated, Canada, U.S.) An automobile or cart, particularly one which is old and inexpensive." (Wiktionary HERE.)

- "If it ain't Hawkshaw himself":

  "(dated, 19th century) A detective." (Wiktionary HERE; also see Wikipedia HERE.)

- "he maneuvered a black stogie from one side of his expansive mouth to the other":

  "(slang) A cigar." (Wiktionary HERE.)

- "the third-trick bunch":

  "(Western Pennsylvania) A daily period of work, especially in shift-based jobs." (Wiktionary HERE.)

- "cut according to Hoyle":

  "(idiomatic) In strict accordance with the rules, especially of card games; in the proper or expected manner." (Wiktionary HERE.)

Resources:

- FictionMags's listing seems to indicate that Leland Sherwood confined his short fiction to railroading magazines (ss = short story):

  (1) "Weight of Experience," (ss) Railroad Man’s Magazine, April 1930 (above)

  (2) "Red Block," (ss) Railroad Man’s Magazine, July 1931

  (3) "The Nut," (ss) Railroad Man’s Magazine, September 1931

  (4) "Clear Board," (ss) Railroad Stories, May 1932

  (5) "Sandhouse Chatter," (ss) Railroad Magazine, October 1943.

- Other ONTOS encounters with railroads include, but aren't limited to:

  Francis Lynde's Scientific Sprague (HERE)

  Victor Whitechurch's "A Warning in Red" (HERE)

  Roy Vickers's "The Eighth Lamp" (HERE)

  Freeman Wills Crofts's "The Mystery of the Sleeping-Car Express" (HERE)

  D. C. Freeman's "The Stolen Ten Thousand" (HERE)

  Arthur M(inturn) Chase's "The Disappearing Diamonds" (HERE)

  B. M. Adler's "A Million Dollars" (HERE)

  Ian Bell's "Mystery Trains: Crime Writers and the Railway" (HERE)

  Howard Rigsby's "The Body in Roomette 9" (HERE)

  Agatha Christie's "The Plymouth Express Affair" (HERE)

  Leroy Yerxa's "One-Way Ticket to Nowhere" (HERE)

  Albert Harris's "The Commercial Traveller" (HERE)

  Augustus Wittfeld's "The Gold Coupler," "The Goat Degree," and "The Alcohol Annihilator," with "Dirk Johnson's Bank Robbery" tossed in (HERE)

  Cutcliffe Hyne's "At Close Quarters with Death: A Story of the Rail" (HERE)

  Johnston McCulley's "Tramps' Christmas Eve" (HERE)

  Johnston McCulley's "New Year's at Rock Siding" (HERE)

  Railway Related Stories (2017) (HERE)

  W. L. Alden's "The Missing Pullman Car" (HERE)

  C. Langton Clarke's "The Ends of Justice" (HERE)

  William Edward Hayes's "High Iron Rolling" (HERE)

  Ernest Bramah's "The Knight's Cross Signal Problem" (HERE)

  and David M. Norman's "Satan Turns the Timetables" (HERE).

The bottom line:

  "Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."

    — S. L. Clemens

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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UPDATE: Edward D. Hoch's "The Oblong Room"

Added Archive.org link and The Saint Magazine cover (HERE).

UPDATE: David M. Norman's "Satan Turns the Timetables"

Added a link to the Pulpgen Archive (HERE).

"Thurber Needed Several Minutes To Realize He Was Dead"

"I Want To Go Home."

By Robert Moore Williams (1907-77; Wikipedia HERE; the ISFDb HERE; the SFE HERE; and the IMDb HERE).

Illustrated by Orban (1896-1974; Field Guide to Wild American Pulp Artists HERE).

First appearance: Super-Science Fiction, April 1958.

Reprinted in Tales from Super-Science Fiction, 2012.

Short story (12 pages).

Online at SFFAudio (HERE).

(Note: Some text washed-out but still legible.)

   "What's he trying to do—make a radio set that will contact Mars?"

SOCIOLOGISTS have delineated many causes for juvenile delinquency, but we're fairly sure they haven't come across this one . . . yet . . .

Main characters:

~ Calvin Thurber ("A gadfly of thought was buzzing in his mind") and Ralph ("I've got it right this time. I've got it right!").

Typos: "often the engineer of" [should be or] "the famous scientist"; "not fothcoming"; which is it: "Kine" or "Tine"?

References:

- The theme of someone not from around here wanting to get back to where they came from became the main plot point in two hit sci-fantasy movies back in the '80s (WARNING! SPOILERS! Wikipedia HERE and HERE.)

- "this was schizophrenia":

  "Schizophrenia is a serious mental health condition that affects how people think, feel and behave. It may result in a mix of hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking and behavior. Hallucinations involve seeing things or hearing voices that aren't observed by others. Delusions involve firm beliefs about things that are not true. People with schizophrenia can seem to lose touch with reality, which can make daily living very hard." (The Mayo Clinic HERE.)

- "The condensers must have gotten a little damp":

  "In electrical engineering, a capacitor is a device that stores electrical energy by accumulating electric charges on two closely spaced surfaces that are insulated from each other. The capacitor was originally known as the condenser . . ." (Wikipedia HERE.)

Resources:

- Previously we've encountered Robert Moore Williams a couple of times: "The Accidental Murders" (HERE) and "The Pruning Man" (HERE).

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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