Frederic Dannay, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and the Art of the Detective Short Story 1476676526, 9781476676524

Citation preview

Frederic Dannay, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and the Art of the Detective Short Story

ALSO BY LAIRD R. BLACKWELL The Metaphysical Mysteries of G.K. Chesterton: A Critical Study of the Father Brown Stories and Other Detective Fiction (McFarland, 2018) H.C. Bailey’s Reggie Fortune and the Golden Age of Detective Fiction (McFarland, 2017)

Frederic Dannay, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and the Art of the Detective Short Story LAIRD R. BLACKWELL

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina

♾

ISBN (print) 978-1-4766-7652-4 ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4766-3561-3

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

© 2019 Laird R. Blackwell. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Front cover illustration © 2019 Shutterstock Printed in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com

With love and gratitude to my wonderful and accomplished wife Melinda, for all her support and love over the years, and to my grandson Jack who, in a few years, may become another fan of detective literature

Acknowledgments Thanks to Ellery Queen who almost singlehandedly (doublehandedly?) encouraged and championed the detective- crime short story through a time when it was fading from sight and memory, and undying gratitude to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, which still thrives after over 75 years of publishing the very best of the genre—resuscitating the Old Masters, sustaining the New Masters, and birthing the Masters-to-Be.

vi

Table of Contents Acknowledgments

vi

Preface

1

Introduction: Queen as Champion of the Past and Patron of the Future

5

ONE. From Thinking Machine to Human Being— From Ellery I to Ellery II

13

T WO. A Quorum of Queens, the Old Masters and the New Masters

16

THREE. A Never-Ending Stream of Manuscripts

28

FOUR. The Old Masters Resuscitated

39

FIVE. The New Masters Celebrated

54

SIX. The Acclaimed and the Awarded

93

SEVEN. “’Tec Tyros” as Masters of the Future

114

EIGHT. Other Significant Debuts

143

NINE. The Fine Arts of Parody, Pastiche and Spoof

179

TEN. Queen as Champion, Cheerleader, Critic and Patron

187

Appendix: Story Titles

193

Works Cited

205

Index

207 vii

This page intentionally left blank

Preface The short story has often been called the perfect and ideal form of expression for detective fiction.—Haycraft in Queen 1942, preface Modern readers tend to think of detective stories as novels, but the original, the “legitimate” form was the short story.— Queen 1941, p. vi Almost without exception, the best detective stories are short stories.—Starrett in Queen, 1942, preface

Ellery Queen. The two words together have a provocative and satisfying rhythm—from the multiplicity of the three syllables of the first to the unity of the single syllable of the second, from the dangling “ee” sound at the end of the “Ellery” to the closed and final “een” sound at the conclusion of the “Queen.” The contrast of the complexity of “Ellery” with the simplicity of “Queen” is reminiscent of the disparate personalities and skills and sometimes antagonism of the two cousins, Manfred Lee and Frederic Dannay—Man and Dan—resolving into the apparent unity and accord of their nom de plume— Ellery Queen—and is suggestive too of the tortuous intricacy of plot, clues, and red herrings of the classic detective stories resolving at last into the relief and satisfaction of the single solution. “Ellery” almost seems to be a question hanging in the air—a puzzle, an enigma, a case; while “Queen” is the answer, the detective, the solution—solid and irrefutable. But to the seasoned reader of the detective-crime genre, “Ellery Queen” not only evokes images of the classic, eccentric, brilliant, rather brash and arrogant young Ellery, complete with pince-nez and affected speech, penetrating the clues and discarding the deception, but also conjures images of transition and maturation—in Ellery and in the detective-crime genre as a whole—as the later, wiser, sadder, more compassionate, and more human Ellery (without the affectations) struggles through the human drama with all its tragedies and triumphs to solve the crimes but not the human dilemma, 1

2

Preface

just as the genre moves away from pure puzzle and eccentric detective to crime and detective stories of manners, psychology, and human interest. To most readers, those two magical words “Ellery Queen” probably elicit memories of the novels—from the intricate “Challenge-to-the-Reader” puzzles of, among many others, the debut novel The Roman Hat Mystery, 1929, The Tragedy of X, 1932, (published under the name of Barnaby Ross) and The Greek Coffin Mystery, 1932, to the tragic human dramas of Calamity Town, 1942, and Cat of Many Tails, 1949, and the provocative speculation and exploration of the human condition of Ten Days Wonder, 1949, The Origin of Evil, 1951, and The Player on the Other Side, 1963. But despite the success and renown of the many novels, Queen’s (at least Dannay’s) greatest interest was always the short story, which he believed to be the truest expression of the detective-crime tale. He amassed one of the finest and most complete collections of books of detective-crime short stories in the world (“larger and finer than those of the Library of Congress in Washington and the British Museum in London” [Introduction, EQMM, April 1947, p. 17]), which eventually led to his promoting and championing the detective-crime short story through his editorship of what was to become the most respected and influential periodical in the genre—Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine—and of well over a hundred anthologies, most of which reprinted the best stories from EQMM, but several of which (including the celebrated 101 Years’ Entertainment and the “theme” anthologies such as Rogues’ Gallery, Female of the Species, Sporting Blood, The Literature of Crime, and The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes) reprinted works (most not appearing in EQMM) of classic authors, both stories cherished and celebrated and stories lost and forgotten. This massive collection also led to the seminal historical and critical work Queen’s Quorum: A History of the Detective-Crime Short Story as Revealed by the 125 Most Important Books Published in This Field Since 1845. So, despite their brilliance as authors of several renowned detective novels (Dannay created the plots while Lee did the writing) and their success as creators of radio and television scripts, it was in the field of the short story that Ellery Queen had the greatest and longest-lasting impact. As author (Lee and Dannay) but primarily as editor (almost exclusively Dannay) Ellery Queen revived and sustained the detective- crime short story, brought “Old Masters” and “New Masters” and their stories (see Introduction and Chapter Three for explanation) back to the public’s attention and admiration, encouraged “New Masters” to write new stories, and perhaps most importantly for the continuing vitality of the detective-crime short story genre encouraged and nurtured and mentored hundreds of new authors, some of whom would become the masters of the future. Queen, as editor of EQMM and of scores of anthologies, was the single greatest force in the mid–1900s for the survival and health of the detective-crime short story. Dannay is said

Preface

3

to have speculated that “the most enduring part of the Queen legacy might ultimately prove to be the anthologies and critical studies Queen produced and, above all, this magazine [EQMM]” (March/April 2005, p. 4). We would have to agree. There have been several short essays, articles, and testimonials by authors, colleagues, and family members providing insight into the successes and challenges of the Dannay/Lee collaboration, and there is an insightful and award-winning biography Ellery Queen: The Art of Detection, 2013, by Francis Nevins; but to date there is no detailed study of the true impact of Ellery Queen on the detective-crime short story genre. This monograph will attempt to remedy this by looking at the authors, detectives, and stories that were “birthed,” “resuscitated,” nurtured, and promoted by Ellery Queen in EQMM and in the scores of anthologies, and by analyzing the impact of Queen’s fiction and their historical and critical studies and commentary on the history and development of the detective-crime short story genre. The case will be made that Queen (especially Frederic Dannay in his editor role) was a true champion of the detective-crime short story, playing a vital role in its survival and success. As part of the descriptions in this monograph of many of the authors and their stories nurtured by Queen you will find a section titled “Queen as Champion” which will describe Queen’s unique contribution to the story’s and the author’s (and the genre’s) success—in many cases discovering a “lost” story by an Old or New Master or encouraging a New Master (or even in a couple cases an Old Master) to write a brand-new story or even to introduce a new detective. Although EQMM is still thriving today under the admirable editorship of Janet Hutchings (who followed Dannay’s successor Eleanor Sullivan) over 75 years after its inception and over 35 years after Dannay’s death (Lee died 11 years previously), we will limit our study to the just over 50 years (1929– 1980) during which Ellery Queen was authoring novels and short stories and/or was editing anthologies and EQMM. (Although Dannay—as Ellery Queen—was the editor of EQMM until he passed away in 1982, his poor health led him to begin to phase out his editorial responsibilities some time before his death.) We will see that Queen as author, historian, and critic, but especially as editor, had a profound impact on the survival and vitality of the detectivecrime short story and its authors, an impact that is still felt strongly today. Queen’s own description of his role in regard to a new story submitted to EQMM in the mid–1940s—Manning Coles’ “Handcuffs Don’t Hold Ghosts”— is a particularly apt description of Queen’s self-appointed role in regard to the entire detective-crime short story genre: “we are proud and privileged to be its guardian angel, patron saint, and publisher” (Introduction, May 1946, p. 5). Francis Nevins, one of the many detective-crime authors who blossomed

4

Preface

into a well-known and respected detective-crime author after debuting in EQMM (and author of the previously mentioned biography of Queen) spoke for so many authors when he said after Dannay’s death: For those who were privileged to know Fred on a personal basis, his death meant the end of an infinitely precious friendship … for me the best times would be when we would get together and talk for hours on end about the writers who had come before Fred and those who were coming after him and, as I grew older, those who were coming after me. I never felt so much a part of a living tradition as I did on those occasions. Since Fred’s death, that vital link has snapped and the excitement of his presence lives only in memories [“At Work and Play with Fred Dannay,” The Tragedy of Errors, 1999, p. 139].

And as Hugh Pentecost, another of the now well-known detective-crime authors who found a platform in EQMM said, “EQMM was the last bastion of short mystery fiction” (Around Dark Corners, p. 1).

Introduction: Queen as Champion of the Past and Patron of the Future For many years we had deplored the lack of and shouted the need for a quality magazine devoted to the best detective-crime short stories.—Queen, Introduction, Best Stories from EQMM, 1944 For Ellery Queen: with all due thanks for his help in keeping the stuff from dying on the vine.—Hammett quoted in Introduction, April 1947, p. 18 … in memory of the times when far into the night we discussed detective stories and how they should be written; a subject, happily, we found inexhaustible.—Carter Dickson [John Dickson Carr} in In the Queen’s Parlor, p. 166

By the early 1930s and into the 1940s and 1950s, at the time of Queen’s emergence as author and editor, the detective short story was at a crossroads: many of the “Old Masters” of the late 19th and early 20th Century were beginning to be forgotten and the “New Masters” of the “Golden Age” (1920s– 1940s) were aging and starting to fade from public view and appreciation. Dannay believed that he and Lee could contribute fresh new (but in the classic style) detective-crime stories that would appeal to the “old” readership and would help create new readers, but even as their early novels were making a name for themselves, Dannay was pursuing his first love by amassing a vast library of books of detective-crime short stories, both for his own enjoyment and with the eventual goal of using them to create a new magazine which would galvanize readers by resuscitating old classics and by giving up-andcoming detective-crime authors a platform and an audience. So even as he 5

6

Introduction

was providing plot outlines to Lee for their own writing, Dannay had larger aspirations as an editor—to resuscitate the genre by re-introducing classic authors to the public and by introducing new talent. From the beginning, his goal was to publish only the best of the old and the best of the new. He was indefatigable in his research, perusing his library and other old books and magazines for the “lost and forgotten” of the classic authors at the same time as he was searching for and recruiting novice authors. In 1949, he wrote: The future of the detective story depends on new blood—make no mistake about that. The Old Masters—Poe, Doyle, Shiel, Post, Leblanc, Futrelle, Orczy, Freeman, Chesterton, Bramah, Anderson—the old timers are gone; they have cashed in their criminological chips, and the New Masters [the famous detective-crime authors of the 1930s and 1940s writing more contemporary classics] are getting on: soon, all too soon—Bailey, Christie, Crofts, Sayers, MacDonald, Berkeley, Wilde, Stribling, Simenon, Gardner, Stout, Marsh, Blake, Innes, Ambler, Charteris, Allingham, Bentley, Carr, Hammett, Woolrich, Vickers—will be the grand old men (and women) of the grand old game. Who will take their places? Only the beginners, the detective debutants. Only they have the incentive, the vitality—and, we hope, the daring. Only the ‘tec tyros of today can be the mystery masters of tomorrow. Thus, the most important thing a detective story magazine can do is to publish the work of beginners—especially those eager, talented, young writers who have yet to break into print [Introduction to Queen’s Awards 4th Series, 1950, p. ix].

Although he knew that the “Old Masters” and the “New Masters” and the classic detective-crime story were passing and it was time for new blood and for new types of stories, a part of him longed for the “good old days” of the classic clue-puzzle tale and of “plot before character.” This tension between the old and the new influenced him throughout his years of editorship—he was adept at changing to fit the times and urging others to do so as well, but he sometimes bemoaned, in print, the loss of the old and actively encouraged authors to revive it. To the memories and the ghosts of Professor Craig Kennedy and Dr. Fu Manchu … to the Lone Wolf and the Gray Phantom and the Clutching Hand…. Nick Carter and Philo Gubb and Jimmie Dale and Thubway Tham and Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford … to the “dear departed days” and “the good old times” [Introduction, “The Candy Kid,” November 1954, p. 81]. Certainly “The Crime in Nobody’s Room” is one of Carr-Dickson’s best short stories, and certainly this kind of detective short is being written by too few of the “old-timers” and by almost none of the “new-timers” [Introduction, September 1970, p. 64]. And the story of sound and sustained deduction is not so common these hardboiled days that we can afford to pass over it lightly [Introduction, “The Hand of Glory,” January 1947, p. 94].

So despite his emphasis on nurturing the health of the genre by publishing new authors, he also wanted to gratify and justify his own love of the

Queen as Champion of the Past and Patron of the Future

7

old classics and to inspire new readers and new writers of detective-crime short stories with gems from the past, so he brought many tales of the celebrated Old Masters back into print. Through the 1940s and 1950s EQMM published reprints of detective stories of all eleven of the “Old Masters,” almost one hundred reprinted stories representing fifteen classic detectives. In addition, through the years, EQMM published many stories from the “New Masters.” How vitalizing for the genre (and for the fledgling EQMM) if some of these “modern classics” could be reprinted, and especially if new stories from these authors could make their debut in EQMM. Of the twenty-six “New Masters” of the detective-crime short story genre (22 designated by Queen plus four others including Queen himself—see Chapter Two for an explanation) stories of all of them were published in EQMM, the majority of them reprints (over 450) but also many (over 130) that made their debut in EQMM. The great majority of these almost 600 stories featured famous detectives (44 detectives altogether), but quite a few were crime-mystery tales without a series detective or without a detective at all. But despite expressing his nostalgia for the old with the substantial number of reprints of Old and New Masters, especially in the early issues of EQMM, all through Queen’s tenure as editor he looked also to the future believing that for the detective short story and EQMM to survive and thrive as viable entities, new writers needed to be encouraged and published. Over the forty years of Queen’s reign, over 550 authors made their first appearance in print in a story in EQMM. The great majority were one-timers never authoring another story, but much to Queen’s satisfaction a few dozen of these fledgling authors evolved into “stars” and helped fuel the Renaissance of the detective-crime genre that continues into today. So, although Queen sometimes despaired over the passing of the classic detective-crime short story and occasionally lamented about the future of the genre, he remained fundamentally optimistic, he himself (as editor of anthologies, the short-lived Mystery League, and the highly successful and influential EQMM) a major factor justifying this optimism: The future of the detective short story is bright indeed. This anthology [of stories from EQMM] is only a new beginning; it opens the door to a renaissance, to a more golden era. For remember, dear readers, that Poe said: Let there be a detective story; and it was so; and when Poe created the detective story in his own image, and saw everything that he had made, behold, it was very good; and he cast the detective story originally in the short form, and that form was, and is, and forever will be the true form. Amen [The Queen’s Awards, 1946, p. vii]. But if in some celestial cottage Poe had been following the careers of Uncle Abner, Father Brown, Sam Spade, Dr. Gideon Fell, and all the others we take too much for granted, he will not regret having invented what is now the most fabulous literary form in the history of man’s eternal search for les mots justes [Introduction, “The Garnet Ring,” November 1944, p. 91].

8

Introduction

In this study of the Queen legacy as advocate and patron of the detectivecrime short story, we will first, in Chapter One, examine Queen’s influence on the genre as author of their own short stories. We will see that Queen’s own writing reflected their admiration of the classic clue-puzzle form and their recognition of the need for evolution to a more human-interest style as over time Ellery Queen I evolved into Ellery Queen II without giving up the classic puzzle element. Not surprisingly, this transformation was more evident in the novels than in the short stories, but it showed up in the best of the shorter tales as well. In Chapter Two we will examine Queen as historian, looking to the past, including their celebrated Queen’s Quorum—their list of the 125 most important books of detective-crime short stories from 1841 to 1967—and we will see the large number of stories from these books that Queen published. We will also examine their designation of “Old Masters” and “New Masters” and “’tec tyros” in more detail. In Chapter Three we will provide an overview of Queen as editor—of the two magazines, the ten author collections of short stories, and the over one hundred anthologies. In Chapter Four we will examine Queen’s support of the Old Masters of time gone by. For each “Old Master” we will list and discuss the stories, both acclaimed and forgotten, that Queen included in EQMM and in the anthologies along with some of his commentary and critique. Chapter Five will do the same for stories of the New Masters who were beginning to recede into the past, including both reprints of established stories and debuts of new detectives and new stories. In Chapter Six we will look at Queen’s publishing of stories and authors specially acclaimed and awarded, including winners of EQMM contests, Edgars, Pulitzer Prizes, and Nobel Prizes, as well as stories selected by a BlueRibbon Panel as “the best 12 stories of all-time.” We will see that a large percentage of prize-winning authors and stories were given a stage by Queen, and in some cases this stage was the author’s first. Chapter Seven will explore Queen’s support and encouragement of novice authors—“’tec tyros”—with a detailed look at several of those who had great success and acclaim after their debut in EQMM. Chapter Eight will examine some other important debuts in EQMM— debuts of detectives, the first appearance of “novel” detectives in short stories, and the first appearance of brand-new stories from established authors. Chapter Nine will look at some of the pastiches and parodies that Queen published in EQMM and anthologies. Chapter Ten will sum up Queen’s role as champion, cheerleader, critic, and patron of the detective-crime short story focusing on his hopes and expectations and on some of his greatest successes and a few of his disap-

Queen as Champion of the Past and Patron of the Future

9

pointments as he attempted to bring the past forward into the present and to help shape the future. We will see that praise of Queen as “the detectivecrime short story” is neither gratuitous nor exaggerated.

A Note on Names Undoubtedly you will already have noticed that sometimes it is “Queen” and sometimes “Dannay,” and sometimes it is “they” and sometimes “he.” This is consistent with Dannay and Lee’s own usage, for even in Dannay’s commentary in EQMM (which Lee had very little to do with), Dannay usually refers to himself as “Queen” and “we.” In this monograph I will usually use “Queen” with the understanding that in the case of editorship of EQMM, “Queen” actually refers almost exclusively to Dannay. Queen’s frequent altering of story titles presents a complication for this monograph—should the stories be listed by the original title the author gave them or by the alternate title Queen created? In many cases the original title is the one readers are most familiar with, but if readers are trying to find stories in EQMM or in one of the Queen anthologies, the Queen title is needed. The convention adopted here is to use both titles in the header list of stories (with Queen’s title first) and to use either one (but only one) in the text depending on the context. There are also two appendices of story titles, one of author originals with the Queen alteration in parenthesis, the other with Queen titles with the author’s original in parenthesis, so you will be able to identity a story mentioned in the text either by its original name or by Queen’s re-naming.

A Note on the “Queen as Champion” Section of the Author/Story Descriptions One of the major ways Queen fostered the popularity of the detectivecrime short story was to search through old periodicals and through his vast collection of books of detective-crime short stories to find “lost” and “forgotten” stories by well-known authors. He felt that reprinting “unknown” stories by classic authors was a far more effective way to stimulate renewed interest in the genre than by reprinting stories that had already been reprinted frequently (although he sometimes did this too). Over the years Queen had a remarkable record of such discoveries, so to help make the case that Queen played a vital role in the survival and popularity of the detective-crime short story, note will be made of these discoveries, some of “epic” proportions, in a section within the author description titled “Queen as Champion.”

10

Introduction

What This Monograph Covers Authors of detective-crime short stories (and novelettes) included in EQMM (U.S.) from Volume 1 (Fall 1941) through Volume 76, No. 6 (December 1980) and in the anthologies through 1980 edited by Ellery Queen: Authors designated by Queen as the “Old Masters” and the “New Masters,” Authors who won the Pulitzer Prize and/or the Nobel Prize, Authors whose stories won Edgar Awards, Authors whose stories won 1st or 2nd Prize in one of the EQMM Annual contests, Authors whose stories were selected by a panel of experts chosen by Queen in 1949 as among the best twelve ever written, Authors chosen (in 1951) as the Ten Best Active Mystery Writers, Authors chosen (in 1951) as the creators of the 12 Greatest Fictional Detectives, Selected authors who wrote parodies or pastiches of the great detectives, Selected novice authors who went on to great success after their debut story appeared in EQMM.

What This Monograph Doesn’t Cover Authors who wrote only novels or radio plays, Radio plays, Authors and stories that appeared in EQMM only after the December 1980 edition, Authors who only wrote stories outside the detective-crime-mystery genre.

Comments About Citations and Notations Most of the quotations from stories are from the story’s appearance in EQMM; however, in the few cases where I didn’t have access to the EQMM issue containing the story but did have access to another published source (anthology or author’s collection), I have cited that other source. When a passage is cited from a story in EQMM, only the date and page (not EQMM) are indicated; when a passage is cited from one of Queen’s introductions to a story in EQMM, it is identified as “Introduction” (not “Queen introduction”)

Queen as Champion of the Past and Patron of the Future

11

with date and page. So, all quotations are from EQMM unless otherwise indicated. The notation “QQ#” after an author collection of short stories indicates that the book was chosen by Queen to be “one of the 125 most important books of detective short stories published between 1845 and 1967” (Queen’s Quorum, 1969).

This page intentionally left blank

One

From Thinking Machine to Human Being— From Ellery I to Ellery II Although Ellery Queen had his greatest impact on the life and vitality of the detective-crime short story as historian (primarily his Queen’s Quorum) and especially as editor (primarily of EQMM), he (they) also had a major influence on the genre as author of novels, short stories, radio plays, and television shows. The primary focus of this monograph is on Queen’s impact as editor, but this first chapter will offer a brief analysis of his impact as author, both in reviving and celebrating the classic clue-puzzle, “thinking machine” detective story and in helping the detective-crime story make the transition to a more modern style and structure with more realistic and “human” detectives and more social critique and philosophy. Just as in his role as editor where, as will be seen in following chapters, Queen had a significant influence in championing the detective-crime story’s past as well as mentoring its future, in his role as author he provided “life support” for both the past and the future of the genre as his early works celebrated the old and his later works exemplified and encouraged the new. Although our interest in this monograph is in the impact of Ellery Queen on the life and times of the detective-crime short story, a brief look at the Queen novels will be informative. In the novels (see Nevins’ Ellery Queen: The Art of Detection for detailed analysis) there is a clear demarcation between the old (Ellery Queen I) and the new (Ellery Queen II). Starting with the first novel, The Roman Hat Mystery (1929), and continuing through the eight other novels of the “nationality” series, including the brilliant The Greek Coffin Mystery (1932) and concluding with The Spanish Cape Mystery (1935), Ellery Queen (the detective) was a brash, arrogant “Thinking Machine” intellectual complete with pince-nez and affected speech (Dannay was later to call him an “insufferable prig”) in stories where the clue-puzzle was the plot and the 



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

“Challenge to the Reader” was the pause before Ellery pontificated the solution. Ellery Queen was the classic detective—the Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, Old Man in the Corner, Professor van Dusen, Philo Vance eccentric perceiver of clues and weaver of logic and deduction in a contest of intellect with the reader. He removed his pince-nez and said slowly, “My revered father—there’s little peace for a quiet book-loving man” [The Roman Hat Mystery, p. 36]. Interlude: in which the reader’s attention is respectfully requested. Mr. Queen agrees with me that the alert student of mystery tales now being in possession of all the pertinent facts, should at this stage of the story have reached definite conclusions. The solution—or enough of it to point unerringly to the guilty character—may be reached by a series of logical deductions and psychological observations [pp. 294– 295].

But beginning in 1936, the Queen novels shifted to much more emphasis on human-interest situations, and Queen the detective dropped his affectations, acquired human concerns and flaws, and became much more emotionally involved in his cases. The “Challenge to the Reader” was eliminated as the stories became much less intellectual exercises in deduction and much more human-interest tales of manners, social critique, and philosophical musings. In Calamity Town (1942) Ellery suffered unrequited love, and in both that novel and Cat of Many Tails (1949) he agonized over personal failures and self-doubt: “Stupid, thought Ellery. A stupid speech. But then he was usually the observer, not a participant” (Calamity Town, p. 456). In Cat of Many Tails, he has withdrawn from detecting because of his failures and guilt over his fatal errors in an earlier case—“He had found himself betrayed by his own logic. The old blade had turned suddenly in his hand; he had aimed at the guilty with it and had run through the innocent. So he had put it away and taken up his typewriter” (p. 495)—and only slowly is he drawn back into his detective role. And again, in this new case, he errs in his deductions and is swamped with overwhelming guilt—“I swore after the Van Horn business, I’d never gamble with human lives again. And then I broke that vow…. I broke the vow and here I sit, over the grave of my second victim…. I’m finished. A glorious Schlamperei masquerading as exact and omnipotent science has just been packed away forever without benefit of mothballs” (p. 722). These later novels (including the highly philosophical The Origin of Evil [1951] and The Player on the Other Side [1963]) explored controversial social and ethical issues and the very nature of humanity, sometimes submerging the detective, clue-puzzle aspects beneath the “bigger” story, but never completely losing the classic touch. In the best of these later novels (including Calamity Town and Cat of Many Tails), the old and the new were deftly integrated. In the short stories, the demarcation is not so apparent or clear-cut

One. From Thinking Machine to Human Being



although the earlier stories are definitely in the Ellery I mode—the classic clue-puzzle tales with the arrogant, intellectual, affected, “walking brain” detective. The stories in The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1934) are of this type, although in the best ones (e.g., “The Mad Tea Party” and “The Invisible Lover”) the clue-puzzle is deftly done and Ellery’s affectations and priggishness fade into the background. But even in these better stories, Ellery isn’t really a human character complete with flaws and doubts. Before the fantastical events of “The Lamp of God” (1935)—thought by many critics to be the finest detective long short story (or short novelette) ever written—Ellery is smugly unmovable in his rationality—“This is a reasonable world and everything that happens in it must have a reasonable explanation” (The Ellery Queen Omnibus, p. 362). But the fantastical events of that story shock Ellery into existential humility and the beginnings of the much more human, uncertain, and flawed Ellery II: “When what happened happened, proper minds tottered on their foundation and porcelain beliefs threatened to shiver into shards. Before the whole fantastic and incomprehensible business was done, God himself came into it…. And that is what makes it quite the most remarkable adventure in which Mr. Ellery Queen, that lean and indefatigable agnostic, has ever become involved” (p. 362). “The Lamp of God” (and its publication year, 1935) marks a transition to the succeeding short stories (including those in the thematic Calendar of Crime, 1952), in which Ellery shows much more humanity and the stories blend clue-puzzle with human interest and social critique, although the brevity of the short story makes it more difficult than in the novel for character development and social commentary. So, even in their own writing, Queen both celebrates the old and demonstrates and fosters the movement of the detective-crime story toward the new. Queen wrote some of the very best clue-puzzle stories in the old style (e.g., The Greek Coffin Mystery, The Mystery of X, “The Mad Tea Party”) but also authored some masterpieces in the new style (e.g., Calamity Town, Cat of Many Tails, “The Adventure of the Three R’s”) with much more focus on character and the human dilemma but still rich in plot and puzzle. Their writing—both classic and “modern”—struck a chord with readers (their total book sales has exceeded 100 million) and helped reinvigorate the detectivecrime story for old readers and new readers alike. But although Queen (Dannay and Lee) as author had considerable impact on the popularity and evolution of the detective-crime story (both novel and short story), the real Queen impact on the detective-crime short story genre was in their (mostly Dannay’s) role as historian and especially as editor where he helped resurrect and revitalize its past and guided and mentored its future.

T wO

A Quorum of Queens, the Old Masters and the New Masters Queen’s enormous collection of books of detective-crime short stories (as of 1947 he had obtained 95 percent of the approximately 1,200 books of detective-crime shorts written since 1845) was both a product of and a stimulation to his fascination with the history of the genre. In 1942 he published The Detective Short Story: A Bibliography that featured an annotated list of almost a thousand books of detective-crime short stories and almost fifty detective-crime short story anthologies. From the very first issue of Mystery League in 1933 and of EQMM in 1941, Queen accompanied the featured stories with commentary, sometimes extensive, about the story and its place in the history of the detective-crime short story: The editorial prefaces to the prize-winning stories are full of facts, figures, and statistics; personal opinions on detective-story form and technique; unfamiliar tidbits on detective-story history, lore, and theory; anecdotes, reminiscences—just plain ’tec trivia. If you are a dyed-in-the-blood fan who likes this kind of “stuff,” you won’t find the editorial commentaries long enough; if you are the impatient type of reader, for whom the story’s the thing, you’ll find the editorial effusions not only too long and too elaborate but wholly unnecessary…. So, if you have no interest in the editor’s thoughts, we suggest, with full hearts and no hard feelings, that you simply skip the preludes and proceed without delay to the prize-winning stories themselves [The Queen’s Awards, 1946, p. ix].

Probably very few readers (dyed-in-the-blood fans or not) skipped these preludes, as Queen’s commentary alone, especially in the issues from the mid– 40s through the mid–50s, was worth the “price of admission.” It covered a vast range of topics from lists (e.g., husband-and-wife teams of detective writers, sequels to classics, clever titles, women writers with men’s names, pseudonyms, boy detectives, animal names for detectives) to analysis of detective 

Two. A Quorum of Queens, the Old Masters and the New Masters



types and author style to personal anecdotes to corrections of critics and of himself. Often, after a page or so of detectival meandering in the introduction to a story, the commentary concludes with “Which brings us, in our usual roundabout fashion, to the story at hand” (January 1947, p. 9), and only then actually introduces the story. In the mid–1940s Dannay made a significant change in his comments— instead of presenting his lengthy and detailed comments before the story, he made shorter, more general comments before, keeping his more elaborate comments for after (so he wouldn’t have to worry about spoiler alerts). Then apparently Queen must have run out of steam and/or time as EQMM moved into the late–1950s, for the extensive comments started being replaced by “formulaic” information on type, protagonists, locale, and time, and very brief comments with only occasional lengthy comments on special stories. For about the next ten years the extensive commentary phased out altogether as every story was accompanied by the formula data, but in the mid–1960s there was an occasional return to the lengthier, more unstructured commentary. Throughout the years, Queen also used the pages of EQMM to promote other Queen publications. For example, in the November 1947 issue of EQMM, Queen announced that “Some time in 1948—early in the year, we hope—the World Publishing Company will issue, as the first volume in their Living Library, an anthology titled Twentieth Century Detective Stories … [which will] offer a 20,000 word section called Queen’s Quorum: A Readers’ and Collectors’ Guide to the 101 Most Important Books of Detective-Crime Short Stories” (p. 42). Indeed, in 1948 this book was published, and twenty-one years later, Queen’s Quorum was published on its own with an update through 1967 (now including the 125 “most important books published in this field since 1845”). Not only did it list the most important books, but it broke down the history of the detective-crime short story into ten named periods. It made for fascinating reading, it helped bring classic detective-crime authors and stories back to public attention, and it indirectly served as a spark for revitalizing the detective-crime short story, for Queen selected many authors and stories from this list for inclusion in EQMM and in his anthologies. Of the 125 books listed in Queen’s Quorum, over 225 stories from seventy-three of the books were showcased by Queen in the magazine and anthologies—living museums of the history and evolution of the detective-crime short story genre. Of course for the books published before 1941 (the date of the first issue of EQMM), the publication of their stories in EQMM were reprints, but for almost all of the books published after 1941 their stories appeared in EQMM before their book appearance, in most cases before appearing in any other magazine or anthology, so Queen played an important role in bringing these stories to the public, and probably in leading to their book publication.



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Stories published in EQMM and the Queen anthologies from the Queen’s Quorum list of the 2 Most Important Books of Detective-Crime Short Stories from  to 9 NOTE: When just a date is given for a story, it appeared in EQMM; otherwise the name of the anthology where it appeared is noted. Anthology appearances are noted only when the story didn’t also appear in EQMM. Story titles in bold were stories that debuted in EQMM or in a Queen anthology; the others were reprints. The Founding Father () Poe, Edgar Allan, Tales (QQ#), 1845 “The Black Cat,” November 1949 “The Man in the Crowd,” November 1974 “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Masterpieces of Mystery: The Supersleuths Revisited, 1969 “The Purloined Letter,” February 1950 The First Fifty Years (0s–90s) Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, Out of His Head (QQ#), 1862 “Out of His Head,” July 1949 Stockton, Frank, The Lady, or the Tiger (QQ#2), 1884 “The Discourager of Hesitancy,” March 1953 “The Lady or the Tiger,” March 1953 The Conan Doyle Decade (90s) Conan Doyle, Arthur, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (QQ#), 1892 “The Adventure of the Blue Carbunkle,” April 1951 “The Red-Headed League,” March 1950 Shiel, M.P., Prince Zaleski (QQ#9), 1895 “The S.S.” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941 Post, Melville Davisson, The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason (QQ#20), 1896 “The Men of the Jimmy,” Rogues’ Gallery, 1945 Allen, Grant, African Millionaire (QQ#2), 1897 “The Episode of the Diamond Links,” Rogues’ Gallery, 1945 Bodkin, M. McDonnell, Paul Beck, Rule of Thumb Detective (QQ#2), 1898 “The Vanishing Diamonds,” August 1949 Ottolengui, Rodrigues, Final Proof (QQ#2), 1898 “A Frosty Morning,” January 1943 Carter, Nick, The Detective’s Pretty Neighbor (QQ#2), 1899

Two. A Quorum of Queens, the Old Masters and the New Masters

9

“By a Single Hair,” April 1955 “The Mystery of Mrs. Dickinson,” May 1942 The First Golden era (90–90) Davis, Richard Harding, In the Fog (QQ#29), 1901 “In the Fog,” April–June 1960 Ashdown, Clifford (R. Austin Freeman), The Adventures of Romney Pringle (QQ#0), 1902 “The Assyrian Rejuvenator,” January 1947 “The Foreign Office Dispatch,” February 1948 Bennett, Arnold, The Loot of Cities (QQ#), 1905 “The Fire of London,” September 1949 Barr, Robert, The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont (QQ#), 1906 “The Absent-Minded Coterie,” May 1950 Leblanc, Maurice, The Exploits of Arsene Lupin (QQ#), 1907 “Arsene Lupin in Prison,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941 “Hemlock Shears Arrives Too Late,” The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1944 Futrelle, Jacque, The Thinking Machine (QQ#), 1908 “The Problem of Cell 13,” June 1950 Henry, O., The Gentle Grafter (QQ#0), 1908 “Jeff Peters, Personal Magnet,” Rogues’ Gallery, 1945 “The Man Higher Up,” October 1961 Orczy, Baroness, The Old Man in the Corner (QQ#), 1909 “The Dublin Mystery,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941 “The Edinburgh Mystery,” Challenge to the Reader, 1938 “The Mysterious Death on Percy Street,” April 1949 The Second Golden era (9–920) Chesterton, G.K., The Innocence of Father Brown (QQ#), 1911 “The Honour of Israel Gow,” Challenge to the Reader, 1938 “The Invisible Man,” Masterpieces of Mystery: Cherished Classics, 1978 “The Queer Feet,” Masterpieces of Mystery: The Old Masters, 1978 “The Secret Garden,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941 Adams, Samuel Hopkins, Average Jones (QQ#), 1911 “The Man Who Spoke Latin,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941 Burgess, Gelett, Master of Mysteries (QQ#0), 1912 “The Stolen Shakespeare,” Challenge to the Reader, 1938 Whitechurch, Victor, Thrilling Stories of the Railway (QQ#), 1912 “Sir Murrell’s Picture,” May 1947

20

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Bramah, Ernest, Max Carrados (QQ#), 1914 “The Tragedy at Brookbend Cottage,” August 1951 Hardy, Arthur, Diane and Her Friends (QQ#), 1914 “The Silver Pencil,” March 1944 Mason, A.E.W., The Four Corners of the World (QQ#9), 1917 “The Affair at the Semiramnis Hotel,” January 1950 Post, Melville Davisson, Uncle Abner (QQ#0), 1918 “An Act of God,” March 1962 “The Adopted Daughter,” June 1960 “The Age of Miracles,” January 1963 “The Doomdorf Mystery,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941 “Naboth’s Vineyard,” August 1950 “The Straw Man,” December 1959 “A Twilight Adventure,” March 1950 Butler, Ellis Parker, Philo Gubb, Correspondence Detective (QQ#), 1918 “Philo Gubb’s Greatest Case,” March 1943 Clouston, J. Storer, Carrington’s Cases (QQ#), 1920 “Coincidence,” October 1948

The First Moderns (92–90) Leblanc, Maurice, Eight Strokes of the Clock (QQ#9), 1922 “The Lady with the Hatchet,” March 1943 “The Water Bottle,” Challenge to the Reader, 1938 Christie, Agatha, Poirot Investigates (QQ#), 1924 “The Adventure of the Western Star,” January 1964 “The Case of the Italian Nobleman,” July 1963 “The Case of the Missing Will,” December 1961 “The Chocolate Box,” November 1962 “The Disappearance of Mrs. Davenheim,” November 1958 “The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan,” November 1963 “The Kidnaped Prime Minister,” June 1960 “The Lost Mine,” March 1965 “The Million Dollar Bond Robbery,” August 1962 “The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge,” July 1958 “The Tragedy of Marsden Manor,” September 1964 “The Veiled Lady,” March 1961 Golding, Louis, The Pale Blue Nightgown (QQ#), 1936 “The Pale Blue Nightgown,” March 1950 “Question No. 3,” September 1949

Two. A Quorum of Queens, the Old Masters and the New Masters

2

Wynne, Anthony, Sinners Go Secretly (QQ#), 1927 “The Cyprien Bees,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941 Glaspell, Susan, A Jury of Her Peers (QQ#), 1927 “A Jury of Her Peers,” July 1945 Sayers, Dorothy, Lord Peter Views the Body (QQ#), 1928 “The Dragon’s Head,” Sporting Blood, 1944 “The Footsteps That Ran,” November 1945 “A Matter of Taste,” February 1968 G.D.H. and M.I. Cole, Superintendent Wilson’s Holiday (QQ#), 1928 “In a Telephone Cabinet,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941 “Superintendent Wilson’s Holiday,” Challenge to the Reader, 1938 Stribling, T.S., Clues of the Caribbees (QQ# 0), 1929 “Passage to Benares,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941 Anderson, Frederick Irving, The Book of Murder (QQ#2), 1930 “The Door Key,” March 1952 The Second Moderns (9–90) Jesse, F. Tennyson, Solange Stories (QQ#), 1931 “Lot’s Wife,” Female of the Species, 1943 Simenon, Georges, The Thirteen Culprits (QQ#), 1932 “The Case of Arnold Schottinger,” November 1942 Charteris, Leslie, The Brighter Buccaneer (QQ#), 1933 “The Green Goods Man,” August 1946 Eberhart, Mignon, The Cases of Susan Dare (QQ#), 1934 “Spider,” Female of the Species, 1943 Cobb, Irving, Faith, Hope, and Charity (QQ#9), 1934 “Faith, Hope, and Charity,” April 1952 Queen, Ellery, The Adventures of Ellery Queen (QQ#90), 1934 “The Adventure of the Glass-Domed Clock,” Mystery League, 1933 “The Mad Tea Party,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941 “The One-Penny Black,” Sporting Blood, 1944 King, C. Daly, The Curious Mr. Tarrant (QQ#9), 1935 “The Nail and the Requiem,” May 1944 “The Tangible Illusion,” November 1947 Allingham, Margery, Mr. Campion and Others (QQ#92), 1939 “The Borderline Case,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941 “The Danger Point,” May 1948 “The Definite Article,” November 1942 “The Frenchman’s Gloves,” August 1947

22

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine “The Hat Trick,” January 1946 “A Matter of Form,” January 1945 “The Meaning of the Act,” May 1945 “The Name on the Wrapper,” November 1947 “The Question Mark,” Fall 1941 “Safe as Houses,” March 1944 Bentley, E.C., Trent Intervenes (QQ#9), 1938 “The Genuine Tabard,” November 1950 “The Sweet Shot,” July 1952 Carr, John Dickson/Carter Dickson, The Department of Queer Complaints (QQ#9), 1940 “The Crime in Nobody’s Room,” September 1970 “Death in the Dressing Room,” August 1972 “Error at Daybreak,” July 1967 “The Footprints in the Sky,” November 1958 “The New Invisible Man,” December 1967 “The Silver Curtain,” April 1960 MacHarg, William, The Affairs of O’Malley (QQ#9), 1940 “Broadway Murder,” February 1946 “The Checkered Suit,” April 1946 “Lost Girl,” January 1948 “Murder Makes It Worse,” September 1970 “No Clues,” July 1946 “Soiled Diamonds,” February 1968

The Renaissance (9–90) Irish, William/Cornel Woolrich, After Dinner Story (QQ#9), 1944 “After Dinner Story,” September 1943 “Murder Story,” February 1959 “Night Reveals,” August 1948 “Rear Window,” February 1969 Hammett, Dashiell, The Adventures of Sam Spade (QQ#9), 1944 “A Man Called Spade,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941 “They Can Only Hang You Once,” March 1943 “Too Many Have Lived,” Fall 1941 de la Torre, Lilian, Dr. Sam: Johnson, Detector (QQ#00), 1946 “The Flying Highwayman,” August 1946 “The Monboddo Ape Boy,” March 1945 “Prince Charlie’s Ruby,” March 1944 “The Stolen Christmas Box,” January 1946 “The wax work Cadaver,” September 1945

Two. A Quorum of Queens, the Old Masters and the New Masters Sabatini, Raphael, Turbulent Tales (QQ#0), 1946 “The Alchemical Egg,” June 1951 “The Lord of Time,” May 1951 “The Scapulary,” April 1952 Palmer, Stuart, The Riddles of Hildegard Withers (QQ#0), 1947 “The Riddle of the Black Museum,” March 1946 “The Riddle of the Blue Fingerprint,” May 1942 “The Riddle of the Doctor’s Double,” August 1946 “The Riddle of Green Ice,” Winter 1942 “The Riddle of the Lady from Dubuque,” March 1944 “The Riddle of the Snafu Murder,” November 1945 “The Riddle of the Twelve Amethysts,” March 1945 Vickers, Roy, The Department of Dead Ends (QQ#0), 1947 “The Case of the Honest Murderer,” July 1946 “The Case of the Merry Andrew,” May 1945 “The Man who Played the Market,” October 1946 “The Man who was Murdered by a Bed,” March 1946 “Mean Man’s Murder,” November 1945 “Rubber Trumpet,” November 1943 “Snob’s Murder,” August 1946 Faulkner, William, Knight’s Gambit (QQ#0), 1949 “An error in Chemistry,” June 1946 “Smoke,” October 1947 The Renaissance and the Modern (90–9) Colliers, John, Fancies and Goodnights (QQ#0), 1951 “Back for Christmas,” January 1951 MacDonald, Philip, Something to Hide (QQ#0), 1952 “The Green-and-Gold String,” October 1948 “Love Lies Bleeding,” November 1950 “Malice Domestic,” October 1946 “The wood-for-the-Trees,” June 1947 Dunsany, Lord, Little Tales of Smethers (QQ#09), 1952 “Two Bottles of Relish,” March 1951 Crispin, Edmund, Beware of the Trains (QQ#0), 1953 “Lacrimae Rerum,” June 1949 “The Quick Brown Fox,” February 1952 “Within the Gates,” March 1953 Dahl, Roald, Someone Like You (QQ#), 1953 “Lamb to the Slaughter,” April 1955

2

2

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Innes, Michael, Appleby Talking (QQ#2), 1954 “The Cave of Belarius,” April 1953 “Dead Man’s Shoes,” June 1967 “Inspector Appleby’s First Case,” June 1953 “Lesson in Anatomy,” November 1946 “Tragedy of a Handkerchief,” October 1947 Ellin, Stanley, Mystery Stories (QQ#), 1956 “The Best of everything,” September 1952 “The Betrayers,” June 1953 “Broker’s Special,” January 1956 “Cat’s Paw,” June 1949 “Death of Christmas Eve,” January 1970 “Fool’s Mate,” November 1951 “The House Party,” May 1954 “The Moment of Decision,” March 1955 “The Orderly world of Mr. Appleby,” May 1950 “The Specialty of the House,” May 1948 Armstrong, Charlotte, The Albatross (QQ#), 1957 “The enemy,” May 1951 “what would You Have Done?” July 1955 Rice, Craig, The Name Is Malone (QQ#), 1958 “And the Birds Still Sing,” December 1952 “The Bad Luck Murders,” March 1948 “Goodbye Forever,” December 1951 “Goodbye, Goodbye,” June 1946 “His Heart Could Break,” March 1943 King, Rufus, Malice in Wonderland (QQ#), 1958 “Agree or Die,” December 1957 “The Body in the Pool,” February 1955 “Malice in wonderland,” October 1957 “Miami Papers Please Copy,” October 1956 “To Remember You By,” August 1957 Simenon, Georges, Short Cases of Inspector Maigret (QQ#), 1959 “Journey into Time,” June 1956 “Maigret’s Christmas,” January 1954 “The Most Obstinate Man in Paris,” April 1957 “The Old Lady of Bayeau,” August 1952 “Stan the Killer,” September 1949 Patrick, Q. (Patrick Quentin), The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow (QQ#9), 1961

Two. A Quorum of Queens, the Old Masters and the New Masters “All the way to the Moon,” September 1951 “A Boy’s will,” June 1950 “Little Boy Lost,” October 1947 “Love Comes to Miss Lucy,” April 1947 “Mother, May I Go Out to Swim,” July 1948 “The Pigeon woman,” July 1952 “This will Kill You,” November 1950 “Thou Lord Seest Me,” July 1949 “witness for the Prosecution,” July 1946 Palmer, Stuart and Craig Rice, People vs. Withers and Malone (QQ#20), 1963 “Autopsy and eva,” August 1954 “Cherchez la Frame,” June 1951 “Once Upon a Train,” October 1950 “Rift in the Loot,” April 1955 “withers and Malone: Brainstormers,” February 1959 McCloy, Helen, Surprise! Surprise! (QQ#2), 1965 “Chinoiserie,” July 1946 “number 0 Q Street,” September 1963 “The Other Side of the Curtain,” September 1947 “The Singing Diamonds,” October 1949 “Through a Glass Darkly,” September 1948 Fish, Robert, The Incredible Schlock Homes (QQ#22), 1966 “The Adventure of the Adam Bomb,” September 1960 “The Adventure of the Artist’s Mottle,” November 1961 “The Adventure of the Ascot Tie,” February 1960 “The Adventure of the Counterfeit Sovereign,” June 1963 “The Adventure of the Double-Bogey Man,” February 1962 “The Adventure of the Final Problem,” February 1964 “The Adventure of the Missing Cheyne Stroke,” August 1961 “The Adventure of the Missing Prince,” July 1962 “The Adventure of the Printer’s Inc.” May 1960 “The Adventure of the Snared Drummer,” September 1963 “The Adventure of the Spectacled Band,” November 1960 “The Adventure of the Stockbroker’s Clark,” March 1961 De Ford, Miriam, The Theme Is Murder (QQ#2), 1967 “Beyond the Sea of Death,” May 1949 “De Crimine,” October 1952 “Death Sentence,” May 1948 “The Judgement of en-Lil,” May 1954 “Mortmain,” March 1944

2

2

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine “nameless enemy,” March 1966 “The Oleander,” November 1946 “Something to Do with Figures,” March 1945 “To Be Found and Read,” December 1958 “walking Alone,” October 1957 Gilbert, Michael, Game Without Rules (QQ#2), 1967 “The Road to Damascus,” May 1967 Kemelman, Harry, The Nine Mile Walk (QQ#2), 1967 “end Play,” October 1950 “The Man on the Ladder,” November 1967 “The nine Mile walk,” April 1947 “Straw Man,” December 1950 “The Ten O’ Clock Scholar,” February 1952 “Time and Time Again,” July 1962

As has been mentioned in the Introduction, as part of his advocacy for publishing novice authors, Queen describes (in Queen’s Awards, 1950) the passing of the “Old Masters” and the impending passing of the “New Masters.” He lists eleven authors he considers to be the former and twenty-two he designates as the latter. From the results of two polls conducted by Queen in 1951 to determine the “Ten Best Active Detective-Crime Writers” and the “Twelve Best Detectives of All Time,” four more names arise as legitimate members of the list of “New Masters”: Earl Derr Biggers, Raymond Chandler, Mary Robert Rinehart, and Ellery Queen himself to bring that list to twentysix. As part of Queen’s championing of the detective-crime short story, in addition to giving beginning authors a platform and publicity, he played a major role in bringing the old and new masters of the genre back into the spotlight by reprinting many of their classic stories and by debuting many new stories by the masters still living. number of Stories Published in EQMM and the Anthologies from the Old Masters and the new Masters Old Masters (98 reprints,  debuts): Anderson, Frederick Irving: ten reprints, three debuts Bramah, Ernest: five reprints Chesterton, G.K: seventeen reprints Conan Doyle, Arthur: eight reprints Freeman, R. Austin: seven reprints Futrelle, Jacques: nine reprints Leblanc, Maurice: eight reprints Orczy, Baroness: four reprints

Two. A Quorum of Queens, the Old Masters and the New Masters

2

Poe, Edgar Allan: seven reprints Post, Melville Davisson: twenty reprints Shiel, M.P: three reprints, one debut new Masters (454 reprints, 9 debuts): Allingham, Margery: twenty-eight reprints, six debuts Ambler, Eric: six reprints Bailey, H.C: nine reprints Bentley, E.C: four reprints, one debut Berkeley, Anthony: nine reprints Biggers, Earl Derr: three reprints Blake, Nicholas: four reprints Carr, John Dickson: twenty-one reprints, three debuts Chandler, Raymond: two reprints Charteris, Leslie: five reprints, three debuts Christie, Agatha: one hundred and one reprints Crofts, Freeman Wills: two reprints, three debuts Gardner, Erle Stanley: twenty reprints Hammett, Dashiell: thirty-seven reprints, one debut Innes, Michael: four reprints, eighteen debuts MacDonald, Philip: no reprints, ten debuts March, Ngaio: one reprint, three debuts Queen, Ellery: forty-four reprints, nineteen debuts Rinehart, Mary Roberts: five reprints, one debut Sayers, Dorothy: thirteen reprints, one debut Simenon, Georges: thirty-one reprints (though all were debuts in English) Stout, Rex: twenty-three reprints, two debuts Stribling, T.S: four reprints, fifteen debuts Vickers, Roy: fifteen reprints, thirty-seven debuts Wilde, Percival: three reprints, six debuts Woolrich, Cornel: sixty reprints, ten debuts Altogether, then, Queen published in Mystery League, EQMM, and the anthologies almost 700 stories from the Masters—over 550 reprints and almost 145 new stories. Some of the reprints were of familiar, well-loved stories, but many were of tales “lost and forgotten.” Given the substantial readership of EQMM and the anthologies, this was an enormous jolt of energy for those authors, their stories, and for the whole detective-crime genre. Of course this still leaves over 4,000 stories Queen published, many of them of lesser-known already-published authors and of fledgling new ones—a muchneeded “leg up” for those authors and, again, for the genre.

THRee

A Never-Ending Stream of Manuscripts Your editor works in a fifteen-foot square room completely lined with bookshelves that start at the floor and touch the ceiling. Most of the shelves are ram-jam full; piles of books lean Pisa-like on the floor; tables are heaped high, and when a visitor arrives, even the chairs have to be cleared.—Introduction, May 1945, p. 52.

And what is the editorial process to create some kind of order among this biblio-chaos, and what are the joys and discoveries that kept him going all those years? One of the beauties of Queen is that he tells us everything and shares his “tremors of the heart” with all of us: Through this sanctum sanctorum pass hundreds and hundreds of manuscripts, in a never-ending stream. Most of the manuscripts are read in a large, red-leather easy chair, flanked on one side by a commodious smoking stand which serves as the private cemetery for the innumerable corpses of cigars, cigarettes, and pipe dottle; on the other side is a heterogeneous accumulation of old magazines—Strand, Golden Book, Black Cat, bygone pulps; and surrounding the chair, in every direction the eye can dart, are the precious first editions that contain the best detective short stories written in the last 104 years. It is in this atmosphere of blood-and-smoke that your Editor seeks those two thrills which are the reward of eternal reading—the discovery of a fine story by a new writer and the meeting of an old friend in a new exploit [p. 52].

Queen goes on to explain with typical Queen gusto that the first thrill is “akin to that of some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken,” and the second is “but a lesser peak of Darien” (p. 52). Elsewhere he describes a third thrill—that of discovering an old story that no one has ever heard of by a well-known author. He describes this discovery as “comparable only to the frisson d’extase which shakes the soul and body of a book collector who has just laid trembling fingers on a volume he has sought in vain for half a lifetime” (Introduction, December 1946, p. 8). 2

Three. A Never-Ending Stream of Manuscripts

29

With many thousands of stories evaluated and over 5000 of them published during his over forty years as editor (of the ephemeral Mystery League, of EQMM, of anthologies, and of author collections), Queen was able to experience many of these thrills over and over, and in the process significantly advance the cause of the detective-crime short story. With his vast library and relentless research and his strong reputation as an editor who would work with authors to create the best possible story, Queen was able to publish all sorts of authors and all sorts of stories—the famous and the virtually unknown, the tried-and-true and the brand new, the detective and the crimemystery. During those forty-plus years, Queen: 1. reprinted some well-known detective-crime short stories of wellknown or famous authors in the field (e.g., Poe’s “The Purloined Letter,” Conan Doyle’s “Red-Headed League,” Berkeley’s “The Avenging Chance”), 2. reprinted “lost or forgotten” stories, many published only once previously, from those well-known or famous authors (e.g., Futrelle’s “The Case of the Mysterious Weapon,” Post’s “The God of the Hills,” Hammett’s “The Gutting of Couffignal”), 3. discovered and published unknown stories (never before published) by those well-known or famous authors in the field (e.g., Anderson’s “The Man from the Death House,” Hammett’s “A Man Named Thin”), 4. requested and published new stories by those well- known or famous authors in the field (e.g., Allingham’s “Once More They’ll Hang Him,” Carr’s “House in Goblin Woods,” MacDonald’s “The Wood-for-theTrees,” Shiel’s “The Return of Prince Zaleski”), 5. published the first short stories by a well-known or famous author in the field who had previously written only novels (e.g., Innes’ “Lesson in Anatomy”), 6. published stories from a well-known or famous author in the field that introduced a new detective (e.g., Philip MacDonald’s “The Greenand-Gold String”—Dr. Alcazar, Ross MacDonald’s “Find the Woman”— Lew Archer), 7. reprinted stories for the first time in English by well-known or famous “foreign” authors in the field (e.g., Simenon’s “The Case of Arnold Schuttringer”), 8. reprinted English-language stories that had been published abroad but had never previously been published in the United States (e.g., Blake’s “The Assassins’ Club,” Christie’s “The Kidnaped Pekinese”), 9. published and edited new collections of previously uncollected detective-crime short stories by well-known or famous authors in the field (e.g., Hammett’s The Continental Op, Palmer’s The Riddles of Hildegard Withers, Gardner’s The Amazing Adventures of Lester Leith),

0

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

10. published little- known stories from well- known or famous authors in other fields (e.g., Dreiser’s “The Prince Who Was a Thief,” Tolstoy’s “The Man of God,” Longfellow’s “The Notary of Perigueux,” Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “The Murder in the Fishing Cat,” L. Frank Baum’s “The Suicide of Kiaros”), 11. published new stories by relatively unknown authors who had had only one or a few stories published previously (e.g., Patricia Highsmith’s “The Perfect Alibi,” Manly Wade Wellman’s “A Star for a Warrior”), 12. published an author’s first story which led to a long and brilliant career (e.g., Jon Breen’s “The Crowded Hours,” Avram Davidson’s “The Ikon of Elijah,” Stanley Ellin’s “The Specialty of the House,” Robert Fish’s “The Adventure of the Ascot Tie,” Harry Kemelman’s “The Nine Mile Walk,” James Yaffe’s “Department of Impossible Crimes”). Over the years EQMM gained a reputation as the place to publish a detective-crime short story; it drew the best authors (masters and novices), it attracted the most readers, and it provided the most visible platform for the continuing growth and development of the genre. And Queen’s anthologies are recognized, still today, as some of the best and most innovative—101 Years’ Entertainment is regarded by many critics as the finest anthology of detective-crime stories (both for the stories selected and the commentary) ever published. Without Queen, the detective-crime short story may have faded into obscurity and lived only in the memory of a few.

Magazines Queen had long “deplored the lack of and shouted the need for a quality magazine devoted to the best detective-crime short stories” (Introduction, Best Stories from EQMM, 1944, p. i). In 1933 the first issue was published of “that ill-starred but noble experiment called ‘Mystery League’—a jumbo magazine in contrast with the pocket-sized periodicals now in favor … but it was murdered by a blunt instrument after a mere four issues” (Introduction, December 1950, p. 81). Partly because of price and partly because it was “published on the proverbial shoelace—Fred and myself were the entire staff. We did not even have a secretary. We selected the stories, prepared copy, read proofs, dummied, sweated, and almost literally swept the office as well” (Lee in Nevins, 2013, p. 13)—it had little chance to succeed. Despite its short tenure, however, the magazine did have significant accomplishments—the first publication of Dashiell Hammett’s “Nightshade,” Dorothy Sayers’ “Suspicion” (later judged by a Blue-Ribbon Panel in 1951 to be one of the twelve best detective-crime short stories ever written), Queen’s

Three. A Never-Ending Stream of Manuscripts



own “The Glass-Domed Clock,” Viola Brothers Shore’s “The MacKenzie Case,” John Walsh’s novelette “Guns of Gannett” (Walsh was later to debut over twenty stories in EQMM), and Phoebe Taylor’s novel The Riddle of Volume Four. And from the ashes of Mystery League arose eight years later in 1941 what was to become the most respected and successful detective-crime magazine ever—EQMM—whose United States version is still going strong today after over seventy-five years of publication, almost 900 issues, and approximately 9000 stories printed. There were also overseas editions—Armed Forces Overseas, Australian, and British, plus translated versions of the U.S. edition (Japanese, French, Italian, German)—but they all eventually ceased publication (the Australian and the British were the longest lasting, persisting eighteen years and twelve years respectively). Without question, EQMM (the American edition) published considerably more quality detective-crime short stories over the years than any other periodical: of the ninety-seven detectivecrime short stories awarded Edgars from 1951 to 1980 (see Chapter Six), fifty debuted in EQMM (the periodical with the next most only had seven); consistently about half of the stories selected by Anthony Boucher (during this period) as the best of the year debuted in EQMM, while fewer than a quarter of the stories debuted in the “runner-up” periodical (usually AHMM). EQMM (referring to the United States edition) began as a quarterly In Fall, 1941; but “the response from readers was so cordial that we speeded up our schedule and it became a bi-monthly” (Best Stories from EQMM, 1944, p. 2). But “the fans, starved these many years, were still not satisfied; they wanted EQMM every month” (p. 2), so after World War II when the paper shortage was over, EQMM became a monthly. In the first couple years, it published mostly reprints of established authors, but even from the beginning Queen wanted to publish new material or at least reprints of relatively unknown stories. The avowed philosophy, which was carried out throughout his forty years of editorship, was to balance the best of the old with the best of the new—reprinted stories and debuts; established authors and novices; the familiar, the forgotten, and the not-yet-experienced. In the process he published stories of well-known detectives, unknown detectives, and crimemystery stories without detectives, and he published about every type of story within the detective-crime genre known or imagined—clue-puzzle, manners, cozy, hardboiled, science-fiction/fantasy, children’s, police procedural, parody/pastiche, inverted, suspense, horror, rogue-criminal, and many others. He had a strong preference for the classic fair-play, clue-puzzle detective story, but he adapted with the times and continually broadened his tastes and preferences. The genre was much the better for his love of the past and his adamant insistence on quality as it was for his flexibility and openness to innovation and his looking to the future.

2

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

The detective-crime short story genre owes its continued existence and vitality to Ellery Queen in his many roles, none more important or influential than his more-than-forty-year editorship of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. And as present EQMM editor Janet Hutchings pointed out in 1999, “the legacy of a truly great editor—and Queen was one of the very best—goes beyond the authors he discovers and the individual books and magazines he edits. A great editor changes the way people think and establishes standards of taste that carry beyond his own time. No one in the mystery field has ever done this more completely or with more enduring effect than Frederic Dannay” (The Tragedy of Errors, pp. 173–174).

Author Collections Soon after the beginning of EQMM, Queen began editing collections of detective-crime short stories by some of the masters in the genre beginning with Dashiell Hammett, most of whose hard- boiled tales hadn’t been reprinted since their Black Mask days two decades earlier. After the first few of eight Hammett collections, he started editing collections of other authors, many of whom hadn’t appeared in print at all since their initial publication years before. The collections were part of a two-pronged effort to bring these authors and their stories back to public awareness and acclaim, for in many cases the stories in these collections had been printed shortly before in EQMM. Hammett, Dashiell: The Adventures of Sam Spade and Other Stories, 9 Queen played a vital role in bringing the short stories of Hammett to the public eye, for this collection was the first of eight collections of Hammett short stories to be edited by Queen. Of these seven stories, only two of the Sam Spade tales—“They Can Only Hang You Once” and “Too Many Have Lived”—and “Nightshade” had been previously collected or reprinted since their first appearance in, respectively, Black Mask, Colliers, and American Magazine in the 1920s and 1930s, and this previous reprinting was by Queen himself (the two Spade stories in EQMM and “Nightshade” in the first issue of only four of Mystery League in October 1933). Undoubtedly Queen chose to include the Sam Spade tales in this first collection since Spade was a well-known figure from The Maltese Falcon— book and film. Since there were only three Spade short stories, Queen filled the rest of the collection with four little-known early non-series stories. Hammett recognized the importance of Queen’s contribution to both his work and to the detective-crime short story genre—“For Ellery Queen: with all due thanks for his help in keeping the stuff from dying on the vine”

Three. A Never-Ending Stream of Manuscripts



(Introduction, April 1947, p. 18). Queen’s eight collections of Hammett stories demonstrated that, despite Queen’s affection for the classic clue- puzzle detective-crime story, he strongly believed that this new type of “truly American” story was a breath of fresh air for the genre and was vital to its survival and health: “That we owe a great debt to Hammett no honest writer, reader, or reviewer of detective fiction can deny. He broke away—violently—from the overpowering influence of the polished English writers; he divorced us from effete, namby-pamby classicism; he gave us the first 100 per cent American, the first truly native, detective story” (Introduction, The Adventures of Sam Spade and Other Stories, 1944, p. 8). Hammett, Dashiell: The Continental Op, 9 These four Continental Op stories were early Hammett, originally appearing in Black Mask in the 1920s and 1930s. Only one—“The Farewell Murder”—had been anthologized since its original appearance. As part of Queen’s “resuscitation” of Hammett, two of the stories—“Death on Pine Street” and “Fly Paper”—were published in EQMM just previous to their appearance in this collection. Hammett, Dashiell: The Return of the Continental Op, 9 As with Queen’s previous Continental Op collection, only one of these five stories had been reprinted since its debut in Black Mask. Ironically, it wasn’t “The Gutting of Couffignal,” which Queen predicted would become an anthology favorite (which it did, appearing in several anthologies after Queen rescued it from oblivion in EQMM in 1944 and in this collection). Instead, it was “Death and Company,” which had appeared in Best American Mystery Stories of the Year, Volume 2, 1932, and in Century of Thrillers, Volume 1, 1937. Hammett, Dashiell: Hammett Homicides, 9 Four more Continental Op stories appeared in this collection—only “Ruffian’s Wife” and “Two Sharp Knives” weren’t Op tales. As part of Queen’s concerted effort to get Hammett’s short stories back in the spotlight, most of these stories were published by Queen (in EQMM, except for “Ruffian’s Wife,” which was reprinted in the anthology Rogues’ Gallery) at just about the same time they appeared in this collection. Allingham, Margery: The Case Book of Mr. Campion, 9 All seven of the Campion stories in this collection were originally published in the Strand Magazine from 1937 to 1940, but only two were published again before appearing in EQMM, then in this collection. It wasn’t until 1950 that Allingham, responding to Queen’s urging, began writing a new series of Campion stories (that Queen published in EQMM).



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Carr, John Dickson: Dr. Fell, Detective, and Other Stories, 9 These six “stories” included four of the Dr. Fell short stories, one Dr. Fell radio play, and one non-series story. Three of the four Fell short stories and the non-series tale were reprinted from The Strand and The London Evening Standard, while “The Proverbial Murder” and “The Hangman Won’t Wait” (the radio play) had appeared previously only in EQMM. Hammett, Dashiell: Dead Yellow Women, 9 Queen went a little farther afield to find some of these six stories for this fifth Hammett collection. Four of them featured the Continental Op, but only three of them were originally published in Black Mask (the other three appeared in True Detective, The Pacific Monthly, and The Smart Set) though all of them debuted in the mid–1920s and hadn’t been seen in print since. All of these stories also appeared in EQMM at just about the same time as this collection was published. Palmer, Stuart: The Riddles of Hildegard Withers, 9 The stories of Hildegard Withers, the “super-duper snooper, that irrepressible, irresistible, irreproachable Hildy” (Introduction, The Riddles of Hildegard Withers, p. 6), were Queen’s favorite “frolics of ferrety.” Withers had appeared in numerous novels and several films as well as in several short stories before the publication of this collection. Several of these eight stories had first appeared in Mystery Magazine but hadn’t been reprinted until Queen published them in EQMM a year or more before this collection, but Queen could claim even more special credit for three of the stories, for their appearance in EQMM, then in this collection, were their very first appearances anywhere. Vickers, Roy: The Department of Dead Ends, 9 As with many of Queen’s previous collections of author stories, many (five of the seven) of these stories made their debut in EQMM just a year or two before appearing in the collection. The five stories, starting with “Mean Man’s Murder,” were all part of a new series of Department of Dead Ends stories that Queen persuaded Vickers to write for EQMM. Hammett, Dashiell: Nightmare Town, 9 None of these four stories (two of which featured the Continental Op) had ever been reprinted since their original appearance in Black Mask and Esquire in the 1920s and 1930s except for by Queen himself. As with the previous collections, most of these stories were reprinted in EQMM slightly earlier than their appearance in this collection. Henry, O: Cops and Robbers, 9 This collection is unusual for several reasons: the stories are very short, so there are more of them (15), only two of the stories were published in

Three. A Never-Ending Stream of Manuscripts



EQMM before appearing in this collection (another five were published in EQMM well after this collection), the author, though well-known for his short stories was not well-known for detective-crime stories, and all of the stories were reprinted from previous O. Henry collections—from 1906 to 1936. Nonetheless, none of these stories had been printed anywhere (except in EQMM) since their initial appearance a decade or two earlier, so Queen’s collection complemented EQMM in bringing largely forgotten stories back to readers’ attention. Hammett, Dashiell: The Creeping Siamese, 90 Only three of these stories featured the Continental Op. Other than Queen himself, no one had ever reprinted any of the six tales before this collection. Typical of his effort to re-introduce Hammett to readers, Queen “doubled up” on three of the stories, publishing one each in EQMM in 1947 and 1949 and one in the anthology Twentieth Century Detective Stories in 1948. Palmer, Stuart: The Monkey Murder and Other Stories, 90 Although all of the eight stories in this collection were reprints, five of them had only been reprinted once—by Queen in several 1947 issues of EQMM and in Sporting Blood, 1942. So, through EQMM, these two Palmer collections, and his 1942 anthology Queen was able to bring Palmer and his short stories of Hildegard Withers, the spinster sleuth, to a public who was well aware of her in novels and films. Well over half of these sixteen stories made their debut with Queen, most in EQMM first, then in these collections. Hammett, Dashiell: Woman in the Dark, 92 Again, only three of these seven stories featured the Continental Op. Queen was the only one to have reprinted any of these tales (three of them)— in EQMM a year or so before they appeared in this collection. Hammett, Dashiell: A Man Named Thin and Other Stories, 92 For this last Hammett collection, Queen did some digging, for only one of the eight stories features the Continental Op and only two of the stories appeared originally in Black Mask, the others debuting in Brief Stories, Action Stories, and Saucy Stories. Typically, none of them had ever been reprinted except by Queen in EQMM—every one before its appearance in this collection. “A Man Named Thin” was a special find, for it had never appeared anywhere in print before EQMM and this collection, and it featured an unusual (especially for Hammett) poet-detective. Gardner, erle Stanley: The Case of the Murderer’s Bride and Other Stories, 99 Since the only Perry Mason “short” stories were novelettes, Queen selected one Lester Leith story (“The Candy Kid”) and six non-series stories



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

to represent Gardner. All of them had been previously published but had not been in print for at least ten years and, in some cases, over thirty years. Treat, Lawrence: P as in Police, 90 Lawrence Treat was a prolific writer of detective-crime short stories, authoring over two hundred altogether, about half of which were non-series stories published mostly in Detective Fiction Weekly and Ten Detective Aces from 1936 to 1964. Starting in 1964 he began publishing (in EQMM) his police procedural stories featuring the Homicide Squad of William Decker, Jub Freeman, and Mitch Taylor. The titles followed a consistent and familiar pattern—“A Is for Alibi,” “B Is for Bullet,” etc. EQMM published over fifty of these stories from 1964 to 1980 and a few more until 1993. The collection P as in Police contained sixteen of these Homicide Squad stories, all of which had previously appeared only in EQMM three-to-five years earlier. Hoch, edward: The Spy and the Thief, 9 For this collection, Queen selected seven of the “spy” stories of Jeffery Rand and seven “theft” stories of Nick Velvet, all of which had previously (and exclusively) been published in EQMM from 1965 to 1970. This collection and the appearances of several hundreds of Hoch’s short stories in EQMM probably were major factors in the publishing of later collections (not edited by Queen) of more Velvet stories and stories of other Hoch detectives: Diagnosis Impossible—the Problems of Sam Hawthorne, 1996; More Things Impossible—the Second Casebook of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, 2006; Nothing Is Impossible—Further Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, 2014; All but Impossible—The Impossible Files of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, 2017; The Thefts of Nick Velvet, 1978; The Velvet Touch, 2000; The Old Spies Club, 2001; The Spy Who Read Latin, 2013; Leopold’s Way, 1985; The Quests of Simon Ark, 2013; The Ripper of Storyville and Other Ben Snow Stories, 2016. Gilbert, Michael: Amateur in Violence, 9 This collection is unusual for Queen in that only one of its eleven stories debuted in EQMM, only three appeared in EQMM at all, and three of the stories had previously been reprinted in anthologies. The great majority of the stories, mostly featuring detectives Patrick Petrella or Inspector Hazelrigg, debuted in Argosy in the late 1950s and early 1960s. ellin, Stanley: Kindly Dig Your Grave, 9 This Ellin collection was a celebration of one of the most successful of all the authors who had their first story published in EQMM—all eleven stories had previously appeared in EQMM (from 1967 to 1972) where they made their debut, and none of the stories had been previously reprinted.

Three. A Never-Ending Stream of Manuscripts



Symons, Julian: How to Trap a Crook, 9 The thirteen stories in this collection are a mixture of those featuring Francis Quarles and those without a series detective. Most of the selected stories had debuted in EQMM from 1962 to 1972, and most had not been previously reprinted. Gardner, erle Stanley: The Amazing Adventures of Lester Leith, 90 The five Lester Leith stories in this collection had all appeared originally in Detective Fiction Weekly from 1930 to 1941 but hadn’t been seen since until their publication in EQMM from 1950 to 1955. Although a couple of them were anthologized once or twice after their EQMM appearance, their publication in this 1980 collection was in most cases their first appearance in print for a decade or two. By this time Gardner was a house-hold name, primarily for his Perry Mason stories, as the Lester Leith stories were practically unknown.

Anthologies While the twenty-two author collections allowed Queen to supplement EQMM in providing exposure, publicity, and ready readers for the twelve authors and their stories, the over 100 anthologies from 1938 to 1980 (there were more after 1980 under the editorship of Eleanor Sullivan) allowed him to publish hundreds more authors and a couple thousand more stories. As with the author collections, where many of the published stories had already appeared (and often debuted) in EQMM just a year or two earlier, the great majority of anthologies drew their stories from EQMM, including thirteen years of The Queen’s Awards, 1946–1957, 1962; various kinds of Anthologies, Mid-Year Anthologies, and Seasonal Anthologies from 1960 to 1980; numerous “themed” anthologies and “best-of ” anthologies (e.g., Ellery Queen’s Crime Wave, 1976; Best Stories from EQMM, 1944); To the Queen’s Taste (1946); and the twenty-volume Masterpieces of Mystery series (1976–1979). Altogether there were well over one hundred such anthologies from 1944 to 1980 presenting almost two thousand stories (with some overlap). In addition were the seven themed anthologies that had very few stories from EQMM (most of these anthologies were published before or in the early years of EQMM, and very few of the stories included in these anthologies were then reprinted in EQMM): Challenge to the Reader, 1938; 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941; Sporting Blood, 1942; The Female of the Species, 1943; The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1944; Rogues’ Gallery, 1945; and The Literature of Crime, 1950. Altogether these anthologies published over 150 stories (with some redundancy).



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

In these themed anthologies, Queen was able to attract readers by bringing some established authors (most with well-known detectives or criminals) that he didn’t publish in EQMM back to public attention, e.g., Anthony Wynne (Dr. Hailey), Edgar Jepson and Robert Eustace (Ruth Kelstern), Hulbert Footner (Madame Storey), Gilbert Frankau (Kyra Sokratesco), Fergus Hume (Hagar Stanley), Grant Allen (Colonel Clay), George Randolph Chester (Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford), Thomas McMorrow (Ambrose Hinkle), W.H. Hodgson (Captain Gault), Andrew Lang (Charles Finger), F.A.M. Webster (Old Ebbie), Arthur Reeve (Craig Kennedy). So, with the magazines, author collections, and anthologies, Queen was able to celebrate both the old and the new, bringing to readers familiar and unfamiliar stories of established authors as well as new stories of first-time authors.

FOUR

The Old Masters Resuscitated Although EQMM emphasized “first stories” as promoters of interest in the genre for readers and new writers, the reprints of classic Old Masters also served to vitalize and sustain the genre and to attract interest in EQMM, especially in its early years. The Old Masters as so designated by Queen— Poe, Doyle, Shiel, Post, Leblanc, Futrelle, Orczy, Freeman, Chesterton, Bramah, and Anderson—were seminal writers in the detective-crime genre who had left their indelible impressions on the field. Most critics regard Poe, Doyle, Chesterton, and Post to have created the greatest fictional detectives of all time (Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown, and Uncle Abner), detectives whose names and stories still resonated with readers in the 1940s (and still today). Altogether, Queen printed almost 100 stories from these Old Masters (the vast majority of them reprinted tales of their famous detectives) in EQMM and in the anthologies during the Queen years from the first anthology (Challenge to the Reader) in 1938 and the first issue of EQMM in 1941 through the end of Queen’s editorship of EQMM in the early 1980s. All of these Old Masters were in their last years or had already passed away by the time Queen was creating the anthologies and EQMM, so debut stories were few and far between. However, even with these Old Masters Queen was passionate and indefatigable in his searching for the “new” and was successful in finding several “firsts”—the first reprint in years or even decades of a “lost” or “forgotten” story, the first publication of any kind in the United States, the first reprint of a story left out of the author’s famous collections. Amazingly, in a couple cases (Anderson and Shiel, both of whom died in 1947), Queen was able to discover or even solicit a new story never published before in any form. Note: Mention of the Blue-Ribbon Panel that selected the twelve best detective-crime stories ever written refers to the panel of twelve experts in the 9

0

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

detective-crime short story—James Hilton, Howard Haycraft, John Dickson Carr, Anthony Boucher, Vincent Starrett, James Sandoe, August Derleth, Viola Brothers Shore, Lee Wright, Lew Feldman, Charles Honce, and Ellery Queen— recruited by Queen in 1949. The twelve stories that received the most votes from the panel were published in the twelve issues of EQMM of 1950. Story titles followed only by a date were published in EQMM. Publication in an anthology is indicated only if that story was not also published in EQMM. Story titles in bold are those that debuted in EQMM or the indicated Queen anthology; the others were reprints. Collections marked “QQ” were included in Queen’s Quorum. Anderson, Frederick Irving: Deputy Parr/Oliver Armiston, Sophie Lang, Mr. White, the Infallible Godahl PARR/ARMISTOn: “The Phantom Guest,” winter 92; “The Signed Masterpiece,” November 1943; “Murder in Triplicate,” December 9; “The Phantom Alibi,” November 1947; “The HalfWay House,” February 1948; “The Door Key,” March 1952 PARR ALOne: “The Jorgenson Plates,” Female of the Species, 1943; “The Man from the Death House,” January 9 SOPHIe LAnG: “The Jorgenson Plates (with Parr),” Female of the Species, 1943; “The Signed Masterpiece” (with Armiston and Parr), November 1943 wHITe: “The Unknown Man,” July 1942; “The Purple Flame,” January 1949 GODAHL: “Blind Man’s Buff,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941; “The Infallible Godahl,” Rogues’ Gallery, 1945 Parr/Armiston: Queen always had a special affection for the highly literate Anderson stories of the “extinct author,” Oliver Armiston, and his fanciful fictions of murder and theft that turn out to help Deputy Parr solve real crimes. Queen admired the leisurely, mannered stories with so much nestled between the lines—“We like the spider-slow, spider-patient way he weaves his intricate webs; we like his cunning irrelevancies, his wealth of detail; we like the strange manner in which all his characters flit in and out of most of his stories … and most of all we like his subtle indirection of style” (Introduction, November 1943, p. 78). Whether combating the legendary thief Sophie Lang or more mortal crooks, Armiston and Parr are a highly effective team, one imagining the wildest scenarios, the other with his army of informants diligently following every clue down its alley to the source. And weaving through the ingenious plots and the devious subterfuge are delicate description and evocative speculation of destiny and choice, speculation at the heart of Parr’s detection—“Man can, within the limits of the free will that has vouchsafed him, like a calf on a tether, decide exactly what he will do in a

Four. The Old Masters Resuscitated



certain contingency—and do it. But meantime he is surrounded by fellow creatures who are tugging at their own stake chains of volition; what they are going to do, in the fourth-dimensional area called time, to coincide unwittingly with his plans, cannot be foreseen, and can only be guarded against within the region of a gambler’s choice” (“The Door Key,” The Book of Murder [QQ#2], 1988, p. 269). Queen as Champion: The first of the Armiston/Parr stories ever written, “The Phantom Alibi,” appeared in McClure’s Magazine, November 1920. Dannay was happy to publish the reprints but was even more pleased to be able to be the first to publish the new stories, “The Phantom Guest,” “Murder in Triplicate,” and “The Man from the Death House.” Queen was chagrined that “Despite the plethora of his magazinepublished work [in The Saturday Evening Post and other highly prestigious periodicals] Mr. Anderson has only three books of short stories to his credit” (Introduction, December 1946, p. 75). Queen was adamant that “something should be done to bring a selection of Mr. Anderson’s best stories back into book form…. Your editor signifies his willingness to be party to any scheme (short of nefarious) that will permanentize Mr. Anderson’s work between covers” (p. 75). Even at that time, in 1946, all three of Anderson’s collections of short stories—The Adventures of the Infallible Godahl, 1914; The Notorious Sophie Lang, 1925; and The Book of Murder, 1930—were extremely difficult to find. It took forty-two years after Dannay’s plea (and six years after Dannay’s death) for The Book of Murder to be reissued, and it took an amazing seventy years (thirty-four years after Dannay’s death) for a collection of Anderson’s best stories—The Purple Flame, 2016—to finally appear in print. Somewhere Queen must be smiling. Parr alone (Queen as Champion): “The Man from the Death House” is one of the very few stories where Parr solves a case without the help of Armiston. This is a very special story, as it was discovered in Anderson’s effects after his death in December 1947 by his sister and was sent to EQMM where it was published for the first time, receiving a special posthumous award in the EQMM annual contest. It is typical of Anderson’s other Parr and Armiston stories in its rich and complex and leisurely paced plot and literary descriptions: “The human alleyway writhed, almost pinched itself shut in its delirious ecstasy at beholding so much celebrity on the hoof….” (January 1951, p. 83). Lang: “The Jorgenson Plates” and “The Signed Masterpiece” are two of the seven stories in the collection The Notorious Sophie Lang, 1925, in which Deputy Parr battles wits with the sophisticated and ingenious (and notorious) criminal. All of the Lang stories have the same slow, intricate, convoluted plots as do all of Anderson’s stories. Queen’s comments on “The Jorgenson Plates” could apply as well to any of the Anderson stories: “nothing seems

2

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

really clear until the end—and then, as if Mr. Anderson had suddenly pressed the electric-light switch in a dark room, everything comes to life—the plot, the hidden counterplot, the elusive cross-purposes—yes, the very characters themselves” (Introduction, Female of the Species, p. 375). white: Anderson’s first venture into detective fiction took the form of a short story about newspaper man, Mr. White, a man with “intuition which amounts almost to clairvoyance at times,” July 1942, p. 95. The three stories of Mr. White preceded the first Armiston/Parr story by eight years. White and Parr, however, have in common a philosophy about crime and detection that guides their approach to cases—“The thug who smashes the skull of a pal in a dark alley with a bludgeon … usually goes free. Logic and deduction can’t find him…. But, take the other kind of criminal—the man of intellect, who seeks retribution, and who covers his crime with the chain of circumstance. He is the man we catch … Sherlock Holmes can catch him. Why? Because he doesn’t kill on the impulse of the moment. He meditates. He premeditates. He schemes. Nine times out of ten, he overschemes. He loses his sense of proportion. His foot slips somewhere” (p. 95). Queen as Champion: Mr. White was a member of Queen’s “League of Forgotten Men,” for none of the three Mr. White stories—“The Unknown Man,” 1911, “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt,” 1912, and “The Purple Flame,” 1912—had been reprinted anywhere since their first appearance in Adventure until “The Unknown Man” and “The Purple Flame” appeared in EQMM more than thirty years later. It was to be another sixty-seven years before “The Purple Flame” was reprinted again in the collection of that name. Godahl: “The Infallible Godahl” is an amazing tale of the interweaving of “fact” and “fiction” as Armiston is manipulated into writing a story of an “impossible crime” committed by Godahl that then becomes the blueprints for an “actual” crime by an “actual” criminal. The Godahl stories never made it into EQMM, instead being published in two of the best-known Queen anthologies. Bramah, ernest: Max Carrados CARRADOS: “The Vanished Petition Crown,” Challenge to the Reader, 1938, Sporting Blood, 1944; “The Tragedy at Brookbend Cottage,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941; “The Bunch of Violets”/“Said with Flowers,” September 1943; “The Eastern Mystery,” January 1953 nOn-SeRIeS: “Smothered in Corpses,” August 1947 Carrados: There were over twenty short stories about the remarkable blind detective, Max Carrados, collected in Max Carrados, 1914 (QQ#); The Eyes of Max Carrados, 1923, and Max Carrados Mysteries, 1927 (with one more story, “The Bunch of Violets,” appearing in The Specimen Case, 1924).

Four. The Old Masters Resuscitated



Ellery Queen called the first collection “one of the ten best volumes of detective short stories ever written” (Queen’s Quorum, p. 65). The Carrados stories are certainly unlike any other detective stories, as Carrados often uses his blindness, and his other compensating senses, to his advantage in solving crimes, but some of the tales are memorable for other reasons. “The Eastern Mystery” is strange, stunning, and unforgettable for reasons completely unrelated to blindness, reasons that relate instead to ancient Indian gods, assassination attempts and miraculous survival, fakirs and thugs, and a possible sacred relic of Christianity that must be forever lost at sea. non-Series: “Smothered in Corpses,” as you might imagine from the title, is a spoof of sensational crime fiction. It was also the “victim” of Queen’s playful mood, as he published it with no author’s name and challenged the reader to figure it out. Apparently he hadn’t learned his lesson from the failure of his anthology based on that idea, Challenge to the Reader, almost ten years earlier. Chesterton, G.K.: Father Brown, Mr. Pond, Basil Grant, Horne Fisher, Mr. Hyde, Mr. Traill, Philip Swayne BROwn: “The Honour of Israel Gow,” Challenge to the Reader, 1938; “The Secret Garden,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941; “The Blast of the Book,” July 1943; “The Oracle of the Dog,” July 1950; “The Absence of Mr. Glass,” November 1958; “The Man in the Passage,” February 1959; “The Queer Feet,” Masterpieces of Mystery: the Old Masters, 1978; “The Invisible Man,” Masterpieces of Mystery; Cherished Classics, 1978 POnD: “The Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” September 1953 GRAnT: “The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown,” September 1972 FISHeR: “The Soul of the Schoolboy,” Challenge to the Reader, 1938; “The Fad of the Fisherman,” Sporting Blood, 1944 HYDe: “The White Pillars Mystery,” September 1945 TRAILL: “The Garden of Smoke,” March 1946 SwAYne: “The Man Who Shot the Fox,” July 1946 nOn-SeRIeS: “The Five of Swords,” April 1948; “The Tower of Treason,” December 1950 Father Brown: Of the fifty-two Father Brown short stories (see Blackwell’s The Metaphysical Mysteries of G.K. Chesterton: a Critical Study of the Father Brown Stories and Other Detective Fiction, 2018, for an in-depth look at these stories), twenty-three were published first in periodicals, most in the Saturday Evening Post (1910–1911) and Pall Mall Magazine (1913–1925). All but two of the Father Brown stories (“The Donnington Affair” and “The Vampire of the Village”) were collected in The Innocence of Father Brown,



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

1911 (QQ#); The Wisdom of Father Brown, 1914; The Incredulity of Father Brown, 1926; The Secret of Father Brown, 1927; and The Scandal of Father Brown, 1935. The Father Brown stories are acknowledged by most critics as, along with Poe’s ground-breaking tales of Auguste Dupin and Conan Doyle’s stories of Sherlock Holmes, the finest detective stories ever written—“Father Brown needs no introduction. He is one of the three greatest detectives ever invented” (Introduction, July 1943, p. 63). He is the epitome of the psychological and philosophical detective, solving the mysteries by becoming the criminal, by thinking his thoughts and wrestling with his passions. The four stories reprinted in EQMM are typical of the clever plots, the literate writing, and the paradoxical mysteries of the Father Brown canon: “You will find in ‘The Blast of the Book’ all the great qualities of Chesterton’s genius: his extraordinary cleverness of plot, his unique charm of style, and his brilliant use of paradox both in language and in the counter play of the supernatural and the natural” (p. 63). Despite this high praise for this tale, “The Oracle of the Dog” may be even better, having all of these aforementioned qualities plus a brilliant “locked-room” puzzle. It was selected by five of the 12 panelists as one of the twelve best detective-crime short stories. Pond: In all the Mr. Pond stories, Pond’s paradoxical utterances seem ridiculous when first read, but turn out in the end to be not only true but at the heart of the solution to the crime. Eight Pond stories were collected in The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond, 1990, seven of which were published in Storyteller in 1935 and 1936. “The Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse” appeared first in Colliers, April 13, 1935. Jorge Luis Borges considered this last story, with its “long white road, white hussars, and white horses, and a fascinating struggle of wills” (quoted in Thirteen Detectives, 1987, p. 11) the finest of all Chesterton stories (including those of Father Brown). While this may be an extreme view not shared by many, this story is fascinating and haunting and disturbingly paradoxical. Grant: Certainly not as well known or as brilliantly conceived as Chesterton’s Father Brown stories; nonetheless, the six stories of Basil and Rupert Grant and the Club of Queer Trades are wild and entertaining in their own ways. “The Tremendous Adventure of Major Brown” is the first, and best, story in the collection The Club of Queen Trades, 1905, and appeared two years earlier in Harper’s Weekly, December 19. It is a raucous and frenetic tale of a flood of dangers to Major Brown’s life—a “whirlpool of incredible adventures such as he had never seen or dreamed of in the horrible jungle or the heart of battle” (The Club of Queen Trades, p. 15). Fisher: The man who knew too much about everything actually knew too little about what really mattered, but he was able, nonetheless, to solve several mysterious crimes.

Four. The Old Masters Resuscitated



Hyde (Queen as Champion): “The White Pillars Murder,” this “paradoxical detective story to end all paradoxical detective stories” (Introduction, September 1945, p. 5), was never previously reprinted in magazine or book anywhere after appearing originally in an obscure magazine, “English Life” in 1925. Traill (Queen as Champion): “The Garden of Smoke” was a little known Chesterton story of a one-story detective, romance, spirit, and the hazy world of smoke and poetry. Swayne (Queen as Champion): “The Man Who Shot the Fox” is interesting primarily because it was one of Queen’s proudest discoveries—he thought that “The White Pillars Murder” was the last of Chesterton’s “unknown” tales, so he was thrilled to later discover “this hitherto unsuspected minor classic” (Introduction, July 1946, p. 54). non-Series: “The Five of Swords” and “The Tower of Treason” are both from The Man Who Knew Too Much, but are not of the Horne Fisher series. Conan Doyle, Arthur: Sherlock Holmes HOLMeS: “The Disappearance of Lady Carfax,” Challenge to the Reader, 1938; “Silver Blaze,” Sporting Blood, 1944; The Adventure of the Blue Carbunkle,” April 1951; “The Red-Headed League,” March 1950, January 1962; “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange,” Masterpieces of Mystery: The Supersleuths, 1976; “The Reigate Puzzle,” Masterpieces of Mystery: The Old Masters, 1978 nOn-SeRIeS: “How It Happened,” August 1954; “The Prisoner’s Defense,” November 1959 Holmes: Of all the short stories of the legendary Sherlock Holmes, the detective par excellence, four were reprinted in Queen anthologies, but only two were reprinted in EQMM—after all, how could one find a Holmes story that was little known or forgotten? Practically any of the Holmes’ tales will demonstrate Holmes’ character as the probing mind forever seeking stimulation and challenge, and “The Red- Headed League” (from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892— QQ#) is no exception—“My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me do so” (January 1962, p. 78). Fortunately for Holmes, for Watson, and for readers for over 130 years now, Holmes has his Watson and Watson his Holmes, and we have both to help us all escape those commonplaces—“I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of everyday life” (p. 60). We are all so grateful and excited when the “game is afoot.” In an interesting, if not somewhat blasphemous, twist, “The Red-Headed League” appears in two different issues of EQMM (March 1950 and January



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

1962), the second appearance being followed by an analysis of the story by Thomas Stix, in which he identifies “seven mistakes, misstatements, and foolish and erroneous deductions” (p. 79). The lover of Holmes and Doyle may cry “treason”; Stix replies: “I can only say, in the words of my compatriot, ‘If this be treason, make the most of it!’” “The Red-Headed League” was selected by six of the panel of twelve experts of the detective-crime short story as one of the best twelve such stories ever written. non-Series (Queen as Champion): While any Sherlock Holmes story would be well-known even if not much anthologized, the two non-series Conan Doyle tales published in EQMM are quite another affair as neither was ever reprinted after its initial publication (in 1913 and 1916 respectively). Although these are not detective stories, they are filled with suspense and crime and are written in Doyle’s careful, precise, and literate fashion. Freeman, R. Austin: Dr. Thorndyke, Danby Croker, Romney Pringle (as by Clifford Ashdown) THORnDYKe: “Double Vision”/“Phyllis Annesley’s Peril,” Challenge to the Reader, 1938; “The Puzzle Lock,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941; “Percival Brand’s Proxy,” Summer 1942; “The Missing Mortgagee,” May 1949 CROKeR: “The Brazen Serpent,” Rogues’ Gallery, 1945 PRInGLe: “The Assyrian Rejuvenator,” January 1947; “The Foreign Office Despatch,” February 1948 Thorndyke: Dr. Thorndyke is one of the best known detectives of the early 1900s, both for his fastidious scientific approach to detection (Queen and others call him the best medical detective of all time) and for the famous “inverted” tales that Freeman came to write about him. Although of the more than forty Thorndyke tales, only about a quarter are “inverted,” but these are the best known, for they demonstrate a bold experiment by Freeman—to divulge all the details of the crime in the first half of the story, leaving only the question of how Thorndyke will discover these for the second half. Freeman’s tight plots, meticulous detail, and precise writing along with Thorndyke’s careful observation and scientific analysis carry the stories even when most of the mystery is gone. The writing is so precise and detailed, so reasonable and fastidious, that it can seem to some readers laborious and stuffy; yet, the patient reader becomes accustomed to the leisurely pace and the articulate prose and follows Thorndyke’s unraveling of the crime with fascination. The first collection was John Thorndyke’s Cases, 1909 (QQ#2), but the first inverted tales didn’t appear until 1910 in Pearson’s Magazine, then in the 1912 collection The Singing Bone (QQ#2). “Percival Brand’s Proxy” and “The Missing Mortgagee,” later inverted tales, both first appeared in hard cover in

Four. The Old Masters Resuscitated



The Great Portrait Mystery, 1918. “Phyllis Annesley’s Peril” and “The Puzzle Lock” were more traditional (not inverted) tales, both initially appearing in print in 1925. Croker: As Queen states, Danby Croker, the “scientific crook … would have made a worthy adversary, had Dr. Freeman only thought of it, for the scientific John Evelyn Thorndyke, M.D., F.R.C.P.” (Introduction, Rogues’ Gallery, p. 406). In “The Brazen Serpent” Croker’s takes his success at art forgery as “not a warning to sinners. Rather was it an encouragement to further misdeeds. And it marked out my course finally upon the chart of the future” (p. 422), so there would have been many opportunities for Croker and Thorndyke to confront each other. Queen as Champion: The appearance of “The Brazen Serpent” in Rogues’ Gallery was the first United States appearance of a Croker story. Pringle: Romney Pringle “is a ‘gentleman crook’ who hides behind the respectable form of ‘literary agent’ … a suave and charming scoundrel” (Introduction, January 1947, p. 81). As with Freeman’s Dr. Thorndyke stories, the writing is articulate and precise, only here in the service of the scoundrel instead of the detective. Queen as Champion: Both Pringle stories were from an extremely rare collection, The Adventures of Romney Pringle, 1902, and when printed in EQMM were “a rarity of the first magnitude, the first appearance in the United States of two stories hitherto unavailable to the general public” (Introduction, January 1947, p. 81). Later, in 1968 and 1969 respectively, the Pringle stories were published in The Adventures of Romney Pringle and The Further Adventures of Romney Pringle. Futrelle, Jacques: Thinking Machine, Garron THe THInKInG MACHIne: “The Superfluous Finger,” Challenge to the Reader, 1938; “The Stolen Rubens,” Summer 1942; “The Leak,” February 1949; “The Vanishing Man,” November 1949; “The Problem of Cell 13,” June 1950; “The Case of the Mysterious Weapon,” October 1950; “The Grinning God,” June 1952; “The Thinking Machine Investigates,” December 1958 GARROn: “The Statement of the Accused”/“The Mystery of Room 666,” May 1945 The Thinking Machine: The Thinking Machine is well deserving of his sobriquet, for he is the prototype logician, solving his cases by observation, analysis, and deduction. He also shares other characteristics of the Dupin (Poe’s detective) school of detection—contempt for the police, a rather condescending attitude toward his “Watson,” and a “marvelously keen, cold brain which constantly asserts that ‘two and two make four, not sometimes but all the time,’” “The Thinking Machine Investigates” (December 1958, p. 82).



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

“The Problem of Cell 13” is his most famous case and was selected by five of the twelve panel members as one of the twelve best detective stories. Queen as Champion: The short stories of the Thinking Machine have a fascinating and tragic history: there were fifty one written in four series (plus an introductory chapter, a novel, and a novelette), but of the fifty one short stories, six were lost with Futrelle with the sinking of the Titanic. The first series consisted of ten stories, seven of which were collected in The Thinking Machine, 1907 (QQ#); the second series consisted of thirteen stories collected in The Thinking Machine on the Case, 1908. The third series was comprised of eighteen uncollected stories (plus that introductory chapter), while the last series consisted of ten stories, only four of which were left in London when the Futrelles sailed on the Titanic, so as Queen puts it, “there are forty-eight tales of the Thinking Machine [including the chapter, the novel and the novelette] available to his earthly devotees and six to the denizens of the deep who prize them beyond all pirates’ treasure. Yes, even in Davy Jones’ Locker their price is above rubies” (Introduction, October 1950, p. 105). “The Case of the Mysterious Weapon” was one of the four surviving stories of the fourth series (which was previously published in The Popular Magazine, September 1912). Garron: “The Statement of the Accused” is a strange, convoluted story about madness and murder with a completely unexpected twist at the end. If Futrelle hadn’t perished with the sinking of the Titanic, it would have been interesting to see if he would have brought some of this complexity and eeriness to his later Thinking Machine stories. Queen as Champion: This story of Garron, the detective, was never previously reprinted or collected after its initial magazine publication in 1908. Leblanc, Maurice: Arsene Lupin LUPIn: “The Water Bottle,” Challenge to the Reader, 1938; “Arsene Lupin in Prison,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941; “The Lady with the Hatchet,” March 1943; “Homlock Shears Arrives Too Late,” Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1944; “Edith Swan-neck,” Rogues’ Gallery, 1945; “The Twelve Little Pickaninnies”/“Twelve Little Nigger Boys,” November 1949; “The Red Silk Scarf,” December 1951 nOn-SeRIeS: “A Gentleman,” May 1947 Lupin: Arsene Lupin is probably the greatest rogue in detective-crime literature, the master of disguise, deception, and cocksure exuberance. He appeared in numerous novels and several collections of short stories, including The Exploits of Arsene Lupin, 1907 (QQ#) and The Eight Strokes of the Clock, 1922 (QQ#9). In a few of the stories he also adopted the role of detective. All the stories in Jim Barnett Intervenes, 1928 (from which “The Twelve Little Pickaninnies” comes), feature Lupin in the guise of Barnett of the

Four. The Old Masters Resuscitated

9

Barnett Detective Agency, a brilliant detective who solves every crime presented to him but with criminal consequences for the official Inspector— “Bechoux was quite sure in his own mind that Barnett’s assistance would prove the last straw. Jim Barnett on the case would only mean that, if the mystery was solved, a bundle of securities, including the Twelve Little Pickaninnies of vital importance to their owner, would vanish into thin air” (November 1949, p. 105). In many of the Lupin stories he is full-blown rogue with no pretense of detection, but whenever he acts as detective, you can be certain his detection is successful as much for his own profit as for justice. In one remarkable novel, Lupin in disguise actually serves as Chief of the Surete and in one short story he actually arrests himself. non-Series: “A Gentleman” is a very short and simple story, not much on plot or interest except that Queen speculates that the thief, Prince Metchersky, may be “the great Arsene himself in one of his more obscure and more playful moments, but still up to his old tricks” (Introduction, May 1947, p. 85). This seems unlikely though, for although the Prince is a bit of a rogue, he has little of the panache or bravado of the famous Lupin. Orczy, Baroness: Old Man in the Corner, Lady Molly THe OLD MAn In THe CORneR: “The Edinburgh Mystery,” Challenge to the Reader, 1938; “The Dublin Mystery,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941; “The Mysterious Death in Percy Street,” April 1949 LADY MOLLY: “The Man in the Inverness Cape,” Female of the Species, 1943 The Old Man in the Corner: One of the very first and one of the most celebrated armchair detectives in fiction, the Old Man in the Corner offers his brilliant, logical solutions to murder after murder in these classic tales by Baroness Orczy collected in The Old Man in the Corner, 1909 (QQ#); The Case of Miss Elliot, 1905 (inexplicably the first to be published but the second in the Old Man in the Corner series), and Unravelled Knots, 1925. The irascible old man tying and untying his knots of string as he offers his solutions and belittles the police is the personification of the eccentric “thinking machine” type of detective concerned only with logic and not with justice or morality, as he often sides with the murderer. In “The Mysterious Death in Percy Street,” the reader is shown the inevitable result of this perspective. Lady Molly: As good as the Old Man in the Corner stories are, some of the Lady Molly stories may be even better, as their plots are tight and complex. There is a strong advocacy for female detectives—“we shouldn’t have half so many undetected crimes if some of the so-called mysteries were put to the test of feminine investigation” (“The Man in the Inverness Cape,” Female of the Species, p. 303). In this story Lady Molly solves a complex and deceptive case, not by female intuition, but by careful observation and faultless logic.

0

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Poe, edgar Allan: Auguste Dupin DUPIn: “The Purloined Letter,” February 1950; “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Masterpieces of Mystery: the Supersleuths Revisited, 1979 nOn-SeRIeS: “The Black Cat,” November 1949; “The Cask of Amontillado,” April 1951; “Diddling,” February 1962; “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains,” February 1965; “A Man of the Crowd,” November 1974 Dupin: Although Queen’s avowed intention was to try to reprint less known (in some cases, “lost” or “forgotten”) tales of the masters, in each of its twelve 1950 issues, EQMM reprinted one of the twelve detective-crime short stories chosen by the panel of experts (critics, authors, publishers, editors) as the finest of all time. “The Purloined Letter” was selected by half of the panel members and became the only one of the three famous Dupin stories to appear in EQMM—undoubtedly hidden in its pages in plain sight. Almost thirty years later, one of the other famous cases of Dupin—“Murders in the Rue Morgue,” which according to most scholars was the very first detective short story, was anthologized in Queen’s Masterpieces of Mystery series. Both stories appeared in Poe’s Tales, 1845 (QQ#). non-Series (Queen as Champion): “The Black Cat” and “The Cask of Amontillado” were well-known and much anthologized horror stories; however, true to Queen’s philosophy, the other three Poe non-series tales were never reprinted until appearing in EQMM over 120 years after their initial publication. Queen makes a strong case that “A Man of the Crowd,” originally published several months before the first Dupin story, “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” actually features “an embryonic detective—the seed of C. Auguste Dupin, the world’s first detective—Poe’s own prototype of the private eye” (Queen comments following “A Man of the Crowd,” November 1974, p. 100). Post, Melville Davisson: Uncle Abner, Colonel Braxton, Randolph Mason, Pendleton ABneR “The Doomdorf Mystery,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941; “A Twilight Adventure,” March 1950; “Naboth’s Vineyard,” August 1950; “The God of the Hills,” June 1953; “The Devil’s Track,” November 1953; “The Dark Night,” January 1954; “The Straw Man,” December 1959; “The Instrument of Darkness”/“The Adopted Daughter,” June 1960; “The Three Threads of Justice”/“An Act of God,” March 1962; “Dead Man’s Gloves”/“The Age of Miracles,” January 1963 BRAXTOn: “No Way to Win”/“The Survivor,” Challenge to the Reader, 1938; “The Forgotten Witness,” November 1949; “Of More Value Than Sparrows,” March 1956; “The Great Game”/“The Mute Voices,” August 1956; “No Way to Win”/“The Survivor,” March

Four. The Old Masters Resuscitated



1957; “The Witness in the Metal Box”/“The Metal Box,” August 1958 MASOn: “The Men of the Jimmy,” Rogues’ Gallery, 1945 PenDLeTOn: “The Fortune Teller,” July 1942 nOn-SeRIeS: “The New Administration,” July 1954 Abner: Most critics place Post’s “righteous right hand of God” Uncle Abner among the four greatest fictional detectives of all time—with Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Chesterton’s Father Brown, and Poe’s Auguste Dupin. The Abner stories usually hinge on one crucial clue, sometimes physical but often psychological, that only Abner notices and interprets, but the strongest feature of these tales is the powerful character of Abner and his staunch belief in God’s law over man’s and in the fallibility of man trying to create a false sequence of events to cover his crime—“No man can do it. For to do that, one must know everything that goes before and everything that follows the event which one is attempting to falsify. And this omniscience only the intelligence of God can compass. It is impossible for the human mind to manufacture a false consistency of events except to a very limited extent” (December 1959, p. 85). Queen as Champion: Probably the best known of these stories is “The Doomdorf Mystery,” but in line with Queen’s philosophy of trying to print lesser known stories of the masters, EQMM reprinted several less famous stories, including three of the four “lost” stories—those tales not published in the famous collection Uncle Abner: Master of Mysteries, 1918—QQ#0 (“The Devil’s Track,” “The God of the Hills,” and “The Dark Night”), all of which appeared only in Country Gentleman Magazine in 1927 before showing up in EQMM. “Naboth’s Vineyard” was selected by three of the twelve panel members as one of the best twelve detective-crime stories. Braxton: These stories of the shrewd and unpredictable lawyer, Colonel Braxton, have some similarities to the stories of his more famous peer, Uncle Abner. Both men are powerful and commanding but humble in the face of “divine intelligence” and the futility of man’s effort to rearrange events to suit himself—“At the little points where events touch the great conduct of human affairs, men undertake to substitute their feeble intelligence for the infinite intelligence of the Ruler of Events. They undertake to set that will aside, and to rearrange the moving of events as they wish them to appear. They are fools enough!” (November 1949, p. 141). In all these Colonel Braxton stories, the attempt of the criminal to fabricate a false train of events is foiled by a minor but hardly trivial fact—an incontrovertible and inevitable “silent witness.” Queen as Champion: Although all six of these Colonel Braxton stories are reprints, two of them (“The Forgotten Witness” and “Of More Value Than

2

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Sparrows”) are “forgotten” tales, for they were omitted from the only collection of Braxton stories, The Silent Witness, 1930, and were published only in The American Magazine in the 1920s. Mason: In “The Men of the Jimmy” as well as in the other Mason stories in the first two collections (The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason, 1896—QQ#20, and The Man of Last Resort, 1897) Mason is unscrupulous, finding loopholes in the law to allow forgeries, kidnappings, and even murder to go unpunished, but in the third collection (The Corrector of Destinies, 1908) he repents and finds obscure law to punish crime or liberate the innocent. Pendleton: W.H. Wright (S.S. van Dine) might have thought EQMM reprinted a “lost” Uncle Abner story when it published “The Fortune Teller” in its July 1942 issue, for Wright refers to that story as an Abner tale—“One of the truly outstanding figures in detective fiction is Uncle Abner, whose criminal adventures are recounted in Uncle Abner: Master of Mysteries and in a couple of short stories included in the volume The Sleuth of St. James’ Square [1920]” (Introduction, The Great Detective Stories, 1927)—however, as Queen points out, this is not an Uncle Abner story, but “while Van Dine was incorrect in fact, he was correct in spirit, for the detective bears a great resemblance to the great Uncle Abner” (Introduction, July 1942, p. 76). non-Series: “The New Administration,” much like some of the best Uncle Abner stories, brims with the sense of ultimate justice beyond the realm of man—“there was here, now, the awe and solemnity, the grip of power, that we feel must inevitably attend the majestic presence of that vast, dominating, imperial thing we call the State” (July 1954, p. 100), and, as much as in any of the Abner stories, it ends with a stunning and ultimate finality. Shiel, M.P.: Prince Zaleski, Cummings Monk ZALeSKI: “The S.S.,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941; “The Return of Prince Zaleski,” January 9 MOnK: “Cummings Monk”/“He Wakes an Echo,” February 1946 nOn-SeRIeS: “A Case for Deduction” (written with John Gawsworthy), November 1948 Zaleski: Prince Zaleski is one of the strangest and most remarkable detectives in all of fiction, ensconced alone (but for his man servant Ham) in his castle far from the disappointments and sorrows of life and love, bathed in his esoteric philosophy and saphron fumes—“that lonesome room, gloomy in its lunar bath of soft perfumed light, shrouded in the sullen voluptuousness of plushy, narcotic-breathing draperies, pervaded by the mysterious spirit of its brooding occupant” (“The S.S.,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, Queen, 1946, p. 68). Shiel brings Zaleski three bizarre cases (all appearing in Prince Zaleski, 1895—QQ#9), one especially (“The S.S.”) with world-shattering implications

Four. The Old Masters Resuscitated



and the “most extraordinary motive for mass murder ever conceived” (Introduction, p. 66). Queen as Champion: The story of the publication of the fourth and last Prince Zaleski tale, written fifty years after the publication of the first three (when Shiel was over 80 years old), is almost as strange and remarkable as the Zaleski tales themselves. On Queen’s request, Shiel wrote “The Return of Prince Zaleski” and walked to a mailbox to mail it, but fainted and, on awakening, couldn’t remember if he had mailed it or not. It was never received by EQMM, but two years later Shiel died and five years after that John Gawsworth (the well-known author and literary executor of Shiel’s estate) discovered a typed copy of that fourth story in Shiel’s belongings and mailed it to EQMM. This is one of the very few tales from the Old Masters that debuted in EQMM. This last Zaleski story is not quite as elaborate or mystifying as the earlier three, but still has tinges of the Shiel “redolent romanticism, bizarre bravado of style, and flamboyant felony of conception” (Introduction, January 1955, p. 82). Zaleski’s retreat from the sorry world may bring him “all the cool refreshments held by a midsummer-night’s dream in the dewy deeps of some Perrhoebian grove of cornel and lotus and ruby stars of the asphodel” (“The S.S.” p. 68), but the stories bring us readers no such relief. Monk: Shiel created another, almost unknown, exotic “sleuth” in Cummings King Monk. Of the three Monk short stories, all appearing in Shiel’s Pale Ape, 1911, only “Cummings Monk” is actually a detective-crime tale. Queen, with his preference for the classic, logical, clue-puzzle detective story, is nonetheless moved to frenetic, almost rococo praise of Shiel, Zaleski, and Monk, and not without reason, for this Monk story oozes with madness, human vivisection, imprisonment, and death, and yet, it also boasts a wild, super-logical premise and the keen analytical mind of Monk. It bears a strange affinity to the Nicky Welt tale, “The Nine-Mile Walk” (see) by Harry Kemelman, for Monk, rather like Welt, undergoes a mental exercise in which he first conceives a hideous crime, constructs it in his mind with the necessary motives and opportunities and circumstances, then finds those circumstances in the world, and so discovers, through sheer logic, someone actually committing that “hypothetical” crime.

FIVe

The New Masters Celebrated By 1947, within six years of the first issue of EQMM, the last of the Old Masters had passed away, so the future of the detective-crime genre was now in the hands of the New Masters, those authors who were then establishing themselves as preeminent in the field. Queen came up with a list of twentytwo: Allingham, Ambler, Bailey, Bentley, Berkeley, Blake, Carr, Charteris, Christie, Crofts, Gardner, Hammett, Innes, MacDonald (Philip), Marsh, Sayers, Simenon, Stout, Stribling, Vickers, Wilde, and Woolrich. In 1951, Queen commissioned an international poll to select the “Ten Best Active DetectiveCrime Authors” and another poll (requested by the Portuguese government who was creating an issue of commemorative postage stamps) to determine the “Twelve Best Fictional Detectives of All Time.” The results of these two polls largely coincided with Queen’s list with the additions of Raymond Chandler (detective Philip Marlowe), Earl Biggers (detective Charlie Chan), Mary Roberts Rinehart, and Ellery Queen himself. We will, then, designate these twenty-six authors as the “New Masters”—those authors who were to carry the detective-crime story through the middle decades of the 20th century. Since this new generation were contemporaries of Queen, he could find or solicit new stories, not having to rely so heavily on reprints to attract and energize readers. Especially with the advent of the Annual EQMM DetectiveCrime Short-Story Contest (which debuted in 1945 and continued through 1956 and then for one last year in 1961), many of the most acclaimed authors in the field, and many who would become acclaimed partly through their appearances in EQMM, submitted stories to EQMM. In several cases, Queen actively and successfully requested new stories from these authors, and in a few cases new detectives from these authors were born in the pages of EQMM. EQMM and the Queen anthologies published stories from all twentysix of these New Masters, almost 600 stories in all, about 80 percent of which featured series detectives, and about 25 percent of which were debut stories. 

Five. The New Masters Celebrated



From the beginning of EQMM, Queen’s editorial policy was “to give you an equal balance of new stories and old. The new stories are the finest original tales of crime and detection being written today [many of them by the ‘New Masters’]. The old stories are not the usual type of reprint. We try to bring you not only ratiocinative roast beef but criminous caviar—especially those obscure little classics, those unaccountably forgotten gems which can be found only in rare or unavailable books” (Queen Introduction, April 1950). In the first few years of EQMM, the percentage of reprints from classic authors was considerably higher than 50 percent, but not surprisingly as the years passed, new stories (of novice authors but also of the New Masters) approached two-thirds of the total. In 1954 Queen conducted a reader survey to determine whether readers now wanted all new stories, but readers overwhelmingly (by 8 to 1) affirmed the original policy, so Queen continued to search for “out-of-the-way” reprints to complement the new tales of masters and novices alike. In several of these cases (e.g., Berkeley, Christie, Crofts, Hammett), only after appearing in EQMM and/or in a Queen anthology was the story anthologized by others and/or collected in an author collection. Note: The stories in bold debuted in EQMM; the others were reprints. Allingham, Margery: Albert Campion, Charley Luke CAMPIOn: “The Border-Line Case,” Challenge to the Reader, 1938, 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941; “The Question Mark,” Fall 1941; “The Definite Article,” November 1942; “Safe as Houses,” March 1944; “A Matter of Form,” January 1945; “The Meaning of the Act,” May 1945; “The Hat Trick,” January 1946; “The Crimson Letters,” October 1946; “Mr. Campion’s Lucky Day,” April 1947; “The Case of the Frenchman’s Gloves,” August 1947; “The Name on the Wrapper,” November 1947; “The Danger Point,” May 1948; “The Case Is Altered,” January 1949; “One Morning They’ll Hang Him,” August 90; “On Christmas Day in the Morning,” January 1953; “The Unseen Door,” April 1955; “The Neatest Trick of the Month,” March 1959; “Family Affair,” October 90; “Murder Under the Mistletoe,” January 1963; “The Chocolate Dog,” August 1967 LUKe (with Campion in a minor supporting role): “Tall Story,” April 9; “Mum Knows Best,” June 1954; “The Man who Utterly Vanished,” December 9; “The Curious Affair on nut Row,” February 9 nOn-SeRIeS: “They Never Get Caught,” June 1946; “Evidence in Camera,” October 1949; “The Same to Us,” January 1950; “The Lieabout,” April 1950; “Catching at Straws,” January 9; “Money to Burn,” April 1957; “The Doctor and the Silver Plate”/“The Great



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine London Jewel Robbery,” September 1957; “The Perfect Butler,” May 1959; “Bubble Bath #3”/“Bluebeard’s Bathtub,” March 1967; “The Lying-in-State Affair,” July 1969

Campion: Although the Campion stories often provide an interesting problem for Campion to sleuth, the puzzle and detection are not the main appeals—rather it is the smooth and witty writing, the memorable characters, and the social commentary. Campion, the aristocratic “dandy”—“the ’tec toff, that sleuth-hound swell, who plays the somewhat peculiar role of Universal Uncle and amateur of crime” (Introduction, May 1948, p. 128), never met a young person, especially a young woman, who needed help without offering his services. It is rather ironic that Queen says of Allingham, “one of our modern shining lights—a detective story writer who can successfully mix crime and whimsy [bold mine], who can transform serious detection into a light-hearted business without resorting to wisecracks” (Introduction, May 1945, p. 39), for the somewhat “foppish” Campion (especially in the early stories) does have some resemblance to Sayers’ Peter wimsey. In the later stories where Campion has matured into a much more “human” character, he has more in common with Bailey’s Reggie Fortune—those stories have “the same inordinate sympathy and heart-warming quality that the creator of Reggie Fortune instills into certain Fortunesque cases” (Introduction, October 1946, p. 30). Queen as Champion: Albert Campion was already a well-established detective by 1950 with nineteen short stories (most published in The Strand Magazine and many collected in Mr. Campion and Others, 1939—QQ#92) and thirteen novels in print. EQMM had already reprinted thirteen Campion stories, which saw their American debut in EQMM, but Queen was eager to add a new Campion story to the accomplishments of EQMM—“Ever since EQMM started its annual contests—way back in 1945—we have been hoping Mrs. Allingham would write a new Mr. Campion story just for us. Occasionally we would drop a note to Margery expressing our hope” (Introduction, August 1950, p. 3). Finally the two met for lunch during an Allingham visit to America, and “she promised to do just that, and in front of witnesses! And Mrs. Allingham was as good as her word—for which we will be eternally grateful” (p. 3). “One Morning They’ll Hang Him” won a Second Prize in the 5th Annual EQMM Contest, and four more new Campion stories (three featuring Inspector Luke with Campion in a minor role) appeared, along with several reprints, in EQMM over the next 10 years. Luke: In these four stories, Campion is present but only with an occasional nod or comment as Divisional Detective Chief Inspector Charlie Luke narrates the criminous tale, often to the admiration of a beautiful woman audience.

Five. The New Masters Celebrated



non-Series: The several non-detective stories are all as much about society and social customs as they are about crime. Ambler, eric: Dr. Jan Czissar CZISSAR: “The Case of the Emerald Sky,” March 1945; “The Case of the Pinchbeck Locket,” November 1945; “A Bird in the Tree,” May 1947; “The Case of the Gentleman Poet,” September 1947; “The Case of the Overheated Flat,” April 1948; “The Case of the Landlady’s Brother,” February 1949 Czissar: The delightfully meddlesome “Dr. Jan Czissar, late Prague Police. At your service!” (March 1945, p. 45) is a pain-in-the-neck busybody to the inspectors at Scotland Yard, but the pain results in case after case with a clever solution to a puzzling crime. His observations are acute, his logic is impeccable, and his solutions are inarguable much to the chagrin of the beleaguered investigators at the Yard. Assistant Commissioner Mercer’s hope that “Dr. Czissar would one day prove that he was no more infallible than other men had been deferred too often for him to derive any comfort from it” (September 1947, p. 83), and so, time after time, Mercer has to admit being bested by the insufferable Czech. The six Dr. Czissar stories were all reprinted from The Sketch in July and August of 1940. Queen as Champion: Ambler was best known for his secret service novels, notably A Coffin for Dimitrius. These six obscure short stories—“It is not generally known that he wrote a series of pure detective stories” (Introduction, March 1945, p. 38)—were all introduced to American readers in EQMM. Bailey, H.C.: Reggie Fortune, Simon Bowley, Victoria Pumphrey FORTUne: “The Long Dinner,” April 1953; “Thistle Down,” May 1943; “The Football Photograph,” Sporting Blood, 1944; “The Young God,” Sporting Blood, 1944; “The Yellow Slugs,” October 1950; “The Affair of the Zodiacs”/“Zodiacs,” April 1952; “The Superfluous Clue”/“The Young Doctor,” March 1954 BOwLeY: “Mr. Bowley’s Sunday Evening,” Rogues’ Gallery, 1945 PUMPHReY: “A Matter of Speculation,” February 1961 Fortune: Reggie Fortune was one of the most popular detectives of the Golden Age (see Blackwell’s H.C. Bailey’s Reggie Fortune and the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, 2017), appearing in ten novels, twelve collections of short stories, and a grand total of eighty-five short stories, only five of which were reprinted in EQMM and two of which were published in Queen anthologies. The “Long Dinner” and “The Yellow Slugs” (both originally collected in Mr. Fortune Objects, 1935) are considered by most critics to be among the finest detective short stories ever written. The latter was selected by three of the twelve panel members as one of the twelve best detective-crime short stories



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

(praised by James Sandoe, one of the panel, for “the delicacy of its nasty insinuation, and for its genuine pathos and for Reggie’s rage” (quoted in Introduction, October 1950, p. 34). The first collection of Fortune stories was Call Mr. Fortune, 1920 (QQ#), although most of the best Fortune tales are in later collections. Queen as Champion: While Queen wasn’t able to convince Bailey to write a new Fortune story for EQMM, he was pleased to be able to locate and publish the one Fortune story that never appeared in any of the Bailey collections—“Thistle Down.” While it isn’t one of the better Fortune stories, it was still a coup to publish this one “outlier,” previously appearing only in the obscure Queen’s Book of the Red Cross [not Ellery Queen], 1939—“A Mr. Fortune story never before published in the U.S. Hop to it, fans!” (Introduction, May 1943, p. 5). Bowley: Seemingly an amalgam of Bailey’s famous Reggie Fortune and his pious but hypocritical not-as-popular Joshua Clunk, Mr. Bowley is “a word-montage of Reggie-and-Joshua, a double exposure of Fortune-andClunk … the strangest blend of pure goodness and pure evil in the chronicles of crime” (Introduction, Rogues’ Gallery, p. 63). Pumphrey (Queen as Champion): Never before published in any of Bailey’s books or in any form in the United States, this story about questions of identity was regarded by Queen to be a “genuine detective-story discovery” (Introduction, February 1961). It introduced Miss Victoria Pumphrey as she entered the field of private investigation—“relations discovered or destroyed; domestic quarrels settled; mysteries solved—family skeletons a specialty” (p. 27). Bentley, e.C.: Philip Trent TRenT: “The Ministering Angel,” September 1943; “The Genuine Tabard,” November 1950; “The Sweet Shot,” July 1952 nOn-SeRIeS: “Greedy Night,” January 1943; “The Feeble Folk,” March 1953 Trent: Author of the celebrated novel, Trent’s Last Case, 1913, regarded by many critics to be one of the cornerstone works of the detective genre, Bentley also wrote thirteen Trent short stories, twelve of which were collected in Trent Intervenes, 1938 (QQ#9). Trent was intended to be a bit of a spoof on the infallible detectives of the time, for he frequently reaches eminently logical but false conclusions (although usually his extensive knowledge of the arts and academics allows him to solve the puzzle in the end). Trent (and Berkeley) are often erudite with a droll humor that reveals something sinister beneath appearances. “The Genuine Tabard” was selected by three of the twelve panel members as one of the twelve best detective-crime short stories.

Five. The New Masters Celebrated

9

Queen as Champion: Dannay was excited to discover “The Ministering Angel,” “the only Philip Trent story your Editors know of that cannot be found in any of E.C. Bentley’s published books. It took a long time to track down … but the final ‘Eureka’ was worth it” (Introduction, To the Queen’s Taste, 1946, p. 291). This story (as was true also of the other Trent stories reprinted in EQMM) was originally published in the Strand Magazine in the late 1930s, but this one had never been reprinted since. As with many of Queen’s “discoveries,” it was reprinted a few times after Queen published it, appearing in a few anthologies and in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. non-Series: “Greedy Night” is a rather slapstick parody of Sayers’ Lord Wimsey stories complete with all manner of affectations and ending with death by ingesting Strong Poison. “The Feeble Folk” won a 3rd Prize in the 7th Annual EQMM Contest. Berkeley, Anthony: Roger Sheringham SHeRInGHAM: “Mr. Bearstowe Says,” July 1945; “The Wrong Jar,” March 1947; “The Avenging Chance,” April 1950 nOn-SeRIeS (as Berkeley): “Holmes and the Dasher,” Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1944; “Mr. Simpson Goes to the Dogs,” February 1946; “The Policeman Only Taps Once,” June 1951 nOn-SeRIeS (as Iles): “Dark Journey,” May 1943; “Outside the Law,” June 1949; “The Coward,” January 1953 Sheringham: Six of the twelve panel members selected “The Avenging Chance” as one of the twelve best detective-crime short stories ever written—a “perfect” story with no word, event, clue, or comment out of place. Queen as Champion: Ever since reading “The Avenging Chance” Queen had “a consuming desire to publish an ‘unknown’ short story about Roger Sheringham” (Introduction, July 1945, p. 57). But despite years of searching, Queen couldn’t find one, until one day completely unexpectedly, EQMM received a manuscript in the mail from Berkeley—“the manuscript of a brandnew Roger Sheringham short story [‘Mr. Bearstowe Says’],” p. 57. Apparently Berkeley didn’t tell Queen that this story had been previously published (in The Saturday Book #3, 1943), for Queen goes on to say that he was “urging Mr. Berkeley to make ‘Mr. Bearstowe Says’ the first of a series of Roger Sheringham shorts to be written especially for EQMM” (p. 57). Although Queen was misled and “Mr. Bearstowe Says” wasn’t written especially for EQMM (nor did any other especially-for-EQMM Sheringham stories follow), “Mr. Bearstowe Says” was a bit of a “lost” treasure—a wonderful, forgotten story with twists and turns, false leads, subtle clues, and inspired detection. non-Series as Berkeley: In considerable contrast to the sober cluepuzzle Roger Sheringham stories are Berkeley’s ironic and humorous nondetective crime stories—“the typically British species in which the meek

0

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

inherit, not the earth, but all the troubles the earth is heir to” (Introduction, February 1946, p. 116). In “Mr. Simpson Goes to the Dogs,” the upstanding and well-meaning Mr. Simpson certainly demonstrates this species as his good intentions result in nothing but complications, embarrassment, and distress. In his own book of satires, Jugged Journalism, Berkeley (under his real name A.B. Cox) asks how another famous author would write a Sherlock Holmes story. In “Holmes and the Dasher” Berkeley illustrates his answer to his own question—don’t try to copy another author’s style but stay true to your own, for in this “bi-blasphemous, semi-sacrilegious parody” (quoted in Introduction, Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes, p. 66), Berkeley’s jauntily British, somewhat sarcastic style comes to the fore: “What-ho, Watson, old fruit. What does that mass of alluvial deposit you call a brain make of this, what, what?” (p. 66). non-Series as Iles: In even more contrast is the intense, dark, and suspenseful style of Berkeley as Iles, the style of his famous novel, Before the Fact. “Dark Journey” is indeed dark—an “internally terrifying portrait of a murderer—a superb psychological study of crime and punishment” (Introduction, May 1943, p. 33). Queen as Champion: None of these Iles stories had been reprinted since their original publication, although that was only a few years before their appearance in EQMM. Biggers, earl Derr nOn-SeRIeS: “The Ebony Stick,” November 1952; “The Apron of Genius,” August 1953; “The Dollar Chasers,” February 1970 non-Series: Biggers’ Charlie Chan was one of the few fictional detectives to be featured in books, magazines, films, radio, and television. However, despite Queen’s urging, Biggers never wrote a Chan short story (the magazine appearances were serialized novels): “We remember corresponding with Mr. Biggers, back in the old ‘Mystery League’ days, asking him—no, pleading with him—to write at least one Charlie Chan short story for posterity. But Mr. Biggers replied that if he could hit on a satisfactory plot idea for a Charlie Chan short, he would not squander it on 5000 or 10,000 or even 20,000 words; he would expand the idea into a 60,000-to-70,000 word novel” (Introduction, February 1970, pp. 17–18). Queen as Champion: Despite the absence of a Chan short story, Queen did manage to locate two “relatively unknown” non–Chan shorts (“The Apron of Genius” and “The Ebony Stick”) and one non–Chan short novel (The Dollar Chasers) that had long been out of print, originally appearing, respectively, in Hampton’s Magazine, Collier’s, and The Saturday Evening Post in 1909, 1916, and 1924. Queen called these discoveries “a thrill almost beyond compare” (Introduction, August 1953, p. 65).

Five. The New Masters Celebrated



Blake, nicholas: Nigel Strangeways STRAnGewAYS: “The Assassins’ Club,” March 1945; “Conscience Money,” January 1962; “Long Shot,” February 1964 nOn-SeRIeS: “A Study in White,” May 1949 Strangeways: The erudite and literary Nigel Strangeways appears in almost twenty novels (including the acclaimed The Beast Must Die, 1938) but only three short stories, all reprinted in EQMM. “Conscience Money” and “Long Shot” were published first in Sunday Dispatch, 1938, and The Strand, June 1944, respectively, while “The Assassins’ Club” appeared first in an anthology—Detective Medley, 1939. All the Strangeways stories (novels and short stories) feature literary style (Blake was a pseudonym for the renowned and celebrated poet Cecil Day Lewis) and considerable erudition, except “The Assassins’ Club” which spends its literary capital satirizing authors, especially detective story authors (including Blake himself). Queen as Champion: The appearance of “The Assassins’ Club” in EQMM was not only its first appearance in America, but it was the first American appearance of any Strangeways short story. non-Series: “A Study in White,” which won a 3rd Prize in the 4th Annual EQMM Contest, was the kind of detective story Queen loved—an oldfashioned, classic clue- puzzle complete with a “challenge-to-the-reader” moment before the solution, but the writing is typically erudite and satiric Blake. Carr, John Dickson/Carter Dickson: Gideon Fell, Colonel March, Henry Merrivale, Colonel Marquis FeLL: “The Wrong Problem,” July 1942; “The Proverbial Murder,” January 9; “The Locked Room,” November 1943; “The Incautious Burglar”/“Guest in the House,” November 1956; “Death by Invisible Hands”/“King Arthur’s Chair,” April 1958 MARCH: “William Wilson’s Racket,” November 1944; “The Empty Flat,” May 1945; “The Footprint in the Sky,” November 1958; “The Silver Curtain,” April 1960; “Right Before Your Eyes”/“Hot Money,” April 1966; “The Lion’s Paw”/“Error at Daybreak,” July 1967; “The Man Who Saw the Invisible”/“The New Invisible Man,” December 1967; “The Crime in Nobody’s Room,” September 1970; “Death in the Dressing Room,” August 1972 MeRRIVALe: “The House in Goblin woods,” november 9; “The Man Who Explained Miracles”/“All in a Maze,” March 1956 MARQUIS: “The Third Bullet,” January 1948 nOn-SeRIeS: “Strictly Diplomatic,” January 1946; “The Clue of the Red Wig,” December 1948; “The Gentleman from Paris,” April 90; “The Other Hangman,” January 1965; “The One Real Horror”/

2

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine “New Murders for Old,” August 1966; “To Wake the Dead”/“Blind Man’s Hood,” December 1966

Fell: Gideon Fell, probably the best known and most popular of Carr’s classic series detectives, was primarily a novel detective (twenty-three novels from 1933 to 1967), but he did also appear in four radio plays and five short stories, all of which were published in EQMM. “The Proverbial Murder” was the only Fell story to debut in EQMM (although there is some indication that it may have been published first in an English magazine, but no one has been able to verify this). The collections Dr. Fell, Detective, 1947, and The Third Bullet, 1954, contained several of the Fell stories, but it wasn’t until Dr. Fell and Foul Play, 1991, that all the Fell short stories and radio plays were published together. All five of the Fell short stories are the “typical Carr story— the impossible crime—baffling, ingenious, and in the end, completely possible” (Introduction, November 1943, p. 5). Queen as Champion: Although Queen, in his Introduction to the reprint of “The Wrong Problem” (July 1942, p. 100), described it as the only short story of Dr. Fell, Carr soon informed him that there were at that time actually two others—“The Locked Room” (published in The Strand, July 1940) and “The Incautious Burglar” (published in The Strand, October 1940). Queen was delighted to acknowledge his mistake and reprint these others along with the brand new story—“The Proverbial Murder.” Carr wrote one more Fell story, “King Arthur’s Chair,” published initially in the magazine Lilliput, August 1957, then reprinted in EQMM as “Death by Invisible Hands.” March: Queen believed that The Department of Queer Complaints, 1940 (QQ#9) with seven short stories of Colonel March, would “pass every test and remain one of the important books of modern detective short stories” (Introduction, November 1944, p. 5). All the March stories involve “locked room” or other “impossible” crimes often with a touch of the appearance of the supernatural: “All the essential ingredients—the Dicksonesque eeriness of atmosphere tinged with terror, the Carresque romance, the completely impossible crime, the completely possible solution—are yours for the reading” (Introduction, May 1945, p. 5). March, of course, brings sanity and order and reason back to the chaos; every “supernatural” crime has a natural, though often quite far-fetched, solution. Queen as Champion: All seven of the collected March stories were reprinted in EQMM after first appearing in The Strand from 1937 to 1940 and in The Department of Queer Complaints in 1940, and so too were two March stories not included in that collection and never before published in the U.S.—“William Wilson’s Racket” and “The Empty Flat.” Queen called the unearthing of “William Wilson’s Racket” a discovery of “epic importance to the American fan” (Introduction, November 1944, p. 5).

Five. The New Masters Celebrated



Merrivale (Queen as Champion): The twenty-two Merrivale novels and two short stories are good (in some cases, great) examples of Carr’s forte. After seventeen of the Merrivale novels had appeared in print, Queen asked Carr to write a Merrivale short story and submit it to the 2nd Annual EQMM Contest. The result was one of Carr’s (and Merrivale’s) greatest triumphs (which won a 2nd Prize)—a brilliantly clever “locked room” story with a touch of Carr’s love of supernatural flavor that Queen called “one of the most distinguished firsts it has been your Editor’s privilege to introduce to American readers” (Introduction, November 1947, p. 4). “The House in Goblin Woods” is tightly constructed, atmospheric, and ingenious, so much so that Queen used it “as a study of technique, as a lesson in craftsmanship” (p. 20), by spending two pages after the story carefully analyzing it paragraph by paragraph, clue by clue, deception by deception. After Carr had written this first Merrivale short story especially for EQMM in 1947, he wrote one other Merrivale tale (a long short story or novelette), which was first published in serial form in The Housewife from January–March 1956, then was reprinted in EQMM shortly after. This story isn’t as “perfect” as the first new one but is still quite interesting, for it has two locked rooms in the same story and has a charming love story (not all Carr’s attempts at writing romance were charming). “The Man Who Explained Miracles” was Queen’s title; Carr originally called it “Ministry of Miracles,” then settled on “All in a Maze”—the title under which it eventually was included in the Carr collection The Men Who Explained Miracles, 1963, then in Merrivale, March, and Murder, 1991. Marquis: “The Third Bullet” is the only story Marquis appears in, but it is quite an appearance as this long short story is among the best of the many Carr “impossible crime” stories—too many guns, too many bullets, and many too many murderers! non-Series: “The Gentleman from Paris” won 1st Prize in the 5th Annual EQMM Contest. Queen as Champion: Before being published in EQMM, “Strictly Diplomatic” had “never appeared in America in any form whatsoever.” Chandler, Raymond: Philip Marlowe, Carmady MARLOwe: “Philip Marlowe’s Last Case”/“Marlowe Takes on the Syndicate,” January 1962 CARMADY: “The Curtain,” September 1965 Marlowe: Philip Marlowe is one of the best known of hard-boiled detectives, primarily from the six novels The Big Sleep, 1939; Farewell, My Lovely, 1940; The High Window, 1942; The Lady in the Lake, 1943; The Little Sister, 1949; and the Long Goodbye, 1953. It is not as well known that Marlowe also appeared in four short stories, although he was the original detective in only



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

one of them—“Philip Marlowe’s Last Case.” In the original versions of the other three stories, there was a different detective: Carmady in “Finger Man” and “Goldfish,” and Dalmas in “Red Wind,” both of whom became Marlowe when the stories were collected in The Simple Art of Murder. “Philip Marlowe’s Last Case” was Queen’s revised title for Chandler’s “Marlowe Takes on the Syndicate.” Although Queen often changed titles for apparently arbitrary reasons, he provides a persuasive rationale for this alteration—“this was not only the last story Raymond Chandler wrote about Philip Marlowe, it was also the last story Raymond Chandler wrote before his death” (Introduction, January 1962, p. 30). Carmady: “The Curtain” was first published in Black Mask in September 1936, the fifth of six Carmady short stories (or novelettes) to appear in that magazine in the 1930s. Carmady was Chandler’s forerunner to Philip Marlowe—the “tough, durable, American rugged individualist, the roughdiamond detective of destiny” (Introduction, September 1965, p. 102). “The Curtain” and “Killer in the Rain” were expanded (in Chandler’s terminology, “cannibalized”) to create his famous novel The Big Sleep, again with Marlowe replacing Carmady. As with all Chandler’s “hard-boiled” detective fiction—Carmady, Dalmas, Mallory, or Marlowe—there is plenty of boozin’, shootin’, and fightin’, but also a certain morality and dignity in the service of justice. Charteris, Leslie: Simon Templar (the Saint) TeMPLAR: “Paris Adventure,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941; “The Mugs’ Game,” Sporting Blood, 1944; “The Blind Spot,” Rogues’ Gallery, 1945; “Green Goods Man,” August 1946; “The Quarterdeck Club,” August 9; “Salt on His Tail,” november 9; “The Arrow of God,” September 99; “The Saint Takes on a Dare”/“The Five Thousand Pound Kiss,” September 1964 Templar: Leslie Charteris wrote scores and scores of Saint novels, novelettes, and short stories, most of the non-novels appearing in Empire News and The American Magazine in the 1930s and in the Saint Magazine in the 1950s and 1960s. His collection The Brighter Buccaneer, 1933, was designated as QQ#. Of course in most of these stories the Saint was strictly or mostly a rogue; however, in the three stories that debuted in EQMM in the 1940s, the Saint, though still part rogue, also played detective with all the skill and cleverness and trickery that he used when “purely” rogue. In the reprinted story, “The Green Goods Man,” Templar is certainly more rogue than sleuth, but he has to detect the fraud and its method before he can turn it his way and outcon the con, all of which he does brilliantly and seamlessly. The Saint’s “fierce and fantastic adventures merely reflect Leslie Charteris’ own life, salted with humor, yeasted on imagination, and sugar-coated

Five. The New Masters Celebrated



with a self-confidence that few writers in history have matched” (Introduction, August 1947, p. 16). Queen as Champion: Three of the best Saint stories—“The Arrow of God” (which won a “Special Award” in the 4th Annual EQMM Contest), “The Quarterdeck Club” (which won a 2nd Prize in the 2nd Annual contest) and “Salt on His Tail”—made their debut in EQMM. All of them, especially the witty and satirical “The Arrow of God” with its intriguing puzzle and ingenious solution, show clearly that the Saint could be a pure detective completely free of rogue motives or actions when he chose to be, and show just as clearly that Charteris could write a classic clue-puzzle detective story with the best of them. Queen was fortunate to be able to debut these three Saint stories, for Charteris started his own magazine—The Saint Detective Magazine—in 1953 in the U.S. and in 1954 in England, which then debuted all Charteris’ new work. Christie, Agatha: Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Parker Pyne, Tommie and Tuppence Beresford, Harley Quin, Sir Edward Palliser POIROT: “The Third Floor Flat,” July 1942; “The Case of the Kidnapped Pekinese”/“The Nemean Lion,” September 1944; “The Case of the Drug Peddlar”/“The Horses of Diomedes,” January 1945; “The Case of the Vulture Women”/“The Stymphalean Birds,” September 1945; “The Case of the Missing Schoolgirl”/“The Disappearance of Winnie King,” January 1946; “The Case of the Gossipers”/“Invisible Enemy,” February 1946; “The Case of the Family Taint”/“Midnight Madness,” April 1946; “Four and Twenty Blackbirds,” June 1946; “The Underdog,” May/June 1951; “How Does Your Garden Grow,” November 1954; “The Girl in Electric Blue”/“The Plymouth Express,” March 1955; “Beware the King of Clubs”/“The King of Clubs,” May 1955; “Shadow in the Night”/“The Submarine Plans,” August 1955; “The Six China Figures”/“The Affair at the Victory Ball,” October 1955; “Find the Cook”/“The Adventure of the Clapham Cook,” February 1956; “The Double Clue,” July 1956; “Before It Is Too Late”/“Triangle at Rhodes,” December 1956; “Investigation by Telegram”/“The Mystery of the Hunter’s Lodge,” July 1958; “Hercule Poirot, Armchair Detective”/“The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim,” November 1958; “The Kidnapped Prime Minister,” June 1960; “The Chinese Puzzle Box”/“The Veiled Lady,” March 1961; “Hercule Poirot in Hell”/“The Capture of Cerberus,” June 1961; “Sporting Challenge”/“The Case of the Missing Will,” December 1961; “The Million Dollar Bond Robbery,” August 1962; “The Time Hercule Poirot Failed”/“The Chocolate Box,” November 1962; “The Regent’s Court



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Murder”/“The Case of the Italian Nobleman,” July 1963; “The Theft of the Opalsen Pearls”/“The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan,” November 1963; “Poirot Puts a Finger in the Pie”/“The Adventure of the Western Star,” January 1964; “The Quickness of the Hand”/“Problem at Sea,” March 1964; “Good Night for a Murder”/“Murder in the Mews,” June 1964; “Hercule Poirot, Insurance Investigator”/“The Tragedy of Marsden Manor,” September 1964; “The Three Strange Points”/“The Dream,” December 1964; “Poirot Makes an Investment”/“The Lost Mine,” March 1965; “Poirot Indulges a Whim”/“The Adventure of the Cheap Flat,” November 1965; “Hercule Poirot and the Broken Mirror”/“Dead Man’s Mirror,” February 1966; “Hercule Poirot and the Sixth Chair”/“Yellow Iris,” December 1966; “At the Stroke of Twelve”/“The Adventure of Johnnie Waverley,” July 1967; “The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb,” December 1967; “The Theft of the Royal Ruby,” June 1968; “The Mystery of the Bagdad Chest,” August 1969; “Double Sin,” May 1971; “The Incredible Theft,” March 1972; “The Importance of a Leg of Mutton,” May 1972; “A Chess Problem,” August 1972; “The Cornish Mystery,” March 1973; “Wasp’s Nest,” March 1974 MARPLe: “Strange Jest,” September 1946; “Greenshaw’s Folly,” March 1957; “The Servant Problem”/“The Case of the Perfect Maid,” July 1957; “Village Tragedy”/“Death by Drowning,” December 1957; “Some Day They Will Get Me”/“The Four Suspects,” March 1958; “The Affair at the Bungalow,” November 1959; “Miss Marple and the Wicked World”/“The Bloodstained Pavement,” November 1960; “Never Two Without Three”/“A Christmas Tragedy,” January 1961; “Foxglove in the Sage”/“The Herb of Death,” March 1962; “The Man on the Chancel Steps”/“Sanctuary,” March 1963; “The Supernatural Murder”/“The Idol House of Astarte,” September 1965; “Motive vs. Opportunity,” March 1966; “Miss Marple and the Golden Galleon”/“Ingots of Gold,” March 1967; “Ask and You Shall Receive”/“The Thumb Mark of St. Peter,” June 1967; “The Case of the Caretaker,” March 1969; “Miss Marple Tells a Story,” November 1969; “The Tuesday Night Club,” June 1970; “Village Murder”/ “Tape Measure Murder,” January 1973 PYne: “The Cat and the Chestnut”/“The Case of the Distressed Lady,” October 1957; “Once a Thief ”/“The Pearl of Price,” November 1957; “Express to Stamboul”/“Have You Got Everything You Want,” June 1965; “The Gate of Death”/“The Gate of Baghdad,” June 1966; “The Dream House of Shiraz”/“The House of Shiraz,” September 1966; “The Oracle at Delphi,” March 1968; “Death on the Nile,” May 1969; “The Regatta Mystery,” July 1971

Five. The New Masters Celebrated



BeReSFORD: “The Disappearance of Mrs. Leigh Gordon,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941; “The Sunnydale Mystery,” Winter 1942; “Seek and Ye Shall Find”/“The Clergyman’s Daughter,” January 1960; “Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives”/“The Affair of the Pink Pearl,” April 1960; “The Man in the Mist,” September 1961; “The Crackler,” July 1968; “The House of Lurking Death,” December 1969; “The Ambassador’s Boots,” September 1970; “The Unbreakable Alibi,” January 1971; “Finessing the King,” March 1971; “The Case of the Missing Lady,” September 1973 QUIn: “The Love Detectives”/“At the Crossroads,” December 1946; “The Disappearance of Captain Harwell”/“At the Bells and Motley,” January 1954; “The Man in the Empty Chair”/“The Dead Harlequin,” January 1955; “The Sign in the Sky,” January 1959; “Jealousy Is the Devil”/“The Shadow on the Glass,” May 1959 PALLISeR: “Sing a Song of Sixpence,” February 1947 nOn-SeRIeS: “Accident,” March 1943; “The Witness for the Prosecution,” January 1944; “The Mystery of the Blue Jar,” May 1944; “The Mystery of the Spanish Shawl”/“Mr. Eastwood’s Adventure,” April 1947; “The Red Signal,” June 1947; “Where There’s a Will”/“Wireless,” August 1947; “The Fourth Man,” October 1947; “S.O.S.,” December 1947; “Philomel Cottage,” April 1951; “The Dressmaker’s Doll,” June 1959; “In a Glass Darkly,” March 1970; “The Ambassador’s Boots,” September 1970; “The Last Séance,” November 1971 Poirot: As evidenced by the very large number of Poirot stories reprinted (forty-six of the fifty-one Poirot stories written), Queen agreed with the public in their assessment of Agatha Christie and her Belgian sleuth with the amazing little gray cells. The first twenty-five Poirot stories were originally published in The Sketch in 1923 and 1924; the last twenty-six appeared first in a variety of magazines and periodicals, many in The Strand Magazine and This Week. Along with the short stories, Poirot also appeared in thirty-three novels and one play. The Poirot short stories were gathered in numerous collections, the first being Poirot Investigates, 1924 (QQ#), but probably the best known and most ingenious was The Labors of Hercules, 1947, in which Poirot echoes the twelve labors of Hercules for his swan song (or one of his swan songs) before retirement. Finally, all the Poirot stories appeared in Hercule Poirot: the Complete Short Stories, 1999. Although in general the Poirot novels are better than the short stories, some of the latter display Poirot’s genius for observation, psychological understanding, and humorous self-aggrandizement. The short story sometimes doesn’t allow time for Christie’s famous twists and turns and surprise endings



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

to shine in their full glory, but some of the short tales—e.g., “The Stymphalean Birds,” “Triangle at Rhodes,” “The Dream,” “The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge,”— show Christie and Poirot at the peak of their powers and ingenuity. Perhaps because Christie usually needed more than just the short-story length to fully develop her tales, Queen “decided to break our editorial rule against serials” (Introduction, May 1951, p. 96), to bring readers the longer “The Under Dog” (May and June 1951). Christie couldn’t have been happy with many of the changes Queen made to her titles (e.g., replacing mythological and literary titles with mundane ones), but she doesn’t seem to have complained (at least not publically). Queen as Champion: Despite the popularity and extensive publication history of many of the Poirot short stories, Queen was pleased to be able to offer several of the stories (including five of the tales from The Labors of Hercules) their first appearance in the United States, helping to further spread Poirot’s and Christie’s fame and popularity. Marple: Although Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot is certainly her most famous detective, Miss Marple is not far behind. The premise of the innocent and naive-appearing, elderly spinster who understands the evil in the world through her “commonplace” experience in her small village of St. Mary Mead is a universally appealing idea—the heroic hiding beneath the inauspicious as in Superman and Clark Kent, the Swan and the Ugly Duckling, King Arthur and the young Mort. So many of the Marple stories are typical Christie as they “appear so simple and so straightforward, but—typically—you will find the simplicity deceptive (and how Agatha Christie can be deceptive!), and the straightforwardness decidedly devious” (Introduction, January 1973, p. 83). But mixed in with the “typical” is the strange and supernatural, at least in appearance, in such stories as “The Idol House of Astarte” with its haunting spirit of the Goddess of death. Miss Marple appeared in twelve novels and twenty short stories, most of the stories collected in The Thirteen Problems, 1932; The Regatta Mystery, 1939; Three Blind Mice, 1950; and Double Sin, 1961. All twenty were eventually collected in Miss Marple: the Complete Short Stories, 1985. Certainly a testimony to the appeal of Christie and the draw of EQMM is the fact that eighteen of the twenty Miss Marple stories were reprinted in EQMM. The best-selling detective story author of all time may not have needed much help from EQMM, but her appearances there probably helped her popularity and reputation in America (and certainly helped EQMM’s sales). Pyne: All of these Parker Pyne stories first appeared in Cosmopolitan or Nash’s Pall Mall Magazine in the 1930s except for “The Regatta Mystery,” which made its debut in the mixed collection of Christie tales, The Regatta Mystery, 1939. Pyne is an unusual sleuth in that solving crimes is only a

Five. The New Masters Celebrated

9

byproduct of his main goal—to restore a person to happiness. His advertisement in the Personal Column (“Are you happy? If not, consult Mr. Parker Pyne” [September 1966, p. 28]) draws an unusual and varied clientele of the unhappy, not all of them completely on the up and up. Many of the Pyne stories feature the surprise ending, the “least likely suspect,” or the twist-onthe-twist that Christie is so known for. Beresford: The twenty-two Tommy and Tuppence Beresford short stories, eleven of which were reprinted in EQMM, are entertaining “take-offs” on famous fictional detectives of the day, including such luminaries as Sherlock Holmes, The Old Man in the Corner, Dr. Thorndyke, Inspector Hanaud, Reggie Fortune, Max Carrados, Father Brown, Roger Sheringham, and Christie’s own Hercule Poirot. These tales are “not quite parodies, and not exactly pastiches—sort of in-between, leaning more to the broad-burlesque side” (Introduction, July 1968, p. 43). Of the ten stories published in EQMM, all but one appeared initially in various issues of The Sketch in 1923 and 1924 (“The Unbreakable Alibi” was first published in Holly Leaves, December 1928). All of the eleven, plus four more, were collected in Partners in Crime, 1929. Quin: In thinking of Agatha Christie, few readers would think first, or even at all, of the enigmatic Mr. Harley Quin, but in typical iconoclast fashion, Christie herself called Mr. Quin her very favorite detective creation. Some readers may dismiss the Quin stories as “supernatural” or too mythological, but others share Christie’s view, for the best Quin stories are classic clue-puzzle detective stories and much more—moving, philosophical explorations of life, love, and death—“Who is Mr. Quin? No one knows, but he is one who speaks for the dead who cannot speak for themselves” (Introduction, December 1946, p. 9). Queen as Champion: Twelve of the Quin stories were collected in The Mysterious Mr. Quin, 1930, but Queen discovered a lost treasure (“At the Crossroads,” Queen’s title was “The Love Detectives”)—a thirteenth tale that appeared in Flynn’s Weekly, October 26, 1926, but was left out of the collection. It is a fine detective story with typical Christie misdirection. Palliser: “Sing a Song of Sixpence” is a delightful tale of a retired criminal lawyer, almost 70 years old, whose heart is stirred and whose detective intellect is rekindled by an encounter with an old flame to whom he had promised to always be a knight in shining armor in times of her need. Queen as Champion: “Sing a Song of Sixpence” had never previously been published in any form in the United States. non-Series: “Philomel Cottage” was selected by Panel member Anthony Boucher as one of the twelve best detective-crime short stories, while “Witness for the Prosecution” is famous for the Marlene Dietrich film. Queen as Champion: “Wireless” and “The Mystery of the Spanish Shawl” made their American debut in EQMM, while “The Red Signal” and

0

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

“Witness for the Prosecution” had never appeared in any of Christie’s many books in the United States. Crofts, Freeman wills: Inspector French FRenCH: “The Hunt Ball,” May 1943; “The Oversight,” December 9; “Two Birds with One Spanner,” August 9 nOn-SeRIeS: “The Greuze Girl,” October 1949; “Unbreakable Alibi,” May 9 French: Freeman Wills Crofts was at one time considered to be among the “Big Five” of detective story writers of the Golden Age (roughly 1920s– 1940s). By the end of the 1950s he had written twenty-seven Inspector French novels and over forty French short stories collected in Murderers Make Mistakes, 1947; Many a Slip, 1955; and Mystery of the Sleeping Car Express, 1956. In all his novels and shorter works, French is workmanlike, persistent, and fastidious, called by some “Humdrum” but by others “honestly realistic”— “one of the few great detectives of fiction who talks, thinks and acts like a real-life policeman” (Introduction, May 1943, p. 93). “The Oversight” is “one of Freeman Wills Crofts’ cleverest ‘inverted’ detective stories. So simple, so obvious, and yet…” (December 1951, p. 46). Crofts is a true craftsman where diligence and calm logic make mystery and tension about the who and the how unnecessary. In “The Hunt Ball” fingerprints and hard work play crucial roles; there’s no triumph, no emotion, just “We’re ready for an arrest, I think” (p. 103). Queen as Champion: “The Hunt Ball” is a reprint of a story first published in 1937 but never previously published in America. Queen was also able to print two brand-new French stories, “The Oversight” and “Two Birds with One Spanner.” non-Series: There is nothing “humdrum” about the two non-detective stories reprinted in EQMM, as without a featured detective, the focus is on the elaborate crimes and the attempted deceptions. “The Unbreakable Alibi,” being another inverted tale, lacks some of the tension and uncertainty of “The Greuze Girl” in which a painting whose worth far exceeds its value becomes the center of a wild ride of twists and turns and uncertainty for the main character and the reader. Gardner, erle Stanley: Lester Leith, Perry Mason, Sydney Zoom, Bill Eldon, Peggy Castle LeITH: “Lester Leith, Impersonator”/“A Thousand to One,” May 1950; “Lester Leith, Financier”/“Something Like a Pelican,” November 1950; “The Exact Opposite,” October 1951; “In Round Figures,” July 1952; “Bird in the Hand,” November 1953; “The Candy Kid,” November 1954; “The Hand Is Quicker Than the Eye”/“Lester Leith, Magician,” July 1955

Five. The New Masters Celebrated



MASOn: “The Case of the Crimson Kiss,” April 1951; “The Case of the Irate Witness,” July 1954; “The Case of the Crying Swallow,” March 1963 ZOOM: “The Case of the Scattered Rubies”/“The First Stone,” March 1959 eLDOn: “The Clue of the Hungry Horse,” March 1966; “The Clue of the Runaway Blonde,” March 1971 CASTLe: “The Jewelled Butterfly,” March 1968 nOn-SeRIeS: “Death Rides a Boxcar,” March 1948; “To Strike a Match”/“The House of Three Candles,” May 1956; “The Case of the Murderer’s Bride,” March 1960; “Danger Out of the Past”/“Protection,” March 1961; “Only by Running”/“Flight into Disaster,” March 1962; “A Man Is Missing,” March 1964 Leith: Lester Leith is a criminal lawyer version of Leblanc’s Arsene Lupin in his role as Jim Barnett—“one of the cleverest crooks this city has ever produced. He makes a living out of robbing crooks of their ill-gotten spoils. He dopes out the solution of a crime in advance of the police, and then shakes down the crook before we get to him” (October 1951, p. 97). The plots are as devious as they are ingenious, and Leith ends up with the “loot” in all sixtyfive of the stories, almost all of which first appeared in Detective Fiction Weekly from 1929 to 1941. Five of the seven stories that were reprinted in EQMM later appeared in collections, most in The Amazing Adventures of Lester Leith, 1980. Queen waxes sentimental in his Introduction to “The Candy Kid” (originally published in 1931)—“To the memories and the ghosts of Professor Craig Kennedy and Dr. Fu Manchu … to Nick Carter and Philo Gubb and Jimmie Dale and Thubway Tham … to the dear, departed days and the good old times” (November 1954, p. 81). Mason: The name “Perry Mason” evokes images of scores of novels, all of them titled “The Case of…,” and years of Raymond Burr on television, but Gardner also wrote three Mason short stories (two were long short stories or short novelettes). These three reprinted in EQMM were first published, respectively, in American Magazine, June 1948; Collier’s, January 17, 1953; and American Magazine, August 1947. Mason (probably named after Melville Davisson Post’s unscrupulous lawyer Randolph Mason) was always a bit free and loose with the law in his investigations and was wildly flamboyant in his courtroom tactics. In the early novels (fifteen were in the 1930s), he is rather hard-boiled, but softens in the later works, including the short stories, though he continues to push the limits of legality in the name of truth and defending his clients. Zoom: One of Erle Stanley Gardner’s many pulp characters, Sydney

2

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Zoom—The Master of Disguises—with his police dog, Rip, “prowled ceaselessly at night, searching for those oddities of human conduct which would arouse his interest” (“The First Stone,” The Casebook of Sydney Zoom, 2006, p. 96). He poses as a carefree man about town, but refers to himself as a “Doctor of Despair, a Collector of Lost Souls,” (Pronzini Introduction, p. 7), solving cases and vindicating the innocent. There are seventeen Zoom short stories, all of which were first published in Detective Fiction Weekly from 1930 to 1934, ten of which were collected in The Casebook of Sydney Zoom. Despite Pronzini’s claim that all ten of these were “reprinted for the first time” (p. 7) in that collection, the one story “The Case of the Scattered Rubies” was reprinted first in EQMM. Pronzini’s oversight was probably the result of Queen’s incessant changing of author’s titles to his own—“The Case of the Scattered Rubies” was Queen’s version of Gardner’s original “The First Stone.” It is challenging, at times, to follow the trail of Queen’s shifting titles. eldon: It is difficult to imagine a character more different than Gardner’s big- city lawyer Perry Mason than his country sheriff Bill Eldon—“slow, relaxed, his voice drawling, his manner elaborately casual—a kindly and sympathetic man, a meditative man” (Introduction, March 1966, p. 21). It’s difficult to imagine Perry Mason finding a clue in a horseshoe or in the kind of hay fed to a horse, but Eldon’s “country mind” serves him as well as Mason’s “city sophistication” serves him. These two Sheriff Eldon stories comprised the Gardner collection Two Clues, 1947, and appeared in The Country Gentleman in 1945 and 1947. A third Eldon story—“The Clue of the Screaming Woman”—appeared in the same magazine in 1949. Castle: Peggy Castle, gossip columnist and a one-story Gardner detective in “The Jewelled Butterfly” is “surely one of Erle Stanley Gardner’s most appealing characters” (Introduction, March 1968, p. 26). non-Series: From murder to espionage, Gardner’s non-detective stories are filled with adventure and deceit. They may have been written quickly but they are filled with typical Gardner style and irony. Hammett, Dashiell: Continental Op, Sam Spade, Robin Thin, Guy Tharp, Phil Truax COnTInenTAL OP: “Fly Paper,” July 1942; “One Hour,” May 1944; “The Gutting of Couffignal,” November 1944; “Death on Pine Street”/“Women, Politics. And Murder,” January 1945; “The Tenth Clue,” July 1945; “The House on Turk Street,” March 1946; “Night Shots,” May 1946; “The Main Death,” September 1946; “The Golden Horseshoe,” January 1947; “House Dick”/“Bodies Piled Up,” April 1947; “Dead Yellow Women,” May 1947; “Who Killed Bob Teal,” July 1947; “The Creeping Siamese,” August 1947; “Corkscrew,”

Five. The New Masters Celebrated



September 1947; “The Scorched Face,” December 1947; “This King Business,” January 1949; “The Black Hat That Wasn’t There”/“It,” June 1951; “Arson Plus,” August 1951; “The Gatewood Caper”/ “Crooked Souls,” May 1953 SPADe: “A Man Called Knot”/“A Man Called Spade,” Challenge to the Reader, 1938, 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941; “Too Many Have Lived,” Fall 1941; “They Can Only Hang You Once,” March 1943 THIn: “A Man named Thin,” March 9 THARPe: “Ruffian’s Wife,” Rogues’ Gallery, 1945 TRUAX: “When Luck’s Running Good,”/“Laughing Masks,” December 1959 nOn-SeRIeS: “Nightshade,” Mystery League, October 1933; “His Brother’s Keeper,” Sporting Blood, 1944, “The Judge Laughed Last”/“The New Racket,” March 1944, “Two Sharp Knives,” September 1945, “The Green Elephant,” November 1945; “The Hairy One”/“Ber-Bulu,” October 1946; “Albert Pastor at Home,” January 1948, “The Man Who Killed Dan Adams,” December 1949, “The Man Who Stood in the Way”/“The Vicious Circle,” April 1951; “Wages of Crime”/“The Sardonic Star of Tom Doody,” November 1957, “The Barber and His Wife,” April 1958, “Itchy the Debonair”/ “Itchy,” November 1958; “In the Morgue”/“The Dimple,” August 1959 Continental Op: In many ways the quintessential hard-boiled Black Mask stories (the magazine insisted on “plausibility, truthfulness in details, realism in the picturing of thought, the portrayal of action and emotion” [Introduction, August 1947, p. 4]), Hammett’s stories of the Continental Op were “rough-and-tumble, no-holds-barred adventures of one of Dashiell Hammett’s most authentic characters” (Introduction, May 1944, p. 5). The Op stories are brutal, filled with cascades of descriptions of violence. “The Gutting of Couffignal” may be the most violence-filled short story in detective fiction history, but all of the Op stories have their fair share of mayhem and brutality. Certainly nothing could be further from the classic clue-puzzle story or the logic-and-deduction detective as these hard-boiled adventures— not to everyone’s taste, but certainly popular in their day, as illustrated by the number of Op stories reprinted in EQMM and the number of collections of Hammett short stories (nine, many of which were edited by Queen), most of which contain at least a couple Continental Op tales. All but two of the Op stories reprinted in EQMM were published originally in Black Mask from 1923 to 1929, the two exceptions being “This King Business” (Mystery Stories, January 1928) and “Who Killed Bob Teal” (True Detective, November 1924). “Fly Paper” has the distinction of being the last manuscript in Hammett’s typewriter before The Maltese Falcon, 1930.



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Queen as Champion: EQMM had many “firsts” with the Continental Op stories, including publishing several (e.g., “House Dick,” “Corkscrew,” “The Golden Horseshoe,” “Fly Paper,” and “The Gutting of Couffignal”) which hadn’t been reprinted since their Black Mask days in the 1920s. Queen predicted correctly that the little-known “Gutting of Couffignal,” after its publication in EQMM, would become an “anthological favorite” (Introduction, November 1944, p. 16). Spade: Spade is that “rough-and-tumble operative who is most dangerous when his smile flickers with a dreamy quality; who hates to be hit without hitting back; who won’t play the sap for anyone … who can play both ends against the middle, have his pie and eat it, outwit, outfight, and outbluff, whichever way the cards fall” (Introduction, The Adventures of Sam Spade, p. 4), although these qualities don’t show up as strongly or as violently in the short stories as they do in The Maltese Falcon. Queen as Champion: Famous for his central role in The Maltese Falcon, 1930, Sam Spade also appeared in three rather inconsequential short stories, two of which appeared in EQMM and another in Challenge to the Reader about a decade after their first publication. After their EQMM appearance, the two stories were collected (along with the third story) in The Adventures of Sam Spade, 1945 (QQ#9). Queen was excited to have found these “lost treasures”—“the thrill of discovering the three Sam Spade short stories and being the first to reprint them—in anthologies and in EQMM—was surely akin to that of some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken” (Introduction, Rogues’ Gallery, p. 7). Thin (Queen as Champion): Although Queen was able to discover several “lost” Continental Op stories and Sam Spade stories and reprint them for the first time since their original publication a decade or two earlier, his major Hammett coup was printing “A Man Named Thin” for the very first time anywhere. It had been accepted for magazine publication in the 1920s, but the magazine went out of business before the story made print. Some twenty years later “we heard about an unpublished Hammett manuscript late in 1945. We negotiated for its purchase, and acquired the story early in 1946. So far as we were able to check at the time, the manuscript represented the only unpublished Hammett in existence” (Introduction, Ellery Queen’s 16th Mystery Annual, 1961, p. 221). For some undisclosed reason, it couldn’t be published until 1961 in EQMM and in Ellery Queen’s 16th Mystery Annual. To make the find even more dramatic, Hammett stopped writing in 1934, so it became the last new Hammett story to appear in print. Also interesting is that Thin is a poet as well as a detective, and the story is anything but “hardboiled.” Tharpe: “Ruffian’s Wife” is an early Hammett story which shows that he already had great skill at telling a whole tale with vivid characterization and

Five. The New Masters Celebrated



dialogue, The “perfumed, asthmatic, fat man,” Leonidas Doucas, oozing a somewhat effeminate treachery and threat, is, as Queen suggests, a “trial balloon … a prototype” (Introduction, Rogues’ Gallery, p. 8) for the later Caspar Gutman of The Maltese Falcon, but this trial balloon is itself insidiously and ominously successful. Truax: “When Luck’s Running Good” was Hammett’s venture into “an out-and-out, no-holds- barred action story packed with mystery, adventure, suspense, terror, and undiluted villainy” (Introduction, December 1959, p. 18), although it wasn’t all that different from Hammett’s much better known Continental Op and Sam Spade stories. non-Series (Queen as Champion): “The Hairy One” had never been reprinted anywhere, and “The Green Elephant” had lain dormant for 11 years after its publication in the anthology The Smart Set in 1923. Innes, Michael: Inspector Appleby APPLeBY: “Lesson in Anatomy,” november 9; “Tragedy of a Handkerchief,” October 9; “The Cave of Bellarius,” April 9; “Inspector Appleby’s First Case,” June 9; “A Very Odd Case Indeed,” September 9; “A Test of Identity,” October 9; “Tom, Dick, and Harry,” november 9; “The Ghost of a Ghost,” December 9; “The Metal Ribbon,” May 9; “The Cellini Salt Cellar,” August 9; “The Heritage Portrait,” november 9; “The Magic Painting,” January 9; “Ogne ,” March 9; “Policeman’s Holiday,” December 1959; “Death in the Sun,” March 1966; “The end of the end,” november 9; “Dead Man’s Shoes,” June 1967; “Comedy of Discomfiture,” September 1971; “The Memorial Service,” February 9; “A Case of Headlong Dying,” August 9; “A Matter of Disturbing Incidents,” november 9; “A Secret of the woodpile,” October 9 Appleby: The Appleby stories are classic clue-puzzle tales with a (large) twist—erudite, sophisticated, literary, frenetic, suave, stylish, and strange. Some, like the very first (“Lesson in Anatomy,” which won a 3rd Prize in the 1st Annual EQMM Contest), are wild and crazy, almost slapstick—in this case, cadavers who seem to be alive, professors who are dead, vultures flying around the lab, quotes from Goethe, Shakespeare, and Donne, mingled smells of lilies and formalin, academic backbiting, and espionage! Some, like “Tragedy of a Handkerchief,” which won a 2nd Prize in the 2nd Annual EQMM Contest, are scholarly, brilliantly interweaving literary plots (in this case Othello) with “real-life” (in the story) mystery and crime. Appleby is donnish, academic, and astute, as adept at making esoteric allusions to English literature as observing and deducing from obscure clues, which sometimes are those esoteric allusions. Sometimes the question of what literary



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

quotation or reference is coming next and what relationship it will have to the crime (usually murder) is as puzzling and entertaining as the crime itself. For those detective story fans versed in English literature and drama, the stories are doubly interesting and twice loved. Queen as Champion: At the time of the 1st Annual EQMM Detective Short Story Contest in December 1945, Inspector Appleby had already appeared in ten novels (he would eventually appear in thirty-two) but in no short stories. Innes submitted his first Appleby short story to the contest, which began a long string of short stories and short story collections— Appleby Talking, 1954 (QQ#2); Appleby Talks Again, 1956; The Appleby File, 1975; and Appleby Talks About Crime, 2010. Of the over seventy Appleby short stories EQMM eventually published twenty-two, sixteen of them debuts. Macdonald, Philip: Anthony Gethryn, Dr. Alcazar, Harry the Hat GeTHRYn: “The wood-for-the-Trees,” June 9 ALCAZAR: “The Green-and-Gold String,” October 9 HARRY THe HAT: “The Absence of Tonathal,” February 99; “Sheep’s Clothing,” February 99 nOn-SeRIeS: “Malice Domestic,” October 9; “Love Lies Bleeding,” november 90; “The Man Out of the Rain,” September 9; “Dream no More,” november 9; “In the Course of Justice,” July 90; “The Star of Starz,” October 9 Gethryn: Philip MacDonald’s most famous detective, Anthony Gethryn, was best known for the classic novels, The Rasp, 1924; X vs. Rex, 1935; and The List of Adrian Messenger, 1959. MacDonald did write several nondetective crime short stories and a few tales of his series detectives Harry the Hat and Dr. Alcazar, but he wrote only one short story featuring Anthony Gethryn. Queen as Champion: Queen believed that this story, “The Wood-forthe-Trees,” was “one of the most important ‘firsts’ it has ever been your Editor’s privilege to bring to American fans” (Introduction, June 1947, p. 4). A few years after its debut in EQMM it appeared in the MacDonald collection Something to Hide, 1952 (QQ#0). Many other critics have agreed with Queen that the story and the collection rank among the very best; the story combines the best of the old and the new—a brilliant, pure detective story of deduction, but deduction enveloped in mounting tension and peril, ominous atmosphere, and “maniacal, unspeakable crimes” (Something to Hide, p. 109). Alcazar: Dr. Alcazar is an intriguing and unusual if not entirely unprecedented type of detective—“this clairvoyant extraordinary, this Olympianbowed charlatan blends completely those two perennial favorites—the deductive sleuth and the debonair rogue” (Introduction 1948, p. 4). Queen goes on to cite precedents—“It has been done, but not frequently” (p. 5).

Five. The New Masters Celebrated



The debut story of Dr. Alcazar, “The Green-and-Gold String,” is beautifully written, playing Alcazar’s mind-reading and crystal ball gazing to the hilt, showing all his subtlety and refinement of style and presentation, never overdoing his “pitch” to the skeptical, always gently hooking them then leading them on. As the crystal ball clears, Alcazar reveals amazing knowledge (gotten through other covert means) that leads to the solution of a murder and the receiving of a large check. MacDonald was to go on to write two more Alcazar stories, the first of which—“Something to Hide”—appeared in the aforementioned collection of short stories of that same name. These follow-up stories are in much the same vein as the debut story with crystal balls, charlatanism, and detection mixed in the brew. Queen as Champion: Philip MacDonald is a perfect example of the well-established author reaching out to EQMM to introduce a new (and fascinating) detective. MacDonald, by 1948, was already acknowledged as a detective story writer “of outstanding accomplishment, who in the opinion of most critics has already produced two of the mightiest classics in the genre [The Rasp, 1924, and Warrant for X, 1938, both with MacDonald’s best-known detective Anthony Gethryn]” (Introduction, October 1948, p. 4), when he submitted the only Gethryn short story for first publication to EQMM in 1947 (“The Wood-for-the-Trees,” June 1947) and he introduced a “really new detective and a new technique” (MacDonald in Introduction, p. 4), with the rogue/detective Dr. Alcazar in “The Green-and-Gold String,” in October 1948. MacDonald submitted this story to the 3rd Annual EQMM Contest with an advance letter to Queen indicating that the story would be coming. Queen immediately “wrote to Mr. MacDonald telling him how much we looked forward to his manuscript, and we waited—biting our nails. And on the final day of the contest the story arrived” (p. 4). non-Series: Two other classic and famous MacDonald crime stories (without a series detective) also first appeared in EQMM (“Malice Domestic” and “Love Lies Bleeding”). A writer with MacDonald’s credentials and popularity may not have needed the help of EQMM, but the fact that four of the six stories in his highly acclaimed book of short stories first appeared in EQMM strongly suggests the high opinion detective authors had of EQMM’s popularity and influence. Queen as Champion: With so many first publications of MacDonald crime and detective short stories—the only Anthony Gethryn short story, the debut story of Dr. Alcazar, the only two Harry-the-Hat detective stories, and several non-series crime stories (including the classic “Malice Domestic” submitted to the 1st Annual EQMM Contest), EQMM was a highly successful and influential partner and platform for MacDonald in his short story career.



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Marsh, ngaio: Roderick Alleyn ALLeYn: “I Can Find My way out,” August 9; “Death on the Air,” January 1948; “Chapter and Verse,” March 9, “A Fool About Money,” December 9 Marsh: The Alleyn tales all have interesting plots and detection, but (like the Albert Campion stories of Allingham), their main appeal is the literate writing, the well-developed characters, and the surrounding societal context. Queen as Champion: EQMM had the privilege to print the first of Marsh’s short stories to appear in the U.S. and the first to present Alleyn outside of a novel—“I Can Find My Way Out,” which Alleyn submitted to the 1st Annual EQMM Contest winning a 3rd Prize. It is a wonderfully atmospheric story of the theater demonstrating vividly Marsh’s extensive experience and special love of all things theatrical. “Like her splendid full-length tales [thirty-seven Alleyn novels, starting with A Man Lay Dead, 1934], ‘I Can Find My Way Out’ is suave, intelligent, and amusing” (Introduction, August 1946, p. 5). Queen, ellery: Ellery Queen, Linc Pearce QUeen: “The Adventure of the Glass-Domed Clock,” Mystery League, October 9; “The Hanging Acrobat,” Challenge to the Reader, 1938; “The Adventure of the Treasure Hunt,” Fall 1941; “The Mad Tea Party,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941; “Man Bites Dog,” Sporting Blood, 1944; “The One-Penny Black,” Sporting Blood, 1944; “The Adventure of the Three R’s,” September 9; “The Adventure of the Dead Cat,” October 9; “The Adventure of the Tell-Tale Bottle,” november 9; “The Adventure of the Inner Circle,” January 9; “The Adventure of the President’s Half-Disme,” February 9; “The Adventure of the Ides of Michael Magoon,” March 9; “The Adventure of the Dauphin’s Doll,” December 9; “The Adventure of the emperor’s Dice,” April 9; “The Adventure of the Gettysburg Bugle,” May 9; “The Adventure of the Medical Finger,” June 9; “The Adventure of the Fallen Angel,” July 9; “The Adventure of the needle’s eye,” August 9; “The Lonely Bride”/“The Lady Couldn’t Explain,” December 1951; “The Three Widows”/“Murder Without Clues,” January 1952; “Money Talks”/“The Sound of Blackmail,” August 1952; “A Lump of Sugar”/“Murder in the Park,” February 1953; “The Witch of Times Square,” May 1953; “Miser’s Gold”/ “Death of a Pawnbroker,” April 1954; “The Adventure of the GI Story,” August 9; “The Adventure of the Diamonds in Paradise,” September 9; “The Accused,” December 1954; “The

Five. The New Masters Celebrated

9

Gambler’s Club,” March 1955; “The Adventure of the Bride in Danger,” August 9; “Driver’s Seat”/“Lady, You’re Dead,” November 1955; “Double Your Money”/“The Vanishing Wizard,” September 1955; “The Black Ledger”/“The Mysterious Black Ledger,” December 1955; “Cold Money,” January 1956; “Mum Is the Word,” April 1956; “Snowball in July”/“The Phantom Train,” July 1956; “Cut! Cut! Cut!”/“the Myna Bird Mystery,” September 1956; “My Queer Dean,” November 1956; “A Matter of Seconds,” January 1957; “Miracles Do Happen,” July 9; “The Wrightsville Heirs,” November 1957; “No Parking”/“Terror in a Penthouse,” February 1958; “No Place to Live”/“The Man They All Hated,” March 1958; “Object Lesson”/“The Blackboard Gangsters,” April 1958; “A Question of Honor,” May 1958; “Child Missing”/“Kidnaped,” June 1958; “Long Shot,” March 1959; “Adventure of the Hollow Dragon,” June 1959; “The Case Against Carroll,” September 1960; “E = Murder,” May 1961; “Mind Over Matter,” September 1962; “The Mystery at the Library of Congress”/“Enter Ellery Queen,” February 1963; “The Death of San Juan,” August 1964; “Mum Is the word,” April 9; “The Broken T”/“Mystery in Neon Red,” May 1966; “Payoff ”/“Crime Syndicate Payoff,” July 1966; “The Little Spy,” September 1966; “Dead Ringer,” October 1966; “Last Man to Die,” January 1967; “Abraham Lincoln’s Clue,” March 1967; “The President’s Regrets,” July 1967; “wedding Anniversary,” September 9; “Uncle from Australia,” November 1967 PeARCe: “The Motive”/“Terror Town,” August–September 1958 Queen: It is not surprising that so many of the Queen short stories were published in EQMM—forty reprints and eighteen debuts (not counting ten radio scripts). The great majority of the reprints were published originally in This Week from 1949 to 1963; some of the later reprints appeared first in Argosy, Cavalier, The Diner’s Club Magazine, and Playboy. Most of the short stories were eventually gathered in a variety of collections: The Adventures of Ellery Queen, 1934 (QQ#90); The New Adventures of Ellery Queen, 1940; Calendar of Crime, 1952; QBI: Queen’s Bureau of Investigation, 1954; Queen’s Full, 1965; QED: Queen’s Experiments in Detection, 1968. Some of the stories (especially those in the last three collections listed) are little more than a gimmick (often semantic) with little else to offer, but the best stories (mostly in the three earlier collections) are intriguing cluepuzzles with twists and turns, surprises, red herrings, astute detection, and even, in some cases, interesting character development. The twelve stories in Calendar of Crime (especially “The Adventure of the Three R’s”) are top quality and all hang together around a common theme—“we shall do our

0

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

best to write one story each month for an entire year. Each story will have a timely quality—the theme or background or something else about each tale will have a direct tie-up with the month of issue in which the story is published” (Introduction, September 1946, p. 44). Queen eventually fulfilled their intention of writing one story for each month and publishing them all in one collection, and although they published them all in EQMM before they were published in the collection, they weren’t able to write and publish them all in twelve consecutive months, instead appearing from September 1946 to August 1951—still a remarkable feat, especially given the high quality of the stories. Queen was always justifiably proud of their accomplishments, but usually showed restraint in EQMM in touting their own work. Not only did Queen exclude himself from the “New Masters” of the detective short story, but he rarely wrote more than very short editorial comments (often no comments) to accompany Queen stories in EQMM. “One of Ellery’s strangest cases—with a strange clue of the sort that only Ellery Queen seems to encounter in these days of so much ‘clueless detection’” (Introduction, September 1967, p. 6)—is one of the longest and most pointed comments Queen allows himself about his own stories. The reader can draw his or her own conclusions in regard to what Queen meant by “clueless detection.” It is interesting to note that Queen was almost as ruthless in changing the titles of his own stories as he was in changing those of other authors (notably Christie and Woolrich). Queen as Champion: Many of the Ellery Queen stories, including all twelve from Calendar of Crime, made their debuts in EQMM. Pearce: Of all the Queen stories printed in EQMM, “Terror Town” is the only one without Ellery Queen as the detective. This does afford Queen, the author, the chance to weave a little simple romance into the mounting terror of a town victimized by a serial killer since Queen (the detective) is largely romance free. Rinehart, Mary Roberts: Tish TISH: “The Treasure Hunt,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941 nOn-SeRIeS: “The Dog in the Orchard,” March 1948; “The Papered Door,” August 1950; “Four A.M.,” April 1951; “The Trumpet Sounds,” May 1954; “The Splinter,” September 9 Tish: Queen called Rinehart “the grand lady of the American detective story, our senior Mistress of Manhunting” (Introduction, March 1948, p. 132). One of her best-known detectives is the comical Tish, and one of the best Tish short stories is “The Treasure Hunt,” which appeared originally in Rinehart’s The Book of Tish, 1926, and The Saturday Evening Post of that same year, and hadn’t been in print again until appearing in the Queen anthology fifteen years later.

Five. The New Masters Celebrated



non-Series: Although Rinehart was the “generally acknowledged founder of the ‘Had-I–But-Known School’ of detective writing” (p. 132), the non– Tish stories published by Queen are anything but that, for they are tense, carefully plotted character studies without any of the oft-disparaged melodrama. Queen as Champion: Most of the Rinehart stories Queen published are reprints from a decade or two earlier, but “The Splinter,” a touching story of a missing boy, a dog, and thoughts of murder was a new story written especially for EQMM, winning a 2nd Prize in the 10th Annual EQMM Contest. Sayers, Dorothy: Lord Peter Wimsey, Montague Egg wIMSeY: “The Dragon’s Head,” Sporting Blood, 1944; “The Vindictive Story of the Footsteps That Ran,” November 1945; “The Necklace of Pearls,” March 1950; “The Haunted Policeman,” May 1952; “Striding Folly,” August 1953; “Something Queer About Mirrors”/ “Image in the Mirror,” September 1964; “The Power of Darkness”/“The Incredible Elopement of Lord Peter Wimsey,” May 1965; “The Queen’s Square,” April 1967; “A Matter of Taste,” February 1968 eGG: “The Poisoned Dow,” February 1948 nOn-SeRIeS: “Suspicion,” Mystery League, October 1933 and EQMM, December 1950; “The Man Who Knew How,” Winter 1942; “The Leopard Lady,” January 1943; “Blood Sacrifice,” Rogues’ Gallery, 1945 wimsey: Lord Peter Wimsey, the ultimate English gentleman dilettante detective (some say “insufferable prig”) appeared in eleven novels and twenty short stories originally published in the 1920s and 1930s. Eighteen of the stories were collected in Lord Peter Views the Body, 1928 (QQ#); Hangman’s Holiday, 1933; and In the Teeth of the Evidence, 1939. Many of the Wimsey stories are straight clue-puzzle tales (with interesting characters and sometimes biting social critique), but a few of the tales are wildly creative and rather strange, including the “incredible” tale of the elopement of Wimsey with another man’s wife to save her sanity. Wimsey may seem affected and pretentious at times, but he is a brilliant detective with a strong sense of justice that any victim of crime would want on his/her side. Queen as Champion: Queen was particularly excited about publishing “The Vindictive Story of the Footsteps That Ran,” a story that he considered to be one of Sayers’ best but that had never been reprinted since its first appearance in 1928. Queen called it a story “covered with editorial dust, a story made mute by critical Coventry, a story that literally has been buried alive for seventeen years” (Introduction, November 1945, p. 75). EQMM also

2

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

published the two Wimsey stories (“Striding Folly” and “The Haunted Policeman”) which were not included in any of the Wimsey collections although they both had been reprinted several times since their initial appearance in Strand Magazine, July 1935, and Harper’s Bazaar, February 1938, respectively. egg: The Egg stories are light-hearted even when about murder, Egg continually referring to adages from his Salesman’s Handbook: in the middle of a locked-room murder he reminds himself that “The goodwill of the maid is nine-tenths of the trade” and “The salesman with open eye sees commissions mount up high” (“The Poisoned Dow,” Hangman’s Holiday, 1995, pp. 96 and 105). non-Series: “Suspicion,” which was chosen by three members of the Panel as one of the twelve best detective-crime short stories, is a beautifully written tale of slowly building suspicion of murderous intent—slowly building in the reader as much as in the victim. Queen as Champion: Queen was proud to have introduced “Suspicion” to the public—not in an anthology or in EQMM (although it was eventually reprinted in EQMM), but in the first issue of four of their first attempt at a detective-crime magazine, Mystery League: “Seventeen years ago we called ‘Suspicion’ a ‘criminological gem of fluid and technological perfection.’ After nearly two decades, we have no reason whatever to modify our earliest criminal opinion” (Introduction, December 1950, p. 82). Simenon, Georges: Jules Maigret, M. Froget, G7, Joseph Leborgne, Little Doctor, Kachoudas MAIGReT: “Stan the Killer,” September 1949; “Madame Maigret’s Admirer,” January 1951; “The Old Lady of Bayeau,” August 1952; “Maigret’s Christmas,” January 1954; “Journey into Time,” June 1956; “The Most Obstinant Man in Paris,” April 1957; “Maigret Deduces,” November 1966; “Inspector Maigret Directs,” March 1967; “Inspector Maigret Thinks,” June 1967; “Inspector Maigret Pursues,” October 1967; “Inspector Maigret Investigates,” June 1968; “Maigret’s War of Nerves,” October 1968; “Maigret Hesitates,” May 1969; “Inspector Maigret and the Missing Miniatures,” March 1972; “Maigret and the Frightened Dressmaker,” April 1973; “The Inn of the Drowned,” January 1975; “Inspector Maigret Smokes His Pipe,” June 1977 FROGeT: “The Case of Arnold Schuttringer,” November 1942; “Affaire Ziliouck,” May 1944; “The Case of 3 Bicyclists,” July 1946; “Nouchi,” December 1948 G: “The Secret of Fort Bayard,” November 1943; “The Tracy Enigma,” May 1947; “The Chateau of Missing Men,” August 1978 LeBORGne: “The Three Rembrandts,” September 1943; “The Safe of

Five. The New Masters Celebrated



the S.S.S.,” October 1946; “The Little House at Croix Rousse,” November 1947 LITTLe DOCTOR: “Le Château de l’Arsenic,” November 1948; “The Little Doctor and the Slipper Fiend,” October 1955 KACHOUDAS: “Blessed Are the Meek,” April 1949 nOn-SeRIeS: “A Matter of Life and Death,” January 1952 Maigret: Of the scores and scores of novels, novelettes, and short stories Simenon wrote about Inspector Jules Maigret, over twenty were translated into English and appeared in periodicals, and many more were published in English-language Maigret collections. EQMM provided twelve of these stories their first appearance in English; five more were reprinted from the British periodical Argosy (1961 and 1962). The Short Cases of Inspector Maigret was selected by Queen to be QQ#. Many critics have praised these stories for their powerful evocation of place and character; they are not the typical detective tales of tightly wound plot, clues, and detection, but are leisurely expositions of subtle perception and detection by osmosis. Often nothing much happens in these stories, but what does happen happens slowly—“Maigret conducted his investigation, without seeming to, having a drink now and then, sitting by the stove, going for little strolls outside” (June 1967, p. 17). These are stories that insist the reader emulates Maigret’s patience and quiet perception. Froget was a fierce examining magistrate, and the stories are of his examinations—cold, precise, relentless, and impeccably logical. Anthony Boucher, who translated all four stories for EQMM, asserts that: “With his cold precision, his infinite patience, and his ten-sous notebook with its red-ink epilogues M. Froget is, for me, one of the great short story detectives” (Boucher in Introduction, “The Case of Arnold Schuttringer,” To the Queen’s Taste, 1946, p. 387). The Thirteen Culprits, a collection of Froget stories, was designated by Queen as QQ#. G: These three tales in EQMM, translated by Anthony Boucher, are the only G7 stories in English. G7 remains calm and coolly logical in the face of the most brooding and horrific cases, finding clues sometimes in the very body of the crime. Leborgne: Never known for his plots, Simenon’s Joseph Leborgne stories may have more “simon-pure puzzle” (Boucher in Introduction, November 1947, p. 37) than most of his other tales. The most memorable of the three Leborgne stories is probably “The Little House at Croix Rousse” with its poignant motive and interesting solution to a “locked room” shooting death. Little Doctor: The two Little Doctor stories published in EQMM are the only two in English, both of which demonstrate Simenon’s brilliant “observer’s eye for detail, weather, clothes, customs, food, all the revealing



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

‘little facts,’ as Stendhal called them” (John Hutchens of the New York Herald in Introduction, October 1955, p. 3). Although Simenon is renowned for detailed and leisurely portrayal of setting and character, the Little Doctor stories, perhaps more than most of his other tales, do demonstrate that he did have a talent and an appreciation for plot as well—“one of Simenon’s most ingenious detective puzzles” (p. 3). Kouchadas: “Blessed Are the Meek” has the feel of Burke’s classic “The Hands of Mr. Ottermole” and Davis’ “In the Fog” but with Simenon’s agonizingly unhurried description and narration. In the end, this winner of 1st Prize in the 4th Annual EQMM Contest is more horrible irony than soothing bromide. Queen as Champion: Although all of the Simenon stories published in EQMM and Queen’s anthologies were reprints from the French, they were all debuts in the United States and in English. Queen played a significant role in spreading the word about Simenon who came to be widely regarded as the most important detective- crime author outside the United States and England. non-Series: “A Matter of Life and Death” is written with the same fastidious attention to detail, the same snail-like pace, and the same poignant portrayal of character that typifies all Simenon’s stories. And, as with those other tales, the City is as much a character as any of the people—its streets and alleyways rich with sounds and scents and crime. Stout, Rex: Nero Wolfe, Alphabet Hicks wOLFe: “Help Wanted Male,” February 1948; “Murder on Tuesday,” July 1948; “Bullet for One,” June 1950; “The Affair of the Twisted Scarf,” April 1951; “The Cop Killer,” March 1952; “The World Series Murder,” October 1953; “When a Man Murders,” May 1955; “A Dog in the Daytime”/“The Body in the Hall,” February 1956; “Immune to Murder,” February 1957; “Too Many Detectives,” October 1958; “eeny Meeny Murder Mo,” March 92; “The Zero Clue”/“Scared to Death,” April 1963; “Blood will Tell,” December 9; “The Christmas Party Murder,” January 1965; “The Gun with Wings,” March 1965; “The Fourth of July Murder”/“The Fourth of July Picnic,” August 1965; “The Dazzle Dan Murder Case”/“The Squirt and the Monkey,” July 1966; “Poison à la Carte,” April 1968; “The Rodeo Murder,” September 1968; “Nero Wolfe Devises a Strategem”/ “Home to Roost,” January 1970; “A Window for Death,” March 1970; “Method Three for Murder,” July 1970; “Counterfeit for Murder,” August 1971 HICKS: “Curtain Line”/“By His Own Hand,” May 1964 nOn-SeRIeS: “Santa Claus Beat,” January 1956

Five. The New Masters Celebrated



wolfe: The Wolfe stories are an interesting combination of the eccentric, irascible armchair detective and the active, hardboiled, ladies’ man as Wolfe personifies the former and his sidekick Archie Goodwin embodies the latter. The narration and dialogue are breezy, and often sarcastically funny—“I only allow myself so many lies a day, and I’m careful not to waste them” (March 1962, p. 71). Wolfe was a large intellect in a yet larger body, a cluster of complexes and obsessions in a man-mountain, and he provided the erudition while Goodwin provided the breezy slang, the clean-cut, All-American cockiness, and the romantic interest. Wolfe was more Old Man in the Corner than Sherlock Holmes, while Goodwin was more Sam Spade than Watson, so together they were yin and yang and an ideal sleuth. Queen as Champion: Although there are no actual “short” stories about Nero Wolfe, there are numerous “novelettes” or long short stories and many novels. Although most of the Wolfe stories published in EQMM and in Queen anthologies are reprints, two (“Eeny Meeny Murder Mo” and “Blood Will Tell”) made their debut in EQMM. Most of the reprinted stories first appeared in American Magazine in the 1940s and 1950s with a few being published in Colliers, Look, and The Saturday Evening Post. Hicks: Stout did create a few other sleuths including the one of the odd name, Alphabet Hicks, disbarred lawyer and part-time private detective. Hicks appears in only one novel and one short story, “Curtain Line,” that was first published in Manhunt, April 1955. Stribling, T.S.: Professor Poggioli POGGIOLI: “Bullets,” Challenge to the Reader, 1938; “The Cablegram,” Fall 1941; “The Resurrection of Chin Lee,” 101 Years’ Entertainment, 1941; “The Mystery of the Chief of Police,” July 9; “The Mystery of the Sock and the Clock,” January 9; “The Mystery of the Paper wad,” July 9; “Count Jalacki Goes Fishing,” September 9; “A note to Count Jalacki,” October 9; “The Mystery of the st Kilometer Stone,” July 9; “The Mystery of the Seven Suicides,” April 9; “A Daylight Adventure,” March 90; “The Mystery of the Personal Ad,” May 90; “The Mystery of the Choir Boy,” January 9; “The Mystery of Andorous enterprises,” September 9; “The Mystery of the Half-Painted House,” April 92; “The warning on the Lawn,” March 9; “The Mystery of the Five Money Orders,” March 9; “The Telephone Fisherman,” January 9 nOn-SeRIeS: “Judge Lynch,” September 1950 Poggioli: There are thirty-seven short stories of Professor Poggioli, which were written in three series—the first appearing in Adventure Magazine 1925–1929, then in the famous collection Clues of the Caribbees, 1929—QQ#0



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

(including the brilliant and stunning “Passage to Benares”). Adventure Magazine then solicited a second series of nine stories from 1929 to 1935. When Queen reprinted two of these stories (“Bullets” in his first anthology, Challenge to the Reader, and “The Cablegram,” in the first issue of EQMM, Fall 1941), Queen was so impressed that he asked Stribling to write a new third series. In “The Cablegram,” an early story of the second series, Poggioli is still in his “bumbling” phase as his nemesis, the smuggling ex-dictator, outsmarts him and smuggles drugs right under his nose. But in the stories of the third series, “under the tutelage of Fred Dannay, the erstwhile bumbling former professor of psychology and amateur criminologist became a sleuth of near superhuman ability” (Vickers in Vidro Introduction, Dr. Poggioli: Criminologist, p. 12). These later stories are remarkable for their ingenuity and surprise endings—Queen says of the first of the new stories (“The Mystery of the Chief of Police”) “here is one of the most unusual detective stories it has ever been your Editor’s privilege to read…. There’s a daring conception of crime in this story—a conception large with philosophical implication” (Introduction, July 1945, p. 4). The same could be said of many of these stories, for all of them have the quality of “extreme unusualness and true intellectual approach” (Introduction, January 1946, p. 4). Queen as Champion: It seems odd to say of an author who had already won a Pulitzer Prize before his first story appeared in EQMM, but in many ways Queen had a tremendous positive influence on Stribling’s writing and reputation (at least in the detective-crime genre). Many of the later Poggioli stories dazzle and astound and provoke deep thought about assumptions and conventions, not only in the detective-crime genre but in life in general. non-Series: Queen calls “Judge Lynch” the “most powerful short story that T.S. Stribling ever wrote” (Introduction, September 1950, p. 3). It would be difficult to argue the point, as this moving and provocative story presents a poignant and haunting view of race relations in the Deep South, a theme Stribling explored in his acclaimed novel, The Store, and in at least one of the Poggioli stories, “Bullets.” As with much of Stribling’s work, including the Poggioli tales, it raises more questions than it answers. Vickers, Roy: Department of Dead Ends, Inspector Curwen, Inspector Kyle, Fidelity Dove DePARTMenT OF DeAD enDS: “The Rubber Trumpet,” November 1943; “The Man Who Murdered in Public,” July 1944; “The Case of Merry Andrew”/“The Cowboy of Oxford Street,” May 1945; “Mean Man’s Murder,” november 9; “The Parrot’s Beak,” January 1946; “The Man who was Murdered by a Bed,” March 9; “The Yellow Jumper,” June 9; “The Case of the Honest

Five. The New Masters Celebrated



Murderer,” July 9; “Snob’s Murder,” August 9; “The Man who Played the Market”/“The Clew Proof Murders,” October 9; “The Fantastic Clue,” December 9; “The eight Pieces of Tortoise Shell,” January 9; “The House-in-Your-Hand Murder,” May 9; “The Case of the Social Climber,” June 9; “The nine-Pound Murder,” november 9; “Blind Man’s Bluff,” December 9; “The Lady who Laughed,” February 9; “The Case of Poor Gertrude,” March 1948; “The Man Who Married Too Often,” October 1948; “The Death Position enigma,” november 9; “Dinner for Two,” January 99; “The Crocodile Case,” March 99; “Wit’s End,” May 1949; “The Try-Out Murder,” September 1949; “The Million-to-One Chance,” november 99; “The Patchwork Murder,” February 90; “The Knitted Silk Scarf,” July 90; “The Impromptu Murder”/“The Three-Foot Grave,” October 1950; “The Respectful Murder,” December 90; “The Man with the Sneer,” March 91; “The Hair Shirt,” October 9; “The Pluperfect Murder,” February 1952; “The Cosy nook Murder,” June 92; “The Man who Could not Hold women,” February 9; “A Toy for Jiffy,” August 1956; “Marion, Come Back,” March 9; “The Color of Truth,” June 9 CURwen: “Little Things Like That,” September 9; “Find the Innocent,” August 9; “A woman of Principle,” February 9; “The Dacey Affair,” February 9 KYLe: “The 2-Minute Grave,” October 92; “The Frame-Up,” December 9; “For Men Only,” September 9 DOVe: “The Great Kabul Diamond,” Female of the Species, 1943; “The Meanest Man in Europe,” November 1944; “The St. Jocasta Tapestries,” Rogues’ Gallery, 1945 nOn-SeRIeS: “Double Image,” April 9; “Little Things Like That,” September 1953; “The Man who Punished Himself,” February 9; “Miss Paisley’s Cat,” May 9; “nine-to-One You’ll Hang,” December 9 Department of Dead ends: Although R. Austin Freeman originated the “inverted” detective story in The Singing Bone, 1912, Roy Vickers became its “master” in his numerous stories of the Department of Dead Ends collected in The Department of Dead Ends, 1947 (QQ#0); The Department of Dead Ends, 1949; and The Department of Dead Ends, 1978. The ten stories reprinted in EQMM were published originally in Pearson’s Magazine and Fiction Parade and Golden Book Magazine from 1934 to 1936. Compared to the classic Freeman inverted tales, in those of Vickers “the nature of the evidence is not as scientific or irrefutable … but they are even more gripping in their



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

psychological interest, and they generate a suspense that Dr. Freeman never achieved” (Introduction, November 1945, p. 5). These Department of Dead Ends stories of “middle-class murder and its eventual detection” (Sandoe in Introduction, March 1949, p. 65) are characterized by a dark realism that lies like a heavy cloak over the tale gripping the characters (and the readers) in the grim clutches of determinism— “Frankly your Editor doesn’t know whether this story is true-life or fiction. If it’s true-life, it has all the fascination of fiction. If it’s fiction, it has all the fascination of true-life” (Introduction, November 1943, p. 30). Queen made those comments after the first Department of Dead Ends reprint appeared in EQMM; after scores more (reprints and debuts), it was clear to him that these tales were fiction, but were no less realistic or grim for that discovery. Tiny clues that initially meant nothing end up imprisoning the criminals in their vice as the Department of Dead Ends follow them tenaciously to their inevitable end. Queen as Champion: Not only did Queen reprint ten of the Department of Dead Ends stories, but he convinced Vickers to write a whole new series of the stories just for EQMM—“Yes, we have asked Mr. Vickers to make ‘Mean Man’s Murder’ the first of a new series—so keep your fingers crossed” (Introduction, November 1945, p. 5). Apparently the crossed fingers worked, as twenty-six more new Department of Dead Ends stories graced EQMM over the next almost twenty years. Two of these new stories—“The House-inYour-Hand Murder” and “Hair Shirt”—won 2nd Prizes in the Annual EQMM contests, while “The Patchwork Murder” won a “Special Award” in the 4th Annual Contest. Curwen: Inspector Curwen had already appeared in four novels before his short story debut in EQMM in 1953, followed by three other Curwen stories, all of which first appeared in EQMM. The Curwen stories share many qualities with the Department of Dead Ends tales—precise, thorough, and matter-of-fact narrative style, past events haunting the present, small incidents having large import, and the inexorable intertwining of seemingly unrelated events. Kyle: Inspector Kyle is another of Vickers’ straightforward, matter-offact detectives, long on precision and method and short on personality. These Kyle tales are not inverted, but they have the same intensely detailed and matter- of-fact tone and mood—even the wife- murderer in “The Twelve Minute Grave,” for example, is completely unemotional about both his love and his killing. Dove: Fidelity Dove is well-named, for she is a thief who is faithful to an ethical creed—“If you are among those who execrate her memory, you will say that it was mere moral affectation on Fidelity’s part that she refused to rob any man with a decent record. You will say that the fact that a man

Five. The New Masters Celebrated

9

was a blackguard did not justify Fidelity Dove enriching herself at his expense” (“The Great Kabul Diamond,” Female of the Species, p. 396). But, of course, those who execrated her memory were those blackguards who suffered her retribution. She is also a bit of a poetic soul, devising robberies with an aesthetic touch and describing her booty in romantic terms—“Think not of the diamond as merchandise nor as a chemical entity. Think of it as prisoned sunshine” (p. 398). non-Series: Showing his diversity as well as his talent, a couple years after he won prizes in the EQMM Annual contest for two of his Department of Dead Ends stories, Vickers won two more prizes in those contests for nonseries stories—“Double Image,” an elaborate tale of murder and alibi-byidentical twins winning a 1st Prize; while “Miss Paisley’s Cat,” unusual in theme and plot for Vickers but typical in style, winning a 2nd Prize. wilde, Percival: P. Moran, Bill Parmalee MORAn: “P. Moran’s Shadow,” September 9; “P. Moran, Deducter,” november 9; “P. Moran, Fire-Fighter,” July 9; “P. Moran and the Poison Pen,” March 9; “P. Moran, Diamond Hunter,” April 9; “P. Moran, Personal Observer,” August 9 PARMALee: “Beginner’s Luck,” August 1949 nOn-SeRIeS: “The Witness,” April 1948; “The Way to Freedom,” January 1952 Moran: P. Moran, the correspondence-school detective is indeed “a rare bird—the comic sleuth. Only a small coterie of these droll detectives, these farcical ferrets, these humorous Holmeses, these burlesque bloodhounds, these ludicrous Lecoqs-only a handful have laughed into our plethoric literature of crime” (Introduction, November 1944, p. 50). In all these stories, the humor is broad and blatant as Moran tries (rather futilely) to follow the correspondence school lessons. Moran may fail his correspondence course, but somehow he seems to solve the crime and get his man as, “Seriously, P. Moran grows in stature with each succeeding misadventure” (Introduction, July 1945, p. 89). Whether he grows in stature or not is debatable, but it definitely is not “seriously”! “P. Moran, Personal Observer” won the Special Award for Best Humorous story in the 6th Annual EQMM Contest. Queen as Champion: Moran was born with Queen’s help (“For Fred Dannay, who … had a hand in hatching out P. Moran, and who must accept responsibility for a share of his misdeeds” [Wilde in In The Queen’s Parlor, p. 163]) debuting in “P. Moran’s Shadow” in EQMM in 1943, followed by five more tales in the next eight years, all of which made their first appearance in EQMM. All the Moran stories (up through 1946) were collected in P. Moran, Operative, 1947, then a final story, “P. Moran, Personal Observer” was published in EQMM in August 1951.

90

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Parmalee: Wilde also wrote eight short stories about Bill Parmalee, the “reformed card shark, a master at solving gambling mysteries and exposing cheaters” (Introduction, August 1949, p. 120). “Beginner’s Luck” (first published in Popular Magazine, April 20, 1924) and the seven other stories were collected in Rogues in Clover, 1929 (QQ#9), a very difficult book to find even back in 1949. In all these stories Parmalee turns his vast (and first-hand) knowledge of card-sharking to honest use, catching the would-be crook in the act. non-Series: Wilde himself believed that “The Way to Freedom” was “the best short story a man named Percival Wilde ever wrote … if every writer has a single moment during which he writes better than he knows how, that moment crystallized for me in ‘The Way to Freedom’” (Wilde in Introduction, January 1952, p. 115). Apparently many people agreed, as the story appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including several in other languages, before being reprinted in EQMM. In tone and depth and sincerity and impact, this is utterly unlike the Moran stories so linked with Wilde’s name. woolrich, Cornel nOn-SeRIeS: “Dime a Dance,” Fall 1941; “After Dinner Story,” September 1943; “The Fingernail”/“The Customer Is Always Right,” September 1944; “The Mathematics of Murder”/“What the WellDressed Corpse Will Wear,” March 1945; “Leg Man,” May 1945; “If the Dead Could Talk,” July 1946; “Angel Face”/“Face Work,” December 1946; “You Take Ballistics,” February 1947; “Steps Going Up”/“Men Must Die,” April 1947; “That’s Your Own Funeral”/“Your Own Funeral,” February 1948; “The Night Reveals,” August 1948; “Johnny on the Spot,” November 1948; “The Body in Grant’s Tomb,” December 1948; “Speak to Me of Death,” March 1949; “Momentum”/“Murder Always Gathers Momentum,” May 1949; “Collared,” July 1949; “Blind Date”/“The Corpse and the Kid,” October 1949; “The Hummingbird Comes Home,” March 1950; “The Night I Died,” June 1950; “Cab, Mister?,” September 1950; “The Heavy Sugar,” December 1950; “Through a Dead Man’s Eye,” March 1951; “Death in Round 3,” July 1951; “Charlie Won’t Be Home Tonight,” September 1951; “All at Once No Alice,” November 1951; “Goodbye, New York,” March 1953; “Dormant Account,” May 1953; “Cinderella and the Mob,” July 1953; “The Loophole”/“Three Kills for One,” September 1953; “The Last Bus Home”/“Of Time and Murder,” March 1954; “Dead Shot”/“Picture Frame,” June 1954; “Debt of Honor”/“IOU—One Life,” October 1954; “Something That Happened in Our House”/“Murder at Mother’s Knee,” December

Five. The New Masters Celebrated

9

1954; “Meet Me by the Mannequin,” February 1955; “Invitation to Sudden Death”/“Blue Is for Bravery,” March 1955; “Death at the Burlesque”/“The Fatal Footlights,” June 1955; “The Most Exciting Show in Town”/“Double Feature,” September 1955; “One Night to Be Dead Sure Of ”/“The Living Lie Down with the Dead,” December 1955; “The Absent-Minded Murderer”/“Cool, Calm, and Detected,” May 1956; “The Ice Pick Murders”/“Death in Duplicate,” September 1956; “Wait for Me Downstairs”/“Finger of Doom,” January 1957; “Endicott’s Girl,” February 1958; “Don’t Bet on Murder”/“You Bet Your Life,” March 1958; “Hurting Much”/“Death Sits in the Dentist Chair,” June 1958; “The Penny-a-worder,” September 9; “The Inside Story”/“Murder Story,” February 1959; “Blonde Beauty Slain,” March 99; “Dead Roses”/“The Death Rose,” September 1959; “Hot Water,” June 1961; “The Singing Hat”/“The Counterfeit Hat,” October 1961; “Money Talks,” January 92; “One Drop of Blood,” April 92; “The Cape Triangular,” February 1963; “I’ll Never Play Detective Again,” July 1963; “working Is for Fools,” March 9; “when Love Turns,” June 9; “Adventures of a Fountain Pen”/“Dipped in Blood,” October 1964; “Murder After Death,” December 9; “Just Enough to Cover a Thumbnail”/“C—Jag,” December 1965; “It Only Takes a Minute to Die,” July 9; “All It Takes Is Brains”/“Crime on St. Catherine Street,” December 1966; “The Talking Eyes”/“The Case of the Talking Eyes,” April 1967; “Divorce—new York Style,” June/July 9; “For the Rest of Her Life,” May 9; “Rear Window”/“It Had to Be Murder,” February 1969; “new York Blues,” December 90; “Only One Grain More”/“Detective’s Dilemma,” April 1972; “The Lie,” September 1972 nOn-SeRIeS AS BY wILLIAM IRISH: “The Earring,” February 1946; “Somebody on the Phone,” April 1949; “Steps … Coming Near,” April 1964 nOn-SeRIeS AS BY wOOLRICH AnD IRISH: “Mystery in Room 913,” December 1949 non-Series: As can be seen by the great number of Woolrich stories published in EQMM, Queen had high regard for the brilliance and diversity of Woolrich’s talent—“Mr. Woolrich is an accomplished virtuoso in nearly every type of the modern detective story: the psychological thriller, the story of sheer suspense, the tale of the hunted and the hunter, the story of pointcounterpoint ingenuity, the crime story tinged with horror, and the straightforward police tale” (Introduction, May 1945, p. 18). “One Drop of Blood” was awarded 1st Prize in the 13th (and last) Annual EQMM Contest.

92

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Apparently Queen loved the Woolrich/Irish stories but didn’t at all love the titles as he changed so many of them. It’s difficult to say whose titles capture the mood better, but the stories, regardless of title, capture the mood of suspense, darkness, and quiet horror vividly—“Woolrich was the greatest writer of pure suspense fiction who ever lived. He was the Poe of the twentieth century and the poet of its shadows, carving out of his wretched, doomhaunted, solitary life, a body of work so grotesquely powerful that a category had to be invented to describe it. That category is ‘noir’” (Pronzini and Muller, 1001 Midnights, 1986, p. 859). Perhaps the real horror of the Woolrich stories is the darkness slowly wrenched out of the commonplace to finally overwhelm the scene—the urge to kill with a life of its own, the sinister shadow that refused to be blinded by the light. His famous story, “Rear Window,” (not Woolrich’s original title) is in a way typical of all of his stories as we, the readers, observe too much to stay safely apart as the blackness seeps out of the story and envelopes us. Queen as Champion: A great number of these Woolrich stories were first reprinted in EQMM after their original publication in such periodicals as Black Mask and Argosy. non-Series as by william Irish: “The Earring” is typical of the Irish touch of terror—“powerful in its atmosphere of terror and suspense and with a final whiplash of surprise” (Introduction, February 1946, p. 17). non-Series as by woolrich and Irish: “The Mystery in Room 913” is a unique two- parter—“we make a noble editorial policy. We bring you a double-length story, the first-half written by a famous detective story writer, and the second half written by another famous detective-story writer” (Introduction, December 1949, p. 4). The even more unique feature was that the two famous authors were Woolrich and Irish—a fascinating exercise in double darkness for author(s) and readers alike!

SIX

The Acclaimed and the Awarded One major way Queen encouraged authors to become engaged or to continue to be engaged in writing high quality detective-crime short stories was by instituting the Annual EQMM Short-Story contests which offered a platform, prestige, and cash prizes for the winning stories. The first contest was in 1945, then twelve more contests followed—from 1946 to 1956 and in 1961. The first year there were sixteen prizes awarded—one 1st and several 2nds, 3rds, and 4ths. As the years passed, more and more prizes were awarded, including for “Best First Story,” until there were many more awards given each year. The contests were extremely successful, both for the number of submissions and the quality of the stories. Consistently, year after year EQMM received hundreds of stories from both established and new authors from all over the world that went through an elaborate screening and judging process until only the crème de la crème remained. Queen was gratified by the interest level among authors and with the constantly increasing quality of the stories; both offered him great hope and optimism for the future of the detective-crime short story, a hope and optimism that were justified then (in the 40s, 50s, and 60s) and continue to be justified today as EQMM celebrates more than seventy-five years of publishing quality detective-crime short stories of established and novice authors alike. Some of the prize winners were already highly regarded authors in the genre offering a new story of a familiar detective (e.g., William Faulkner’s Gavin Stevens, Roy Vickers’ Department of Dead Ends) or introducing a new detective (e.g., Philip MacDonald’s Dr. Alcazar) or bringing a detective for the first time from novels to the short story (e.g., H.F. Heard’s Mr. Mycroft); while others were new authors whose submission was only their second or third story (e.g., Avram Davidson, Anthony Gilbert) or, in several cases, was actually their very first story published anywhere (e.g., Shirley Barker, Joyce Harrington, Barbara Owens). For a few authors, their prize-winning story 9

9

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

was their one “moment in the sun,” while for others it was a springboard to other prize-winners and/or a long and successful writing career (e.g., Stanley Ellin, Dorothy Davis, Charlotte Armstrong, A.H.Z. Carr). winners of st and 2nd Prizes in Annual EQMM Short-Story Contests (All of which Debuted in EQMM) st Prizes Armstrong, Charlotte: “The Enemy,” 6th Annual Contest Carr, A.H.Z.: “The Black Kitten,” 11th Carr, John Dickson: “The Gentleman from Paris,” 5th Davidson, Avram: “The Necessity of His Condition,” 12th Ellin, Stanley: “The Moment of Decision,” 10th Flanagan, Thomas: “The Cold Winds of Adeste,” 7th Frazee, Steve: “My Brother Down There,” 8th Heard, H.F.: “The President of the United States, Detective,” 2nd Segre, Alfredo: “Justice Has No Number,” 3rd Simenon, Georges: “Blessed Are the Meek,” 4th Vickers, Roy: “Double Image,” 9th Wellman, Manly Wade: “A Star for a Warrior,” 1st Woolrich, Cornel: “One Drop of Blood,” 13th 2nd Prizes Alexander, David: “The Man Who Went to Taltauds,” 11th Armstrong, Charlotte: “What Would You Have Done,” 10th “And Already Lost,” 12th Austin, Margaret: “Introducing Ellery’s Family,” 13th Barker, Shirley: “The Fog on Pemble Green,” 10th Bloch, Robert: “Dig That Crazy Grave,” 12th Carr, A.H.Z: “The Trial of John Nobody,” 5th “Murder at City Hall,” 6th “Tyger! Tyger!” 7th “If a Body…” 8th Carr, John Dickson: “The House in Goblin Wood,” 2nd Charteris, Leslie: “The Quarterdeck Club,” 2nd Chesson, Ray: “You Can’t Run Away,” 12th Coles, Manning: “Handcuffs Don’t Hold Ghosts,” 1st Daniel, Harold: “Inquest on a Dead Tiger,” 13th Davis, Dorothy: “Spring Fever,” 7th “Backward, Turn Backward,” 9th “By the Scruff of the Soul,” 13th de la Torre, Lilian: “The Stroke of Thirteen,” 8th Douglass, Donald: “The Perfectionist,” 10th Ellin, Stanley: “The Orderly World of Mr. Appleby,” 5th

Six. The Acclaimed and the Awarded “Fool’s Mate,” 6th “The Best of Everything,” 7th “The Betrayers,” 8th “The House Party,” 9th “The Faith of Aaron Menefree,” 12th “The Question My Son Asked,” 13th Faulkner, William: “An Error in Chemistry,” 1st Flanagan, Thomas: “The Customs of the Country,” 11th Gilbert, Anthony: “You Can’t Hang Twice,” 1st Gilbert, Michael: “One-Tenth Man,” 11th Halliday, Brett: “Extradition,” 3rd Henderson, Dion: “From the Music to the Hawk,” 11th Henderson, Zenna: “You Know What, Teacher,” 9th Innes, Michael: “Tragedy of a Handkerchief,” 2nd Johns, Veronica: “Homecoming,” 7th “The Gentleman Caller,” 10th “Mr. Hyde-de-Ho,” 11th King, Rufus: “Miami Papers Please Copy,” 11th “Malice in Wonderland,” 12th Kyd, Thomas: “Cottage for August,” 12th Lipsky, Eleazar: “Tiger in the Night,” 10th MacDonald, Philip: “Malice Domestic,” 1st “The Wood-for-the-Trees,” 2nd “The Green-and-Gold String,” 3rd “The Man Out of the Rain,” 9th McCloy, Helen: “Chinoiserie,” 1st “Through a Glass Darkly,” 3rd McGerr, Pat: “Justice Has a High Price,” 13th Millar, Margaret: “The Couple Next Door,” 9th Miller, Wade: “Invitation to an Accident,” 10th “A Bad Time of Day,” 11th Nebel, Frederick: “Try It My Way,” 11th Palmer, Stuart and Craig Rice: “Once Upon a Train,” 5th “Cherchez la Frame,” 6th Patrick, Q: “Love Comes to Miss Lucy,” 2nd “Mother, May I Go Out to Swim,” 3rd Pentecost, Hugh: “Challenge to the Reader,” 2nd “The Fourth Degree,” 3rd “An End to Fear,” 12th “A Kind of Murder,” 13th Rawson, Clayton: “From Another World,” 3rd Rinehart, Mary Robert: “The Splinter,” 10th

9

9

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Sheridan, Juanita: “There Are No Snakes in Hawaii,” 9th Shore, Viola: “Rope’s End,” 2nd “Bye Bye Blackbird,” 6th Steele, Wilbur Daniel: “Dust to Dust,” 4th “The Lady Killer,” 5th Stribling, T.S: “Count Jalacki Goes Fishing,” 1st “The Mystery of the 81st Kilometer Stone,” 2nd Vandercook, John: “The Challenge,” 7th Vickers, Roy: “The House-in-Your-Hand Murder,” 2nd “The Hair Shirt,” 6th “Miss Paisley’s Cat,” 8th Wallace, F.L: “Driving Lesson,” 12th Wellman, Manly Wade: “The Mayor Calls His Family,” 12th Williams, Vinnie: “Dodie and the Bogerman,” 10th Yaffe, James: “Mom Makes a Wish,” 10th “One of the Family,” 11th

In this monograph we highlight some of the 1st and 2nd Prize winners— those established authors who gained prestige and recognition and brought prestige to EQMM with their winning entries, and those novice authors whose winning impelled them to later successful careers in the genre. We also highlight, using the same criteria, a few of the authors whose detective-crime stories won the Edgar (Allan Poe) Award from the Crime Writers of America. The Edgar Best Short Story Award was first presented to individual stories in 1955 and continues today (from 1951 to 1954 it was awarded to collections of short stories). winners of edgar Awards, 9–90, That Debuted in eQMM Note: The three stories that received the Edgar in 1981 were published in EQMM in 1980, so they are still within our period of interest. Alexander, David: “The Gentlest of Brothers,” 1957 Armstrong, Charlotte: “And Already Lost,” 1958 “The Case for Miss Peacock,” 1966 “The Splintered Monday,” 1967 Backus, Jean: “The Last Rendezvous,” 1978 Brand, Christianna: “Twist for Twist,” 1968 “Poison in the Cup,” 1970 Callahan, Barbara: “Lavender Lady,” 1977 Christopher, John: “Island of Bright Birds,” 1973 Davidson, Avram: “Affair at Lahore Cantonment,” 1962 “Crazy Old Lady,” 1977 Davis, Dorothy: “The Purple Is Everything,” 1965 “Old Friends,” 1976

Six. The Acclaimed and the Awarded

9

Ellin, Stanley: “The House Party,” 1955 “The Blessington Method,” 1957 “The Day of the Bullet,” 1960 “The Crime of Ezechiele Coen,” 1964 “The Last Bottle in the World,” 1969 Ely, David: “Going Backward,” 1979 Fish, Robert: “Double Entry,” 1970 Garfield, Brian: “Jode’s Last Hunt,” 1978 “Scrimshaw,” 1980 Gardner, Elsin: “A Night Out with the Boys,” 1975 Gilbert, Anthony: “Door to a Different World,” 1971 “Fifty Years After,” 1974 Gores, Joe: “Goodbye Pops,” 1970 Harrington, Joyce: “The Purple Shroud,” 1973 “Cabin in the Hollow,” 1975 “Night Crawlers,” 1976 Highsmith, Patricia: “The Terrapin,” 1963 Hoch, Edward: “The Most Dangerous Man Alive,” 1981 Howard, Clark: “Horn Man,” 1981 James, P.D: “Moment of Power,” 1969 Lutz, John: “Until You Are Dead,” 1981 MacDonald, Philip: “Dream No More,” 1956 McNear, Robert: “The Salad Maker,” 1968 Miller, Wade: “Invitation to an Accident,” 1956 Olson, Donald: “Screams and Echoes,” 1975 Owens, Barbara: “The Cloud Beneath the Eaves,” 1979 Pierce, John: “Miss Paisley on a Diet,” 1971 Pronzini, Bill: “Strangers in the Fog,” 1979 Rendell, Ruth: “The Fallen Curtain,” 1975 “The Fall of the Coin,” 1976 Revesz, Etta: “Like a Terrible Scream,” 1977 Roth, Holly: “Who Walks Behind,” 1966 Symons, Julian: “The Boiler,” 1980 Treat, Lawrence: “H as in Homicide,” 1965 Wallston, Robert: “The Children of Alda Nuova,” 1962 Walsh, Thomas, “Chance After Chance,” 1978 “The Closed Door,” 1979 Westlake, Donald: “This Is Death,” 1979 Of the total of ninety-seven stories that won Edgars from 1955 to 1980, fifty-one debuted in EQMM. Playboy and The Saturday Evening Post were “runners-up” with only seven each. Another indication of the strong role

9

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

EQMM played in the ongoing health and survival of the detective-crime short story is that of the authors with the most Edgars (Ellin with five, Armstrong and Harrington with three), Ellin and Harrington both debuted in EQMM, and all three authors were “propelled” by their first prize-winning EQMM story into long and successful writing careers (with a score or more followup stories, most published in EQMM). Another way Queen stirred interest in readers and promoted the health and growth of the detective-crime short story genre was to publish stories from “famous” authors—Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, winners of “best author” or “best detective” or “best story” polls. Most, but not all, of these stories were reprints—familiar and famous stories or, in some cases, less familiar stories of well-known, popular, and honored authors. And finally, Queen sneaked in some big surprises with strong drawing power—famous names and talented writers not ordinarily associated with the detective-crime genre (e.g., L. Frank Baum, Jorge Luis Borges, Pearl Buck, Joyce Cary, Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Henry Longfellow, Andre Maurois, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Saki, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, H.G. Wells). Not only were these authors big draws but they helped Queen in his life-long quest to demonstrate that the detective-crime story could be, at its best, fine literature. In this chapter, we will list and describe some of the authors whose stories appeared in EQMM or in a Queen anthology who won Nobel or Pulitzer Prizes, whose stories were selected as among the best twelve of all time, and whose stories won Edgars. Some of these authors were Old Masters (Chapter Four), New Masters (Chapter Five), or authors who had a debut in EQMM (Chapters Seven and Eight). Descriptions for these authors will be found in the appropriate (indicated) chapter. Stories which won a prize in an Annual EQMM Contest are listed in this chapter only if that author’s description does not appear in another chapter. Note: Stories in bold are reprints (this is a change from in previous chapters); all the others made their debut in EQMM. Of course the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes were not awarded for specific stories, but the stories of those prize-winning authors that appeared in a Queen publication are listed. Appearances in Queen anthologies are only indicated for stories not also appearing in EQMM.

Prize-Winning Authors Alexander, David eDGAR AwARD—“The Gentlest of Brothers,” February 1956 eQMM COnTeST—“The Man Who Went to Taltaud’s,” November 1956

Six. The Acclaimed and the Awarded

99

Other EQMM debut stories: “One Drink Can Kill You,” April 1964; “The Spinning Wheel,” February 1965 After having ten stories appear in Popular Detective and Manhunt from 1951 to 1955, in 1956 Alexander had both “The Gentlest of Brothers” and “The Man Who Went to Taltaud’s” debut in EQMM—the former tale awarded an Edgar and the latter winning a 2nd Prize in the 11th Annual EQMM Contest. He had several more stories published in various magazines, including EQMM, over the next nine years, culminating with “The Spinning Wheel” in EQMM. There is a heavy, almost claustrophobic quality about many of Alexander’s stories, as monsters of the mind haunt the protagonists and the reader, yet the stories draw the reader in with a mounting tension and “irresistible narrative pull” (Introduction, April 1964, p. 132). There is an odd mixture of fancy and stark realism, exemplified by “The Man Who Went to Taltaud’s,” as the man bedeviled by demons from the past turns out to be a historical figure whose demons changed real history for all of us. Allingham, Margery (see Chapter Five: New Masters) BeST Ten ACTIVe AUTHORS Armstrong, Charlotte eDGAR AwARD—“And Already Lost,” June 1957; “The Case for Miss Peacock,” February 1965; “The Splintered Monday,” March 1966 eQMM COnTeST: “The Enemy,” May 1951; “What Would You Have Done?” July 1955; “And Already Lost,” June 1957 Other EQMM debut stories: “Laugh It Off,” October 1953; “The Ring in the Fish,” August 1959; “St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning,” April 1960; “The Other Shoe,” July 1962; “Run—If You Can,” February 1964; “Mink Coat—Very Cheap,” May 1964; “Protector of Travelers,” June 1965; “A Matter of Timing,” October 1966; “The Cool Ones,” January 1967; “The Second Commandment,” July 1967; “More than One Kind of Luck,” December 1967; “From Out of the Garden,” March 1968; “The Light Next Door,” January 1969 Charlotte Armstrong wrote numerous detective-crime novels, including some about her series detective MacDougall Duff, and several non-series detective-crime short stories, which appeared in a variety of magazines until her second story about her protagonist Mike Russell (“The Enemy”) was published in EQMM in 1951. She only wrote two stories about Mike Russell, the first (“The Evening Hour”) published in 1950 in The Philadelphia Inquirer, then reprinted in EQMM, August 1952; the other, “The Enemy,” submitted to the 6th Annual EQMM Contest and winner of its 1st Prize. This latter tale

00

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

is a moving, poignant, important story that “reveals the meaning, the purpose, and the goodness of truth—and conversely the menace, the peril, and the godlessness of truth’s Enemy” (Introduction, May 1951, p. 4), demonstrating that “again, as in the past 110 years, the detective story points the way, teaches the lesson we must all learn” (p. 4)—the hard work, involvement, attention, and commitment it takes to overcome prejudice and rush to judgment with calm and deliberate truth.: “What do they teach the kids these days? To turn away? Don’t weep for your dead. Just skip it, think about something else. Not to seek the truth?” (p. 11). In “The Evening Hour” Russell does not turn away as he leaps in to champion the truth and help an innocent woman accused of murder, who in the end is saved by a “prayer” and a single strand of her white hair. After that first prize-winning story, Armstrong wrote twenty-three more stories, almost all of which made their debut in EQMM and five of which (all with their first appearance in EQMM) won Edgars or prizes in Annual EQMM contests. Many of these stories including the five prize winners are, at their heart and behind the simple but revealing dialogue, about the importance and risks of living by difficult truths in the face of easier, more convenient paths of convention, conformity, and deception. Bailey, H.C. (see Chapter Five: New Masters) BeST TweLVe STORIeS—“The Yellow Slugs,” October 99 Barr, Robert BeST TweLVe STORIeS—“The Absent-Minded Coterie,” May 90 Eugene Valmont, former Chief Detective to the French government and now London’s “leading private eye,” appeared in only eight short stories collected in The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont, 1906 (QQ#). In an attempt to appeal to readers of novels, the stories are spread across twenty-four titled chapters (four of which comprise “The Absent-Minded Coterie”)—a not uncommon “deception” at the time. “The Absent-Minded Coterie,” which was judged by five of the twelve Panel members to be one of the twelve best detective short stories of all time, appeared first in The Saturday Evening Post, May 13, 1905, and was anthologized many times both before and after its appearance in EQMM. It is a clever tale of poor memory, coin counterfeiting, and Valmont’s not altogether successful detective strategies. Bentley, e.C. (see Chapter Five: New Masters) BeST TweLVe STORIeS—“The Sweet Shot,” July 92 Berkeley, Anthony (see Chapter Five: New Masters) BeST TweLVe STORIeS—“The Avenging Chance,” April 90

Six. The Acclaimed and the Awarded

0

Brand, Christianna (see Chapter Eight: Other Significant Debuts) eDGAR AwARD: “Twist for Twist,” May 1967; “Poison in the Cup,” February 1969 Bromfield, Louis PULITZeR PRIZe: “The wedding Dress,” May 9; “Crime Passionel,” January 9; “Tabloid news,” October 9 The well-known author of classic Americana novels (several of which were turned into top-budget films) wrote only three crime short stories, all of which were reprinted in EQMM. The stories have the touch of a master, eloquently and passionately written, and have the “odor” of the romance of old times and indelible personalities. “The Wedding Dress” has a Faulknerlike “Rose for Emily” feel as old Zenobia White, who had lived alone for decades in the woods with stray cats and dogs after she had mistakenly shot her lover, has finally died, alone. For the narrator, and the readers, “something had gone out of the world” (May 1947, p. 72). Buck, Pearl nOBeL PRIZe: “Ransom,” June 9 This tense, almost claustrophobic story about a kidnaping of a child is a moving account of the impact of that crime on the parents, told with the same vivid prose and insight into character as Buck’s classic novel The Good Earth. This story, first published in Cosmopolitan, October 1938, impressed Queen so much that he published it four times over the years—in three anthologies as well as in EQMM. It hadn’t been reprinted anywhere before Queen’s re-discovering it, but was anthologized numerous times after. Burke, Thomas BeST TweLVe STORIeS—“The Hands of Mr. Ottermole,” January 90 In 1949 this story was the top vote-getter in Queen’s Blue-Ribbon Panel selection of the best twelve mystery stories ever written (“The Purloined Letter” was runner-up), and so it was published in EQMM in January 1950 (the twelve best stories were published in the twelve issues of that year). In this terrifying tale, darkness, dread, and horror hang heavy over the unnamed “detective” and the reader—“the great wall hung a blanket of shadow over the land, the shadow and the cadaverous outline of the now deserted market stalls gave it the appearance of a living lane that had been turned to frost in the moment between breath and death” (January 1950, p. 106). You and the walkers on the night streets are stalked and suffocated by the mounting tension and the cloying fear as the hands of Mr. Ottermole seek yet another victim.

02

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

“The Hands of Mr. Ottermole” first appeared in The Storyteller, February 1929, and was reprinted twice before its appearance in Queen’s 101 Years’ Entertainment after which it appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals (including EQMM). Callahan, Barbara (see Chapter Seven: First Stories) eDGAR AwARD—“Lavender Lady,” April 1976 Carr, John Dickson (see Chapter Five: New Masters) Ten BeST ACTIVe AUTHORS, TweLVe BeST DeTeCTIVeS Chandler, Raymond (see Chapter Five: New Masters) Ten BeST ACTIVe AUTHORS, TweLVe BeST DeTeCTIVeS Chesterton, G.K. (see Chapter Four: Old Masters) TweLVe BeST DeTeCTIVeS BeST TweLVe STORIeS—“The Oracle of the Dog,” July 90 Christie, Agatha (see Chapter Five: New Masters) Ten BeST ACTIVe AUTHORS, TweLVe BeST DeTeCTIVeS Conan Doyle, Arthur (see Chapter Four: Old Masters) TweLVe BeST DeTeCTIVeS BeST TweLVe STORIeS—“The Red-Headed League,” March 90 Connelly, Marc PULITZeR PRIZe: “Coroner’s Inquest,” September 9 A short story, but not short enough—one of the most unusual motives for murder in the history of the detective-crime short story. It was first published in Colliers in February 1930, and was anthologized several times after appearing in EQMM. Davidson, Avram (see Chapter Seven: First Stories) eDGAR AwARD—“Affair at Lahore Cantonment,” June 1961; “Crazy Old Lady,” March 1976 Davis, Dorothy (see Chapter Seven: First Stories) eDGAR AwARD: “The Purple Is Everything,” June 1964; “Old Friends,” September 1975 ellin, Stanley (see Chapter Seven: First Stories) eDGAR AwARD: “The House Party,” May 1954; “The Blessington Method,” June 1956; “The Day of the Bullet,” October 1959; “The Crime of Ezechiele Coen,” November 1963; “The Last Bottle in the World,” February 1968

Six. The Acclaimed and the Awarded

0

Faulkner, william (see Chapter Eight: Other Significant Debuts) nOBeL PRIZe: “The Hound,” January 9; “Smoke,” October 9 Fish, Robert (see Chapter Seven: First Stories) eDGAR AwARD—“Double Entry,” January 1969 Futrelle, Jacques (see Chapter Four: Old Masters) BeST TweLVe STORIeS—“The Problem of Cell ,” June 90 Gardner, erle Stanley (see Chapter Five: New Masters) Ten BeST ACTIVe AUTHORS Garfield, Brian eDGAR AwARD—“Jode’s Last Hunt,” January 1977; “Scrimshaw,” December 1979 Other EQMM debut stories: “Hunting Accident,” June 1977; “The Glory Hunter,” September 1977; “Charlie’s Shell Game,” February 1978; “Checkpoint Charlie,” May 1978; “Trust Charlie,” June 1978; “Charlie’s Vigorish,” August 1978; “Challenge for Charlie,” October 1978; “Charlie in Moscow,” November 1978; “Charlie in the Tundra,” January 1979; “Charlie’s Dodge,” March 1979; “Passport for Charlie,” July 1979; “Charlie’s Chase,” October 1979; “The Chalk Outline,” May 1981 Better known for his novels Death Wish and Hopscotch, Garfield had over twenty detective-crime short stories published, the great majority of them in EQMM and over half of them about the counterespionage agent, Charlie Dark. His two Edgar-winning stories, however, are not Dark or spy stories but more “traditional” crime tales. “Jode’s Last Hunt,” Garfield’s debut story in EQMM, is a charming “Western” but with a modern twist of ecological conscience, female power, and moral retribution. Gilbert, Anthony (see Chapter Eight: Other Significant Debuts) eDGAR AwARD—“Door to a Different World,” March 1970; “Fifty Years After,” March 1973 Gores, Joe (see Chapter Seven: First Stories) eDGAR AwARD—“Goodbye Pops,” December 1969 Hammett, Dashiell (see Chapter Five: New Masters) TweLVe BeST DeTeCTIVeS Harrington, Joyce (see Chapter Seven: First Stories) eDGAR AwARD—“The Purple Shroud,” September 1972; “Cabin in the Hollow,” October 1974

0

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Highsmith, Patricia eDGAR AwARD—“The Terrapin,” October 1962 Other EQMM debut stories: “The Perfect Alibi,” March 1957; “The Thrill Seeker,” August 1960; “The Gracious, Pleasant Life of Mrs. Afton,” February 1963; “Another Bridge to Cross,” December 1964; “The Hate Murders,” May 1965; “The Empty Birdhouse,” January 1969; “Poised to Fly,” August 1969; “The Nature of the Thing,” April 1970; “Woodrow Wilson’s Necktie,” March 1972; “Sauce for the Goose,” September 1972; “The Baby Spoon,” March 1973; “Who Dies, Who Lives,” August 1973; “Day of Reckoning,” September 1974; “The Tale of Djemal,” December 1975; “The Pond,” March 1976; “Something You Have to Live With,” July 1976; “Slowly, Slowly in the Wind,” November 1976; “When in Rome,” October 1978; “Things Have Gone Badly,” March 1980 Known best for her dark novels of Tom Ripley, Highsmith was dubbed by Graham Greene “the Poet of Apprehension”—an apt description of her detective-crime short stories as well as her novels, for so many of her stories tell of sad and lonely people betrayed by love and life who are haunted by a numbing anxiety and despair. She wrote over thirty such stories, most of which were published in EQMM, and most of which “make you feel cold inside” (Queen’s description of “Sauce for the Goose” in his September 1972 Introduction, p. 136). Even the occasional attempt of her characters at a noble act turns out badly, and atonement can’t alter the “bittersweet mystery of life” (Introduction, August 1969, p. 19). Hoch, edward (see Chapter Eight: Other Significant Debuts) eDGAR AwARD—“The Most Dangerous Man Alive,” May 1980 Howard, Clark eDGAR AwARD—“Horn Man,” July 1980 Other EQMM debut story: “A Price on His Life,” October 1980 A veteran of the detective-crime short story, Howard wrote over fifty stories (mostly in AHMM) before his first appeared in EQMM—“Horn Man,” a touching story of the power of music in the face of desire, treachery, and revenge, and winner of an Edgar—to be followed by another fifty or so stories after 1980 almost all in EQMM. Huxley, Aldous BeST TweLVe STORIeS—“The Gioconda Smile,” September 90 One of two ventures by Huxley into the detective-crime field, “The Gioconda Smile” is the epitome of a literary tale probing deeply into the psychology of the characters with exquisite writing and haunting philosophical

Six. The Acclaimed and the Awarded

0

questioning. Behind the enigmatic smile lies menace just as behind a life of pleasure and pretense lies meaninglessness and boredom and ruin. EQMM reprinted this story from The English Review, August 1921, as one installment of its publishing of the twelve best detective-crime short stories as voted by the Blue Ribbon Panel. James, P.D. eDGAR AwARD—“Moment of Power,” July 1968 Other EQMM debut story: “Murder, 1986,” October 1970 James had written three novels (featuring her detective Adam Dalgliesh) before her first short story (non-series) saw publication in EQMM. Her talent shines as brightly in the short-story as in the novel, for this first story won an Edgar. Over the next couple decades she wrote several more novels and short stories, and in the last few years her Dalgliesh stories have been adapted for television. The “Moment of Power,” is the moment at the heart of this “distinguished and deeply moving story, told with great subtlety and compassion” (Introduction, July 1968, p. 6)—a moment as momentous as it is unexpected. Lewis, Sinclair nOBeL PRIZe—“The Post-Mortem Murder,” March 9; “The Ghost Patrol,” April 9; “The willow walk,” March 9 These stories of Sinclair Lewis, America’s first Nobel Prize winner for literature, are exquisitely written portrayals of moving landscapes and fascinating characters—a “ghost” policeman who can’t give up his beat, a brilliant poet who is his own worst enemy, and a guilty twin who planned the (too) perfect crime. Crime plays a minor role in all but “The Willow Walk,” as in these other two stories language takes the starring role—“Between Cape Cod and the ocean is a war sinister and incessant. Here and there the ocean had gulped a farm, or a lighthouse reared on a cliff, but at Kennuit the land had been the victor” (“The Post Mortem Murder,” March 1961, p. 109). The three Lewis stories that appeared in EQMM were reprints from more than twenty years earlier from The Century Magazine, The Red Book Magazine, and The Saturday Evening Post. MacDonald, Phil (see Chapter Five: New Masters) eDGAR AwARD—“Dream No More,” November 1955 Marsh, ngaio (see Chapter Five: New Masters) Ten BeST ACTIVe AUTHORS Owens, Barbara (see Chapter Seven: First Stories) eDGAR AwARD—“The Cloud Beneath the Eaves,” January 1978

0

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Pierce, John (see Chapter Seven: First Stories) eDGAR AwARD—“Miss Paisley’s Diet,” February 1970 Poe, edgar Allan (see Chapter Four: Old Masters) TweLVe BeST DeTeCTIVeS BeST TweLVe STORIeS—“The Purloined Letter,” February 90 Post, Melville Davisson (see Chapter Four: Old Masters) BeST TweLVe STORIeS—“naboth’s Vineyard,” August 90 Pronzini, Bill eDGAR AwARD—“Strangers in the Fog,” June 1978 Other EQMM debut stories: “The Half-Invisible Man,” May 1974; “Once a Thief,” August 1975; “Problems Solved,” June 1976; “Sweet Fever,” December 1976; “Under the Skin,” October 1977; “A Cold, Foggy Day,” April 1978; “Bank Job,” August 1978; “Caught in the Act,” December 1978; “The Private Eye Who Collected Pulps,” February 1979; “Rebound,” April 1979; “Million-to-One Shot,” July 1979; “Black Wind,” September 1979; “A Nice Easy Job,” November 1979; “A Craving for Originality,” December 1979; “Times Change,” February 1980; “Two Weeks Every Summer,” June 1980; “The Dispatching of George Ferris,” July 1980 There are twenty-three stories of the Private Eye whose name we never know, most of them appearing in AHMM, but eight appearing in EQMM, six of which were from 1995 to 2004 after our period of interest. All the stories are an intriguing blend of story types with a dash of the classic clue-puzzle and a dollop of the matter-of-fact, realistic private eye. “The Private Eye Who Collected Pulps” is a wonderful case in point as it has “a plot that will make you hark back (longingly, we hope) to the Golden Age of the detective story, complete with a locked-room mystery and an equally baffling dying message—and a manner of telling that belongs to the more contemporary privateeye division, straightforward, no frills, but with no on-stage violence” (Introduction, February 1979, p. 130). As the title of this story suggests, the tale is nostalgic not just in type but in content as the murder victim was a famous collector of classic detective and mystery magazines (including EQMM), and the setting and the dying message both tie in directly with those magazines. In the end those “pulps” were motive, scene, clue, and solution. Queen, ellery (see Chapter Five: New Masters) Ten BeST ACTIVe AUTHORS, TweLVe BeST DeTeCTIVeS Rendell, Ruth (see Chapter Seven: First Stories) eDGAR AwARD—“The Fallen Curtain,” August 1974; “The Fall of the Coin,” June 1975

Six. The Acclaimed and the Awarded

0

Revesz, etta (see Chapter Seven: First Stories) eDGAR AwARD—“Like a Terrible Scream,” May 1976 Roth, Holly eDGAR AwARD—“Who Walks Behind,” September 1965 Other EQMM debut stories: “They Didn’t Deserve Her Death,” October 1958; “As with a Piece of Quartz,” April 1963; “A Sense of Dynasty,” October 1963; “The Loves in George’s Life,” February 1964; “The Spy Who Was So Obvious,” October 1964; “The Game’s the Thing,” November 1966 Holly Roth had four detective-crime short stories published in other periodicals before her debut in EQMM with “They Didn’t Deserve Her Death” in 1958, then three more stories in Suspense and AHMM before finishing her career in the genre with six more stories in EQMM, including the Edgarwinning “Who Walks Behind.” Her themes and styles are diverse— from a poignant commentary on prejudice and the psychological ravages of war (“Who Walks Behind”) to a romantic reminiscence with a kick at the end (“A Sense of Dynasty”) to “one of the finest spy stories that has ever appeared in EQMM” (“The Spy Who Was So Obvious”) (Introduction, October 1964, p. 6). Her stories are rich with exotic locales and cultures vividly portrayed, commentary on human foible and flaw, and a delicate sense of romance, irony, and deception, all with a touch of the fantastic. Russell, Bertrand nOBeL PRIZe—“The Corsican Ordeal of Miss X,” April 9 Queen’s description of this amazing story of a crime with worldshattering ramifications is eloquently accurate—“Name a facet of mystery— any coruscation you can think of—and you will find it in Bertrand Russell’s story: detection and crime, mystery and suspense, adventure and adversity, danger and derring-do, plot and counterplot, clues and concatenation, damsel in distress and professor in peril, conspiracy and secrecy, investigation and international intrigue—altogether a fascinating farrago of Robert Louis Stevenson out of Prosper Merimee, with a soupcon of Shiel” (Introduction, April 1966, p. 114). Sayers, Dorothy (see Chapter Five: New Masters) TweLVe BeST DeTeCTIVeS BeST TweLVe STORIeS—“Suspicion,” December 90 Simenon, Georges (see Chapter Five: New Masters) Ten BeST ACTIVe AUTHORS, TweLVe BeST DeTeCTIVeS

0

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Steinbeck, John nOBeL PRIZe, PULITZeR PRIZe—“The Murder,” August 9; “The Crapshooter,” May 9 Although his fiction has been accused “of being preoccupied with physical suffering, cruelty, and violence” (quoted in EQMM, August 1946, p. 43), he wrote only a few stories that could be considered in the detective-crime genre. “The Murder,” which debuted in North American Review in April 1934, and was reprinted in EQMM more than a decade later, was one of them—a startling tale of love betrayed and restored and cold-blooded murder. Stout, Rex (see Chapter Five: New Masters) Ten BeST ACTIVe AUTHORS, TweLVe BeST DeTeCTIVeS Stribling, T.S.: (see Chapter Five: New Masters) PULITZeR PRIZe Symons, Julian eDGAR AwARD—“The Boiler,” November 1979 Other EQMM debut stories: “The Tiger’s Stripe,” March 1965; “Pickup on the Dover Road,” July 1972; “The Sensitive Ears of Mr. Small,” October 1972; “The Post-Mortem Letters,” May 1979; “The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring,” July 1979; “Value for Money,” December 1980 Julian Symons is probably best known for his critical study of the detective-crime genre, Bloody Murder, and his scores of short stories about the dapper Francis Quarles. His fiction reflects his favoring of the “modern” psychological and human-interest type of story over the classic clue-puzzle tale (which he disparages quite strongly in Bloody Murder). His stories may not have puzzles to solve, but they almost always have ironies and plot twists to savor. He wrote over seventy-five detective-crime short stories, over thirty of which featured Francis Quarles and over twenty of which appeared in EQMM (extending into the 1990s). Treat, Lawrence eDGAR AwARD—“H as in Homicide,” March 1964 Other EQMM debut stories: “L as in Loot,” January 1964; “H as in Homicide,” March 1964; “C as in Clue,” July 1964; “D as in Detail,” October 1964; “C as in Cop,” December 1964; “B as in Bullets,” March 1965; “H as in Holdup,” June 1965; “R as in Robbery,” August 1965; “A as in Accident,” November 1965; “A as in Alibi,” February 1966; “K as in Knife,” May 1966; “H as in Heist,” July 1966; “M as in Mugged,” November 1966; “F as in Frame-up,” February 1967; “P as

Six. The Acclaimed and the Awarded

09

in Payoff,” April 1967; “B as in Burglary,” July 1967; “C as in Crime,” October 1967; “B as in Blackmail,” February 1968; “S as in Shooting,” May 1968; “T as in Threat,” December 1968; “T as in Trespass,” December 1969; “F as in Fake,” July 1970; “R as in Rookie,” October 1971; “K as in Kidnapping,” December 1971; “B as in Bandit,” April 1972; “M as in Missing,” June 1972; “G as in Garrote,” August 1972; “T as in Thief,” October 1972; “C as in Cutthroat,” December 1972; “R as in Riot,” August 1973; “T as in Trap,” November 1973; “B as in Bludgeon,” April 1974; “B as in Bribe,” June 1975; “V as in Vengeance,” August 1975; “G as in Gun,” November 1975; “P as in Poison,” July 1976; “C as in Crooked,” January 1977; “T as in Terror,” March 1977 Queen credits Lawrence Treat with pioneering, promoting, and developing the modern police procedural, giving it a “feeling of substance and unity in a modern sense” (Introduction, January 1964, p. 6). All thirty-eight short stories of Mitch Taylor, Jub Freeman (lab man), and William Decker (boss) were published first in EQMM between 1964 and 1980 (there was one more story that appeared in 1981). The collection P as in Police, 1970, contained sixteen Taylor short stories, all of which had previously appeared in EQMM. The stories are clean and crisp—“no frills, no furbelows, no fancy stuff, yet meaty and absorbing and with the smack of it- really-could-havehappened” (Introduction, November 1965, p. 127). It is a long way indeed from the “cozies” of Agatha Christie and the “mythic” tales of Sherlock Holmes to the plain, matter-of-fact, daily-life tales of Lawrence Treat. It is to his credit that, plain as they may be, they are full of interest and appeal. walsh, Thomas eDGAR AwARD—“Chance After Chance,” November 1977; “The Closed Door,” May 1978 Other EQMM debut stories: “Guns of Gannett,” Mystery League, December 1933; “Cop on the Prowl,” November 1957; “Dear Lady,” March 1958; “Lady Cop,” December 1959; “Fall Guy,” September 1976; “The Dead Past,” May 1977; “The Killer Instinct,” July 1977; “Mr. Bountiful,” August 1977; “The Sacrificial Goat,” January 1978; “Stakeout,” March 1978; “The Last of the Rossiters,” July 1978; “Killer Bill,” September 1978; “The Long Dark Street,” November 1978; “The Stillness at 3:25,” February 1979; “Paul Broderick’s Man,” April 1979; “ A Hell of a Cop,” August 1979; “Looking Out for Number One,” November 1979; “Old Killeen’s Promise,” January 1980; “The Way It Looks,” July 1980; “Born Gambler,” September 1980

0

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

The stories of Thomas Walsh are very much of the modern, humaninterest type. There are no clues to detect, no puzzle to solve, no battle of wits between the reader and an omnipotent detective or even a by-the-book cop. In this sense, the reader is much more an observer than a participant, sitting back and watching the story unfold while admiring Walsh’s artful narrative and moving portrayal of character, crime, and the human condition. Walsh’s true talent is his ability to deeply engage the reader despite this lack of intellectual puzzle through his poignant portrayal and exploration of human flaws, weakness, and doubt, and, ultimately, strength, triumph, and even salvation. The crime in these stories is not the focus but the pathway to examine and contemplate the human condition with all its failures and triumphs. Walsh was a prolific writer, penning nearly sixty stories in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s in such periodicals as Black Mask, Dime Detective, and Colliers before his first appearance in EQMM with “Cop on the Prowl” in 1957, but Queen recognized his talent almost twenty-five years earlier as Walsh’s “Guns of Gannett” appeared in the third (and next-to-last) issue of Queen’s shortlived Mystery League. Yeats, william Butler nOBeL PRIZe—“The Curse of the Fires and of the Shadows,” March 9 As Queen puts it, “Who would have dreamed that William Butler Yeats wrote prose (highly poetic prose, it is true) that belongs in the mystery genre” (Introduction, March 1966, p. 137). “The Curse of the Fires and the Shadows,” which first appeared in The National Observer, August 5, 1893, is a haunting, supernatural tale—almost fairy-tale—of vengeance for an arrogant and blasphemous act.

Some Authors Famous for Stories in Other Genres Baum, L. Frank: “The Suicide of Kiaros,” November 1954 Though The Wizard of Oz has a couple of murders of witches (by falling house and by melting), “would you ever have imagined, in your wildest dreams, that L. Frank Baum, creator of the Wizard of Oz, and such fabulous characters as the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion, and Tik-Tok, once wrote a straightforward, deadly serious ‘locked-room’ story? Unbelievable and improbable as it seems, it is true” (Introduction, November 1954, p. 41). This “locked-room” murder story, which appeared originally in The White Elephant magazine in September 1897, is hardly a cautionary tale, as the killer prospers from his crime with little remorse or regret.

Six. The Acclaimed and the Awarded



Borges, Jorge Louis: “The Garden of Forking Paths,” August 1948; “The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths,” April 1962 Recognized as one of the most original and significant authors in modern literature, Borges is noted for his metaphysical paradoxes and metaphorical enigmas. Among these are “detective narratives in the manner of Chesterton” (Maurois, Introduction, Labyrinths, 1964), but Queen chose two “crime” parables of the inescapable labyrinth of human life—“I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars” (August 1948, p. 106). Labyrinths, fate, and murder—these two short works by Borges certainly demonstrate Queen’s eclecticism and his tenacity in searching for the unusual. Cary, Joyce: “The Sheep,” November 1967 As in his famous trilogy beginning with The Horse’s Mouth, the longsuffering protagonist in “The Sheep” attains in the end a sort of “triumph of normalcy” in this story of “tough-minded realism, perception, and characterdrawing” (Introduction, November 1967, p. 74). It had appeared only once in print previously—in Texas Quarterly, Winter 1958. Dreiser, Theodore: “The Prince who was a Thief,” March 1945 Queen had to dig deep to find this rare fantastic fable by Theodore Dreiser, that “confirmed realist” and author of An American Tragedy—“your editor confesses that never in his wildest dreams did he hope to offer you a short story by Theodore Dreiser” (Introduction, March 1945, p. 99). This captivating romance à la Scheherazade and the One Thousand and One Nights appeared originally in the Dreiser collection, Chains (1927) but hadn’t been published since. Lincoln, Abraham: “The Trailor Murder Mystery,” March 1952 Maybe Queen’s most surprising discovery of all—a detective-crime story (albeit a narrative of a true occurrence) by the sixteenth president of the United States originally published more than one hundred years earlier (in The Illinois Whig, April 1846) just five years after Poe’s (and the world’s) first detective tale. Millay, edna St. Vincent: “The Murder in the Fishing Cat,” May 1950 “The Murder in the Fishing Cat” reads like Millay’s Pulitzer Prize–winning poetry—“the clear, precise voice and the delicate, almost fragile image; the intensely personal style which is of a simple beauty and beautiful simplicity, and the psychological probing of loneliness and mental fatigue, with their twisting emotional crosscurrents and undercurrents” (Introduction, May 1950, p. 40). This beautifully disturbing exploration of quiet despair was originally published in The Century Magazine in March 1923.

2

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Twain, Mark: “The Stolen white elephant,” July 1943; “A Medieval Romance,” November 1945; “My First Interview with Artemus ward,” May 1952; “Tom Sawyer, Detective,” August–November 1952; “My watch,” May 1954; “what Did Poor Brown Do,” September 1955 There are “detective-crime” incidents in Twain’s famous books about Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, but Twain also wrote a few short stories in the genre including the spoof, “The Stolen White Elephant,” which was omitted from Twain’s A Tramp Abroad because “it was feared that some of the particulars had been exaggerated, and others were not true. Before these suspicions had been proven groundless, the book had gone to press” (Twain quoted in Introduction, July 1943, p. 22). Apparently this fear did not trouble Queen. wells, H.G.: “The Hammerpond Park Burglary,” January 1943; “A Deal in Ostriches,” November 1951; “Mr. Brisher’s Treasure,” April 1956 Regarded by many critics as “one of the titans of Modern English literature” (quoted in Introduction, April 1956, p. 44), Wells was incredibly diverse in his writing—several “serious” novels, social commentaries, satires, and studies of history and science as well as his famous science fiction novels (e.g., War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The First Men on the Moon, The Invisible Man, and When the Sleeper Wakes). He also wrote numerous science fiction and fantasy short stories as well as a few in the detective-crime genre, often with more than a touch of humor or irony, including the three Queen reprinted in EQMM, which appeared first in The Strand and Pall Mall Budget in the 1890s and hadn’t been published again since. whitman, walt: “One wicked Impulse,” January 1954 A rare “crime” story by Whitman, first published in The Democratic Review, July–August 1845, this “find” by Queen, a tale of provoked and “justified” murder, is interesting primarily for its ending, which Whitman had changed for its second appearance in Whitman’s collection Specimen’s Day, 1882, and was retained in the EQMM version. And there were many other well-known, celebrated, and award-winning authors who appeared in EQMM, bringing prestige to the pages of EQMM and helping to validate the detective-crime short story as “real” literature. The list reads like a Literary Who’s Who with, among others, Joan Aiken, Poul Anderson, James Barrie, Stephen Vincent Benet, Algernon Blackwood, Ray Bradbury, Lilian Braun Jackson, Erskine Caldwell, Karel Capek, Miguel de Cervantes, Anton Chekhov, Wilkie Collins, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Dickens, Alexander Dumas, T.S. Eliot, Edna Ferber, F. Scott Fitzgerald, C.S. Forester, John Galsworthy, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Susan Glasgow, Ellen Glaspell, Bret Harte, Ben Hecht, Ernest Hemingway, O. Henry, James Hilton,

Six. The Acclaimed and the Awarded



Shirley Jackson, Franz Kafka, MacKinlay Kantor, Rudyard Kipling, Fritz Leiber, Arthur Machen, Katherine Mansfield, Somerset Maugham, Arthur Miller, A.A. Milne, Edith Nesbit, Liam O’Flaherty, Arthur Quiller-Couch, Edward Arlington Robinson, Damon Runyan, Saki, Mabel Seeley, William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dylan Thomas, James Thurber, Leo Tolstoy, Voltaire, Hugh Walpole, Evelyn Waugh, Daniel Webster, and Edith Wharton.

SeVen

“’Tec Tyros” as Masters of the Future Queen took special pride in the authors, especially the young authors, who had their first story published in EQMM. As was mentioned in the Introduction, he believed that the future hope of the detective short story lay in fresh blood, the fledgling authors who would later become the established detective short story writers. He created a “Department of First Stories” for the issues of EQMM and even had a category in the thirteen years of the Annual EQMM Short-Story Contest which began as “Special Prize for the Best First Story” (one story) but evolved into “Special Awards for Best First Stories” with as many as twenty recipients. Queen was unflaggingly encouraging of these new authors, believing that they would carry the series detective short story genre forward well beyond Queen’s lifetime—“As long as young writers like James Yaffe keep coming on, we need have no fear for the future of the detective story” (Introduction, July 2016, p. 22). With such a welcoming stance from Queen, EQMM received large numbers of submissions from first-time authors, each of which was given full attention with a personal note to each author whether the story was accepted for publication or not. The authors were deeply grateful for such encouragement—“You have made a valuable contribution to the future of the detective story by providing me and others with an opportunity to prove ourselves—for which I will be eternally grateful” (Leonard Thompson in Introduction, July 2016, p. 22). Over the forty years of Queen’s editorship of EQMM, 565 authors had their first story published in EQMM. Of course to become an established author took more than just a debut story, so Queen was often even more excited by the appearance of a second story from a novice author, so he developed a (short-lived) “Department of Second Stories” to encourage and honor follow-ups to debut stories. The great majority of these first-time authors, however, never had another story published, but a few dozen evolved into 

Seven. “’Tec Tyros” as Masters of the Future



key figures in the detective-crime genre. Queen couldn’t have been prouder of these authors or happier for the future of the genre. He did have a special affection for the detective story (as opposed to the crime story), so he was constantly urging new writers who had had a successful detective story debut in EQMM to follow up their original story with others of the same detective, e.g., “Nick Noble [Anthony Boucher], Dr. Sam Johnson [Lilian de la Torre], P. Moran [Percival Wilde], Paul Dawn [James Yaffe], Inspector Magruder [Harold and Jerome Prince]—in the case of each of these, your Editor persuaded the author to make the protagonist a ‘series’ character” (EQMM, May 1945, p. 111). Note: For some authors, stories that were reprinted in EQMM are mentioned, but the only stories listed in the headers are those that debuted in that magazine or in an EQMM anthology.

Author Debut Austin, Margaret nOn-SeRIeS: “Lady’s First,” October 1960; “Introducing Ellery’s Mom,” July 1962; “Murder at Merryoak,” October 1962; “The Caper of the Century,” August 1963; “The Theft of the Black Jupiter,” October 1965 non-Series: Austin was the kind of success story Queen loved—not only did she publish her very first story in EQMM (“Lady’s First”—which it was), but she continued to write for EQMM (with four more stories over the next five years), and her second story, “Introducing Ellery’s Mom,” won a Second Prize in the last EQMM Contest. Perhaps her main appeal is her versatility, ranging from an ironic tale of a henpecked and murderous husband with a Thurber-like ending to “a ’tec tongue-in-cheek” (Introduction, August 1963, p. 99) story of a burglar’s “union” taking over the Chicago underworld with “Runyanesque results” (p. 99). Breen, Jon: Ed Gorgon, parody-pastiche, Clement Boore GORGOn: “Diamond Dick,” October 1971; “Horsehide Sleuth,” November 1971; “The Body in the Bullpen,” May 1972; “The Babe Ruth Murder,” June 1972; “Fall of a Hero,” November 1972; “OldTimers Game,” April 1973; “Malice at the Mike,” October 1973; “Designated Murder,” July 1974; “The 12 Jinx,” May 1978 BOORe: “The Pun Detective,” April 1977 nOn-SeRIeS: “The Crowded Hours,” May 1967; “The Austin Murder Case,” December 1967; “Frank Merriswell’s Greatest Case,” April 1968; “The Lithuanian Eraser Mystery,” March 1969; “The Vanity



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Murder Case,” July 1970; “Green Gravy for the Blush,” March 1971; “The Fortune Cookie,” May 1971; “Gilliam’s Tact,” February 1972; “The House of Shrill Whispers,” August 1972; “The Circle Murder Case,” October 1972; “A Dog in the Merger,” January 1973; “Breakneck,” February 1973; “Champoux vs. Joshua,” July 1973; “The Swedish Boot Mystery,” November 1973; “Hercule Poirot in the Year 2010,” March 1975; “The Flying Thief of Oz,” April 1976; “The Adventure of the Disoriented Detective,” September 1976; “The Drowning Icecube,” May 1977; “Revival in Eastport,” February 1979; “Match Race,” June 1979; “The Problem of the Vanishing Town,” November 1979; “Ruffles vs. Raffles,” June 1980

Gorgon: Ed Gorgon, baseball umpire detective, appeared in nine baseball mystery short stories, all published in EQMM (there were three more published in EQMM after 1980). In the debut story, “Diamond Dick,” Ed Gorgon explains that umpiring and detective work have much in common, which is fortuitous for Gorgon as he is called upon to solve a murder at the ballpark to save his own skin. The solution may be obvious to any reader who is a baseball fan of a certain age, but the story is filled with references to baseball history and classic ballplayers (e.g., Jim Bouton, Ryne Duren, Richie Ashburn, Bo Belinksy, Denny Maclain), so that same fan is entertained and nostalgic. Boore: The biggest crimes in this debut story of Breen’s Clement Boore, the Pun Detective, are probably the murderous puns and the punful murders (“Why was the magician killed at a baseball game? Because his most famous trick involved making his horse hide” [April 1977, p. 47]). non-Series: Breen is best known for his artful, often dead-on and hilarious parody-pastiches of classic fictional detectives including several first published in EQMM. These and a few other parody-pastiches comprised the classic collection Hair of the Sleuthhound, 1982. Here are some: Merrivale/Fell: The humor is broad indeed as Merrimac pursues “an invisible lighter-than-air killer who can walk through walls and leaves no footprints,” “The House of Shrill Whispers” (p. 67). The highlight of this parody may not be the rather lightweight case itself but the hilarious spoof of the locked-room/sealedroom/impossible crime mystery as Merrimac has solved several recent cases, but none quite that perfect classic: “not really my kind of case, though some came close. A rumored seal, a rocked room, a rooked lamb, an impassible chrome, a miracle pablum, and a sealed groom. Close every one of them, but no cigar!” (p. 69). th Precinct: One of Breen’s masterful parodies that appeared in the collection Hair of the Sleuthhound: Parodies of Mystery Fiction, 1982, “The Crowded Hours” was published fifteen years earlier in

Seven. “’Tec Tyros” as Masters of the Future



EQMM. As Breen explained, “The 87th Precinct novels, with their mannered descriptions of an anthropomorphized city, their kidding cop dialogues, and their constant underlining of authenticity, proved a broad target for the parodist. But as far as I know, this story (though followed a few months later by Ron Goulart’s ‘Rink’) was the first to parody the series” (Hair of the Sleuthhound, p. 3). The parodying is broad and funny—“They’ll tell you the city is a female. To some she’s a laughing girl, to some a full, ripe woman; to some a lady, to some a dame, and to more than a few a bitch” (p. 4). Upon reading this story, Ed McBain (the author of the 87th Precinct stories) was generous in his praise—“I reread ‘The Crowded Hours’ with great pleasure, and still found it ‘a fine and funny job.’ I feel the series has changed (for the better, I hope) since you wrote this in 1967, but for the most part you captured the style at that time, and rendered it faithfully” (p. 11). Chambrun and Jerricho: As Queen says in his Introduction to this story (“Champoux vs. Joshua”), “So far as we know, this is the first parody-pastiche written about characters created by Hugh Pentecost [Pierre Chambrun and John Jerricho] … with the parody painted in broad strokes and the pastiche penciled in subtle touches” (July 1973, p. 139). The broad strokes for both characters are right up front for all to see; the subtle penciling is a bit more hidden. Queen: As with most of Jon Breen’s parodies, the humor in “The Lithuanian Eraser Mystery,” is very broad, but true to the Ellery Queen stories, it is mostly linguistic or semantic, even including a dying message. For those readers familiar with the Ellery Queen novels, there are several entertaining “groaners”—The Greek Coughin’ Mystery included. Vance: Vance, with his ponderous footnotes and “pretentious displays of erudition was impossible to deal with completely seriously” (Breen, 1982, p. 73), so even Breen’s most serious Philo Vance pastiches were at least partly parodies as well. Callahan, Barbara non-Series: “The Sin Painter,” August 1974; “Lavender Lady,” April 1976; “November Story,” December 1976; “To Be Continued,” January 1977; “Don’t Cry, Sally Shy,” April 1977; “The Pinwheel Dream,” July 1977; “The Man with the Yellow Hair,” December 1977; “Barbarian at the Gate,” February 1978; “Hidden Springs,” June 1980 Although she explores several styles and themes in her short stories, Callahan often explores the fine line between fiction and reality and the



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

blurring of those lines—television characters and the actors playing them, puppets and their puppeteers. This blurring leads to a form of madness, but perhaps these stories from the 1970s are troubling not because the protagonists are mad but because they may be part of the madness of all of us in these “virtual” times. Queen was especially pleased when beginning writers continued to submit stories to EQMM after their debut and continued to evolve—“In this story she has changed her literary course: it simply means the lady is willing to take chances, the writer Barbara Callahan is growing” (Introduction, February 1978, p. 22). Her second story, “Lavender Lady,” won an Edgar, and she went on to have seven more stories printed in EQMM (and two in AHMM) during our period of interest (then ten more in EQMM from 1983 to 2009). Davidson, Avram nOn-SeRIeS: “The Ikon of Elijah,” December 1956; “The Holy Man,” March 1957; “The Necessity of His Condition,” April 1957; “The French Key,” August 1957; “Circle of Guilt,” March 1958; “The Creator of Preludes,” June 1958; “Thou Still Unravished Bride,” October 1958; “The Dive People,” February 1959; “Where Do You Live, Queen Esther,” March 1961; “Affair at Lahore Cantonment,” June 1961; “Traveller from an Antique Land,” September 1961; “The Traditions of His Family,” April 1962; “Revolver,” October 1962; “Blood Money,” July 1963; “The Price of a Charm,” December 1963; “The Cobblestones of Saratoga Street,” April 1964; “A Quiet Room with a View,” August 1964; “The Importance of Trifles,” January 1965; “The Third Sacred Well of the Temple,” May 1965; “The Restorer of Balance,” September 1965; “The Memory Bank,” June 1967; “The Captain M. Caper,” March 1970; “Manhattan Nights’ Entertainment,” October 1970; “The Trefoil Company,” August 1971; “Summon the Watch,” October 1971; “How Could He Do It,” January 1972; “Rookie Cop,” July 1972; “The Mad Sniper,” January 1973; “Murder Is Murder,” June 1973; “If You Can’t Beat Them,” August 1975; “Crazy Old Lady,” March 1976; “Business Must Be Picking Up,” May 1978 Davidson was a prolific writer of short stories with sixty before 1980 and another eight after, more than half the total appearing in EQMM. “The Necessity of His Condition,” only his third story, won 1st Prize in the 12th Annual EQMM Contest and was followed by two Edgar Award winners within the next two decades—“Affair at Lahore Cantonment” is a clever tale somewhat reminiscent of Carr’s “Gentleman from Paris,” as in both tales a famous literary figure of the times is woven into the plot.

Seven. “’Tec Tyros” as Masters of the Future

9

Davis, Dorothy nOn-SeRIeS: “Spring Fever,” November 1952; “Sweet William,” April 1953; “Born Killer,” November 1953; “Backward, Turn Backward,” June 1954; “A Matter of Public Notice,” July 1957; “Mrs. Norris Visits the Library,” April 1959; “Meeting at the Crossroad,” July 1959; “By the Scruff of the Soul,” January 1963; “Purple Is Everything,” June 1964; “Lost Generation,” September 1971; “Old Friends,” September 1975 non-Series: Davis was one of the most successful authors to debut in EQMM, not necessarily by number of stories but by the percentage that won awards. Six of her first eleven stories published in EQMM won Edgars or prizes in the Annual EQMM contests. Her stories are refreshingly creative, integrating touching character portrayal and interesting mysteries and crimes, often crimes of the heart that sometimes precipitate crimes of the flesh. de la Torre, Lilian: Dr. Sam: Johnson JOHnSOn: “Dr. Sam: Johnson, Detector,” November 1943; “Prince Charlie’s Ruby,” March 1944; “Monboddo’s Ape Boy,” March 1945; “The Wax-Work Cadaver,” September 1945; “The Stolen Christmas Box,” September 1945; “The Flying Highwayman,” August 1946; “The Missing Shakespeare Manuscript,” July 1947; “The Black Stone of Dr. Dee,” February 1948; “The Tontine Curse,” June 1948; “The Frantic Rebel,” December 1948; “The Viotti Stradivarius,” August 1950; “The Triple-Locked Room,” January 1952; “Coronation Story,” July 1953; “The Stroke of 13,” October 1953; “Saint-Germain the Deathless,” January 1958; “The Banquo Trap,” June 1959; “The Resurrection Man,” December 1972; “The Virtuoso Venus,” June 1973; “The Westcombe Witch,” October 1973; “The Blackmoor Unchained,” June 1974; “The Lost Heir,” December 1974; “The Bedlam Bam,” September 1975; “The Aerostatic Globe,” June 1976; “The Spirit of ’76,” January 1977; “Milady Bigamy,” July 1978; “Murder Locked In,” December 1980 Probably the finest of all the historical detective stories—“Your Editor knows of no other historical detective stories that hold a candle to Miss de la Torre’s in scholarship, in humor, in spirit, flavor, or compelling detail” (Introduction, March 1945, p. 46)—these tales of Dr. Johnson and his “Watson,” Boswell, comprise a wonderful ongoing saga rich with the flavors and facts of 18th century Europe. There are thirty-one Dr. Johnson short stories altogether, twenty-nine of which were published in EQMM, three of which were after our period of interest from 1984 to 1990. All the stories were collected in four books: Dr. Sam: Johnson, Detector, 1946 (QQ#00); The

20

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Detections of Dr. Sam: Johnson, 1960; The Return of Dr. Sam: Johnson, 1984; and The Exploits of Dr. Sam: Johnson, 1987. In all these tales, Dr. Johnson “devotes his learning and penetration to the detection of crime and chicanery” (de la Torre in Introduction, November 1943, p. 46), and he does so with the humor, irascibility, and verisimilitude of the historical Johnson and his Boz. These Dr. Johnson stories are fastidious, fascinating, and full of entertainment. “The Viotti Stradivarius” won a “Special Award” in the 4th Annual EQMM Contest; “The Triple-Lock’d Room” won the Special Award for the Best Historical Story in the 6th Annual Contest; “The Stroke of Thirteen” won a 2nd Prize in the 8th Annual Contest; and “Saint-Germain the Deathless” won “Honor Roll” in the 12th Annual Contest. ellin, Stanley nOn-SeRIeS: “The Specialty of the House,” March 1948; “The Cat’s Paw,” June 1949; “Death on Christmas Eve,” January 1950; “The Orderly World of Mr. Appleby,” May 1950; “Fool’s Mate,” November 1951; “The Best of Everything,” September 1952; “The Betrayers,” June 1953; “The House Party,” May 1954; “The Moment of Decision,” March 1955; “Broker’s Special,” January 1956; “The Blessington Method,” June 1956; “The Faith of Aaron Menafee,” September 1957; “You Can’t Be a Little Girl All Your Life,” May 1958; “Unreasonable Doubt,” September 1958; “The Day of the Bullet,” October 1959; “Beidenbauer’s Flea,” February 1960; “The Seven Deadly Virtues,” June 1960; “The 9–5 Man,” November 1961; “The Question,” November 1962; “The Crime of Ezechiele Coen,” November 1963; “The Great Persuader,” March 1964; “The Day the Thaw Came to 127,” March 1965; “Death of an Old-Fashioned Girl,” June 1966; “The Twelfth Statue,” February 1967; “The Last Bottle in the World,” February 1968; “Coin of the Realm,” February 1969; “Kindly Dig Your Grave,” November 1970; “The Payoff,” November 1971; “The Other Side of the Wall,” August 1972; “The Corruption of Officer Avakadian,” December 1973; “A Corner of Paradise,” October 1975; “Generation Gap,” September 1976; “Family Circle,” December 1977; “Reasons Unknown,” December 1978; “The Ledbetter Syndrome,” December 1979; “Just Desserts,” October 1980 Stanley Ellin was one of Queen’s greatest success stories. His debut story—“The Specialty of the House”—won the Special Prize for the Best First Story in the 3rd Annual EQMM Contest, and in the next ten years of the contest, his stories won a 2nd Prize seven times and the 1st Prize once (with “The Moment of Decision”). In addition he won five Edgars, four of which were for stories that hadn’t won prizes in the EQMM contests. His writing is articulate and powerful as human psychology and its

Seven. “’Tec Tyros” as Masters of the Future

2

implications for motivation and crime are explored poignantly, with sympathy but also, at times, with a detached fatalism. “The House Party,” an Edgar winner, is typically searing Ellin, as the protagonist feels trapped in an endless and inescapable “hell” of routine and predictability of his own making—“he could see himself crawling the infinite treadmill of his doom” (Ellery Queen’s Edgar Award Winners, p. 23). In “The Blessington Method,” another Edgar winner, a way out of this “hell” of inevitability is offered, but at a high cost to sanity and morality. In most of his stories, there is a pivotal “Moment of Decision” (winner of the 1st Prize in the 10th Annual EQMM Contest) with life-changing (or life-ending) consequences, although in the story by that name we are left “hanging.” Finney, Jack nOn-SeRIeS: “Widow’s Walk,” July 1947; “It Wouldn’t Be Fair,” November 1951; “The Other Arrow,” January 1956 non-Series: Winner of a Special Prize for first stories in the 2nd Annual EQMM Contest, “Widow’s Walk” was the catalyst for Finney to move from an advertising copywriter to a popular author of fiction, including several stories in Colliers and The Saturday Evening Post and the story that was filmed as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the best-selling time-travel novel, Time and Again, 1970. “The Widow’s Walk,” as Queen points out, illustrates the significance of a well-chosen title. Fish, Robert: Schlock Homes, Lt. Clancy—as Robert Pike HOMeS: “The Adventure of the Ascot Tie,” February 1960; “The Adventure of the Printer’s Inc.,” May 1960; “The Adventure of the Adam Bomb,” September 1960; “The Adventure of the Spectacled Band,” November 1960; “The Adventure of the Stockbroker’s Clark,” March 1961; “The Adventure of the Missing CheyneStroke,” August 1961; “The Adventure of the Artist’s Mottle,” November 1961; “The Adventure of the Double- Bogey Man,” February 1962; “The Adventure of the Lost Prince,” July 1962; “The Adventure of the Counterfeit Sovereign,” June 1963; “The Adventure of the Snared Drummer,” September 1963; “The Adventure of the Final Problem,” February 1964; “The Return of Schlock Homes,” June 1964; “The Adventure of the Big Plunger,” February 1965; “The Adventure of the Widow’s Weeds,” August 1966; “The Adventure of the Perforated Ulster,” February 1967; “The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarters,” September 1967; “The Adventure of the Disappearance of Whistler’s Mother,” February 1968; “The Adventure of the Dog in the Knight,” February 1970; “The Adventure of the Briary School,” February 1973; “The Adventure of

22

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine the Hansom Ransom,” May 1973; “The Adventure of the Great Train Robbery,” April 1974; “The Adventure of Black, Peter,” July 1974; “The Adventure of the Odd Lotteries,” July 1975; “The Adventure of the Elite Type,” July 1977; “The Adventure of the Animal Fare,” October 1977; “The Adventure of the Common Code,” September 1979; “The Adventure of the Patient Resident,” February 1980; “The Adventure of the Belles Letters,” June 1980; “The Adventure of the Short Fuse,” August 1980 CLAnCY: “Clancy and the Subway Jumper,” December 1961; “Clancy and the Paper Clue,” January 1962; “Clancy and the Shoeshine Boy,” June 1962; “Clancy and the Cat’s Eyes,” March 1963 nOn-SeRIeS: “Double Entry,” January 1969; “In a Country Churchyard,” August 1970; “Instead of the Wall,” April 1971; “Don’t Worry, Johnny,” December 1972; “No Rough Stuff,” September 1973; “In the Bag,” November 1975; “The Patsy,” June 1976; “One of the Oldest Con Games,” March 1977; “Muldoon and the Numbers Game,” August 1978; “The Wager,” November 1978; “Punishment to Fit the Crime,” April 1980; “The Booby Trap,” October 1980

Homes: Schlock Homes was certainly one of the most successful and popular detectives to make his debut in EQMM—“Robert L. Fish’s tales of Schlock Homes are the most inventive and acute of all detective-story parodies…. You are not apt to find a funnier book in (or possibly out of) the crime field this year” (Anthony Boucher, New York Times Book Review, back cover of The Incredible Schlock Homes, 1974). Clearly the public still loved the immortal Sherlock Homes and was eager to re-encounter him even if (or perhaps especially if) he was presented in a somewhat “disrespectful” but deeply affectionate way. After the appearance of the first story, thirty-one more hilarious tales followed over the next twenty-two years, all of which were first published in EQMM. The tales proved so popular that two collections were published—The Incredible Schlock Homes, 1966 (QQ#22), and The Memoirs of Schlock Homes, 1974—followed by a comprehensive collection, Schlock Homes: the Complete Bagel Street Saga, 1990, which included nine more recent stories not included in either earlier collection. These stories are filled with illogical deductions, clever (and sometimes groanful) puns, and outrageous solutions that almost always turn out to be wrong. Some of the puns (mostly punful titles and phrases) are even funnier if you are well-read in Doyle’s originals, but are usually still amusing to a reader not versed in the original Holmes and Watson. In the very first story, “The Adventure of the Ascot Tie,” all the qualities that made this Fish canon so popular are in evidence—the prickly but endearing relationship between Holmes and Watson (Watney), the atmosphere of

Seven. “’Tec Tyros” as Masters of the Future

2

19th century London (and a few other places), the affectionate parodypastiche of Schlock’s dazzling deductions and his following of Watney’s unspoken train of thought, and the unending series of puns, especially those that take on added meaning if the reader is familiar with the originals. Watney even refers to numerous unpublished cases (a habit of Doyle’s that fascinated readers of the original tales and led them to endless speculation), all of the titles of which are puns on the titles of the originals. In this story and in all of the following tales, the reader (especially the fan of the originals) gets a knowing chuckle out of such titles as “The Adventure of the Danzig Men,” “The Sound of the Basketballs,” “The Valet of Fir,” and “The Adventure of the Patient Resident,” to say nothing of a few altered famous phrases: We were supposed to go to the zoo this afternoon to watch the parade of the elk and the deer [Watney]. You go alone. Much as I would like to be around when the game is afoot, I’m afraid today it must be duty before pleasure [Homes in “The Adventure of the Elite Type,” July 1977, p. 192]. The case involving Miss Millicent Only, to whom Homes refers, even to this day, as the “Only Woman” [Watney in “The Adventure of the Ascot Tie,” February 1960, p. 3].

Almost all the stories follow the same pattern, as Homes’ amazing solutions to the crimes are subtly shown (to the reader) to be completely wrong as Watney reads of some event in the next day’s newspaper, but to Homes and Watney these newspaper stories are unrelated curiosities that leave Homes innocent, undaunted, and smug in his truth. The classic Doyle tales of Sherlock Holmes are eternally ripe for spoof and have been parodied many times, but Fish is the acknowledged master— “with even more delicious puns and canonical adventures, and with, remarkable fidelity to the ‘classical’ form—gorgeous spoofing!” (Introduction, May 1960, p. 56). Fish won three Edgar Allan Poe Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, and The Robert L. Fish Memorial Award to honor each year’s best short story by a new writer was established by his estate. Clancy: It’s difficult to imagine anything more different from the playful, punful, parody-pastiches of Schlock Homes than the serious, by-the-book, the boys-downtown procedurals of Lieutenant Clancy. In several of these stories the realism is enhanced by a detailed time-line of the unfolding of an investigation, so the reader can see the perspiration as well as the inspiration. Three police procedural novels about Lieutenant Clancy followed shortly after the last of the Clancy short stories. non-Series: In many of the non-series stories, Fish shows that he “has his serious side—one might even say, his gloomy side” (Introduction, August 1970, p. 95). In “In a Country Churchyard,” for example, Fish portrays genuine terror and insidious irony.

2

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Flanagan, Thomas: Major Tennente TennenTe: “The Cold Winds of Adeste,” April 1952; “The Point of Honor,” December 1952; “The Lion’s Mane,” March 1953; “The Customs of the Country,” July 1956 nOn-SeRIeS: “The Fine Italian Hand,” May 1949; “This Will Do Nicely,” August 1955; “Suppose You Were on the Jury,” March 1958 Tennente: The debut Tennente story “The Cold Winds of Adeste” won 1st prize in the 7th Annual EQMM Contest in 1952, and the fourth Tennente story “The Customs of the Country” won a 2nd Prize in the 11th Annual EQMM Contest in 1956. It is easy to see why these Major Tennente stories were so honored, for they are powerfully and eloquently written, delve deeply into character and moral issues, and create a vivid sense of time and place. In the debut Tennente story, the reader can feel the cold winds rushing across the mountain pass from Adeste and the dark struggle of Tennente to resist and overcome the violence and hypocrisy of a land with war and revolution in its immediate past and dictatorship in its present. Something as seemingly simple as stopping the smuggling of arms across the border becomes a lifeand-death struggle of logic against apparent fact. The follow-up Tennente stories are equally powerful and provocative, where brilliant detecting is just an overlay to profound ethical and personal issues, as Tennente tries to stay true as the world changes around him—“He wants more than anything else to live by a code of honor, but it is the dilemma of his time that Tennente lives in a world where honor no longer seems to have any meaning” (Introduction, December 1952, p. 129). All the Major Tennente stories are so beautifully and poignantly written that the reader finds those foreign lands and times almost more real than his own. non-Series: Even before his two prize- winning Tennente stories, Thomas Flanagan won a prize for best first story in the 4th Annual EQMM Contest for his very first story, “The Fine Italian Hand,” which again is set in a foreign land and time—15th Century Italy, the time of the Borgias. Queen says of the eleven winners of the Prize for debut story in 1949 that they “so lavishly and so hearteningly justified our 1945 prediction that the future of the detective-crime story is bright indeed” (Introduction, The Queen’s Awards, 1950). Flanagan was certainly a brilliant illustration of the justification of this prediction, for he followed his debut with six other stories in EQMM, two of which won Contest awards. Gores, Joe: Kearny Associates KeARnY: “The Mayfield Case,” December 1967; “Stakeout on Page Street,” January 1968; “The Pedretti Case,” July 1968; “Lincoln Sedan Deadline,” September 1968; “The Mario Navarro Case,” June 1969; “Beyond the Shadow,” January 1972, “Black and

Seven. “’Tec Tyros” as Masters of the Future

2

Unknown Bard,” April 1972; “The Maimed and the Halt,” January 1976 nOn-SeRIeS: “Darl I Luv U,” February 1963; “A Sad and Bloody Hour,” April 1965; “The Seeker of Ultimates,” November 1965; “Goodbye Pops,” December 1969; “Kirinyaga,” March 1975 Kearny: Although the cases of the Kearny Associates, specialists in fraud, defalcations, and embezzlements, “are told in fictional form, the procedures are factual, and the semi-documentary approach charges the stories with a hard, convincing truth” (Introduction, January 1968, p. 6). There were thirteen of these cases altogether, with eleven published in EQMM, three of which are after our period of interest, 1984–1989. All the stories were collected in Stakeout on Page Street, 2000. The writing is terse and realistic without embellishment—“Bart, I spotted this car from the skip list and tailed it until the guy parked. 1965 Dodge Dart, green, license Baker, X-Ray, Eddy, 1-9-9” (January 1968, p. 7). non-Series: The Edgar-winning “Goodbye Pops” is a moving portrayal of the soft heart and the bonds of memory and human experience within all of us, even within a hardened criminal and jail-bird. Certainly far from the documentary style of the Kearny stories, these non-series tales nonetheless ring solidly and profoundly true with the “facts” of the heart and the human family. Harrington, Joyce nOn-SeRIeS: “The Purple Shroud,” September 1972; “The Plastic Jungle,” December 1972; “My Neighbor,” April 1974; “Things Change,” July 1974; “The Cabin in the Hollow,” October 1974; “Night Crawlers,” January 1975; “Tomato Man’s Daughter,” May 1975; “The Green Patch,” June 1975; “It Never Happened,” September 1975; “Death of a Princess,” November 1975; “Pretty Lady Passes by,” January 1976; “Season Ticket Holder,” March 1976; “Blue Monday,” May 1976; “The Couple Next Door,” August 1976; “Two Sisters,” December 1976; “Grass,” March 1977; “The Old Gray Cat,” December 1977; “Happy Birthday Darling,” February 1979; “A Place of Her Own,” September 1979; “My Friend, Mr. Cunningham,” July 1980 After her story, “The Purple Shroud,” debuted in EQMM in 1972, Queen praised her as “a new and impressive talent and we expect—yes, we expect— great things from her” (Introduction, September 1972, p. 93). And great things he got, for this first story later won an Edgar as did two other of her next five EQMM stories in the next three years. She went on to author thirty-five short stories, most published in EQMM during our period of interest.

2

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Her stories have a gentleness about them that belies their crimes—a sweet middle-aged lady weaving a ceremonial end to her husband’s philandering, a lonely spinster deepening her loneliness but standing up for herself by revenge. In the end, in these stories, the stillness of nature embraces and engulfs the petty acts of men. Hoyt, w.R.: Inspector Squid SQUID: “Inspector Squid’s Most Famous Case,” July 1968; “Inspector Squid’s Second Most Famous Case,” April 1969 After listing a litany of the diverse “types, subtypes, species, subspecies, variety, and subvariety, in the genre and subgenre of the mystery-detectivecrime-suspense stories” (Introduction, July 1968, p. 133) that EQMM published in its first seventeen years, Queen challenges the reader to categorize this debut Inspector Squid story. It’s easy to see Queen’s difficulty, for this tale is a wild, frenetic, slapstick, at times hilarious send-up of the old detective Squid still living in the past futilely trying to impress his female companion with tales of his most famous case, tales which keep jumping from incident to incident and memory to memory in almost stream-of-consciousness fashion, all fogged and befuddled by alcohol and hoped-for lechery (the Inspector’s first name is, not coincidentally, “Letchington”). The second Inspector Squid story is a bit saner, but is still filled with burning moustaches (Squid’s), an alligator under the sink, double entendres, and frenetic repartee. The plots and detections (the little that there are) in both stories are easily forgettable, but the breathless slapstick humor and the laugh-out-loud inanity of Inspector Squid are not easily forgotten. You have to hand it to Queen and EQMM for embracing such a wide variety of stories, even those like these Squid tales that have no easily identifiable variety. James, Breni/Breni Pevehouse: Socrates SOCRATeS: “Socrates Solves a Murder,” October 1954; “Socrates Solves Another Murder,” February 1955 nOn-SeRIeS: “So Refreshing,” May 1957 Socrates: It would be difficult to imagine a better prototype for the Thinking Machine type of detective than a philosopher, especially the philosopher. In the debut Socrates-as-detective story, James does a wonderful job of creating the atmosphere and setting of ancient Greece (“The statue which stood beside the pool, a beautiful Eros that stood on tiptoe as if it were about to ascend on quivering wings over the water that shivered beneath it” [October 1954, p. 75]) and the quiet, reflective, logical character of Socrates as he applies careful attention and logical analysis and, yes, the Socratic method to ferret out the truth in what appears to be murder-by-god. His deductions and detections seem almost supernatural (“You have a daemon

Seven. “’Tec Tyros” as Masters of the Future

2

advising you, Socrates!” [p. 80]), but they are purely human and logical. This story won a “Runner Up Award” in the 9th Annual EQMM Contest. In the second story Socrates solves another murder using the same “Socratic man-hunting method” (Introduction, February 1955, p. 65) of penetrating questions and cool logic. Although the puzzles in both stories are nothing noteworthy, the atmosphere and character ring true, and the philosophy and detection-by-logic are precise and satisfying. Apparently James wrote enough Socrates short stories to comprise a collection “and what a companion volume to Lilian de la Torre’s Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector Breni’s book would make” (Introduction, May 1957, p. 57), but sadly neither this book nor any of these additional stories ever saw publication. Her novel, Night of the Kill, 1961, however, was nominated for an Edgar as best first novel. non-Series: “So Refreshing,” a modern tale of fragrances and poison and the simple psychology of jealousy won “Honor Roll” in the 12th Annual EQMM Contest. Kemelman, Harry: Nicky Welt weLT: “The Nine Mile Walk,” April 1947; “End Play,” October 1950; “The Straw Man,” December 1950; “The Ten O’Clock Scholar,” February 1952; “A Winter’s Tale,” April 1962; “The Man with Two Watches”/“Time and Time Again,” July 1962; “The Adelphi Bowl,” March 1963; “The Man on the Ladder,” November 1967 Harry Kemelman was one of the two or three best success stories of authors first published in EQMM. His debut story—“The Nine Mile Walk” about scholar-detective Nicholas Welt, won a special prize in the 2nd Annual EQMM Contest for best first-published story and elicited Queen’s high praise several years later as “still one of the best first stories we have ever published” (Introduction, October 1950, p. 94). Seven more Welt stories were to follow, all of which were published first in EQMM and later comprised the collection The Nine Mile Walk, 1967 (QQ#2). Kemelman went on to success with his nine novels about Rabbi Small from 1964 to 1987, the first of which, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, 1964, won an Edgar for best first novel, and the second of which, Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry, 1966, spent nine weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. Right from the start with the first short story, it was clear that here was a unique detective whose scholarly approach would not only prove fascinating in solving crimes but would entertain, amuse, intrigue, and sometimes irritate readers as much as it did Welt’s unnamed “Watson.” In this first tale, Professor Welt accuses “Watson” of making false inferences (“My dear boy,” he purred, “although human intercourse is well nigh impossible without inference, most inferences are usually wrong. The percentage of error is particularly high in

2

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

the legal profession where the intention is not to discover what the speaker wishes to convey, but rather what he wishes to conceal” [April 1947, p. 117]), and proceeds to challenge “Watson” to create a random sentence of 10 or 12 words from which he will construct a logical chain of inferences that “Watson” never dreamed of when he created the sentence and that, though completely logical, is not true. From the odd sentence, “A nine mile walk is no joke, especially in the rain,” Welt constructs an intricate and complex chain of inferences that ends up not proving his point (for, astonishingly the inferences turn out to be true, solving a murder and catching the murderer). Although all of the seven following Nicky Welt stories are interesting and entertaining (“Welt can be called the modern Thinking Machine” [Introduction November 1967, p. 6]), the best story is the last—“The Man on the Ladder”—in which Welt shines in all his brilliance and pomposity. There are looks inside the back-biting, jealousy-filled, prestige-oriented world of Academia, clever murder, carefully camouflaged but still visible clues, redherrings, meaningful innuendo, a revealing chess game, blackmail, and a well-trained dog. Who could ask for anything more? McConnor, Vincent: George Drayton DRAYTOn: “Just Like Inspector Maigret,” October 1964; “The Honeymoon Murders,” January 1965; “Old George and the Antiques Mystery,” August 1966 nOn-SeRIeS: “Souffle Surprise,” April 1965; “Pauline or Denise?” November 1966; “The Man Who Collected Obits,” February 1967 Drayton: A charming debut for the 73-year-old retired book publisher and devotee of mystery and detective fiction, George Drayton, this first story is perfectly named, for the “unglamorous, uneccentric, unspectacular … same-as-you-or-I sleuth” (Introduction, August 1966, p. 51) emulates George Simenon’s Inspector Maigret in personality and habit, spending most of his days sitting on a bench in the square in front of his house carefully observing his neighbors and happening upon crime. The title also hints at the intermingling of the fictional and the “real” worlds in Drayton’s life as the unfolding of crime and his detection parallel and mimic the mystery and crime novels he is constantly reading (“deciding between the new Simenon and the new Christie. This would be the perfect morning to read about Paris. Simenon it would be” [October 1964, p. 71]). Although Drayton bemoans his apparent inability to measure up to his fictional counterparts and heroes (“Maigret would have solved the mystery easily, sitting here in the square, looking up at those curtained windows. But he, George Drayton, didn’t have a suspicion of an idea—in spite of all the detective novels he had read and published” [p. 72], in the end, he solves the mystery and without moving from his bench “Just like Inspector Maigret”) (p. 75).

Seven. “’Tec Tyros” as Masters of the Future

29

Two more George Drayton stories followed in EQMM in the next two years, both equally charming as the down-to-earth, Maigret-like character of Drayton is constantly lost in the fictional worlds of the detective novels he reads, emerging just long enough to notice and solve the crimes around him. non-Series: Vincent McConnor had several other non-series detective stories published in EQMM and in AHMM from 1965 to 1978. “Souffle Surprise,” like the Drayton stories, has all the charm and atmosphere of Paris, but just under the surface lies a devious tale of revenge and retribution. McGerr, Pat: Captain Rogan, Selena Mead ROGAn: “This One’s a Beauty,” November 1971; “The Last Check,” March 1972 MeAD: “Match Point in Berlin,” June 1968; “Hide and Seek-Russian Style,” April 1976; “The Writing on the Wall,” August 1978 nOn-SeRIeS: “Murder to the Twist,” October 1962; “Justice Has a High Price,” February 1963; “The Washington D.C. Murders,” September 1963; “Winner Takes All,” December 1972; “Nothing but the Truth,” May 1973; “A Choice of Murders,” January 1974; “In the Clear,” April 1978; “A Day of the Bookmobile,” January 1979; “Chain of Terror,” October 1979; “State Visit,” November 1980 Rogan: Captain Rogan of the police force is a hard-working, by-thebook cop, but he can rise to levels of inspiration when the situation demands, outsmarting even the wiliest defense attorneys. When a seemingly open-andshut case (“This One’s a Beauty”) turns out to have two too many confessions, his clever way through the pretense to the truth makes for a beauty of a story. Mead: McGerr is probably best known for her puzzle mystery novels and her stories of Selena Mead, the “female James Bond” but with a disposition for non-violence. Mead appears in a novel and two dozen short stories, five of which were published in EQMM. “Match Point in Berlin,” a “twisting, turning, throbbing novelet of spies and counterspies” (Introduction, June 1968, p. 6), won 1st Prize in the special 1967 Mystery Writers of American contest. A television series based on the Mead stories was planned but never came to fruition. non-Series: “Justice Has a High Price”—2nd in the 13th EQMM Contest. nevins, Frances: Loren Mensing, Milo Turner MenSInG: “After the 12th Chapter,” September 1972”; “Murder of a Male Chauvinist,” May 1973; “Six Thousand Little Bonapartes,” December 1973; “The Possibility of Termites,” May 1974; “The Ironclad Alibi,” November 1974; “The Benteen Millions,” May 1975; “The Kumquats Affair,” October 1975

0

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine TURneR: “The Matchwit Club,” July 1976; “The Dogsbody Case,” February 1977; “To Catch a Con Man,” October 1977; “Flimflam,” June 1978; “The Western Film Scam,” October 1980 nOn-SeRIeS: “Open Letter to Survivors,” May 1972; “The Case of the Nashing Teeth,” December 1972; “Leapday,” July 1973; “The Scrabble Clue,” July 1974; “Funeral Music,” February 1976; “Evensong,” March 1979; “Black Spider,” August 1979; “The Other Man in the Pinstripe,” May 1980

Mensing: The Mensing stories show Mensing’s (and Nevins’) love of classic movies and his concern for human rights and sympathy for protest in sharp contrast to the rather militant police lieutenant. The problems are straightforward (although in “The Ironclad Alibi” the only person who could be the murderer was also the only person who couldn’t be), the clues are small and easily overlooked (in the debut story the vital clue is actually empty space), and the detection is calm and logical. Turner: The Turner stories were more detective- rogue fiction than straight detective fiction, as Turner is a con man sometimes “forced to solve a mystery to bring off one of his cheating capers.” Early in the series, Turner, like Arsene Lupin before him, turns sleuth leading Queen to say that “it wouldn’t surprise us if, more and more, Milo Turner shifts from conning to detecting … while managing [very like Lupin] to extract a profit at the end of each scam” (Introduction, February 1977, p. 98). non-Series: Francis Nevins wrote scores of non-series detective-crime short stories and many articles about such detectives as Ellery Queen, Nero Wolfe, and Lew Archer. His book Ellery Queen, the Art of Detection, 2013, and his insightful article on Frederic Dannay’s editorship of EQMM in the August 2016 issue of the magazine are among his most inspired work. Owens, Barbara nOn-SeRIeS: “A Cloud Beneath the Eaves,” January 1978; “A Little Piece of Room,” December 1979 Owens is one of the few authors whose very first story (published in EQMM)—“The Cloud Beneath the Eaves”—won an Edgar. It is a rather eerie first-person narrative of a mind “going off the tracks”—violently so—somewhat reminiscent of Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s classic “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Although Owens wrote only one follow-up story during Queen’s years as working editor, she went on to a highly successful writing career with twenty-five more stories after 1980, all of them debuting in EQMM. Pachter, Josh: Ellery Queen Griffin, parody/pastiche GRIFFIn: “Ellery Queen Griffin Earns His Name,” December 1968; “Ellery Queen Griffin’s Second Case,” May 1970

Seven. “’Tec Tyros” as Masters of the Future



PARODY/PASTICHe: “Sam Buried Caesar,” (Wolfe) August 1971; “The Theft of the Spy Who,” (Velvet), September 1972 nOn-SeRIeS: “Invitation to a Murder,” August 1972; “The Tipoff,” December 1972; “Skyjack,” October 1973 Griffin: Josh Pachter, like James Yaffe and Leonard Thompson, was a teenager (16 years old) when his first detective story (of Ellery Queen Griffin, one of 11 children of a police inspector all named in honor of famous fictional detectives) was published in EQMM. Queen, while acknowledging a certain “juvenility” in the writing of all three young authors, was equally enthusiastic about all of the debut stories, believing that all three authors had bright futures as series detective writers—“Josh plans to continue with the characters in his first story and has already roughed out plots for Gideon Fell Griffin and Augustus van Dusen Griffen. Personally, we can’t wait” (Introduction, December 1968, p. 106). Parody/Pastiche: The debut story was followed, not by the Fell or van Dusen stories alluded to, but by a second Ellery Queen Griffin tale (“And who are we to complain?” [Introduction, May 1970, p. 62]). In both Ellery Queen Griffin stories, Pachter attempts to give his detective some of the qualities of the “real” Ellery Queen and, in this second story, even refers to a clue from a dying message in one of Queen’s actual stories, “The GI Story,” but the attempt to emulate Queen’s style and methods is rather formulaic, and the plots are prosaic at best. One more Griffin pastiche follows, featuring Nero Wolfe Griffin, and a non–Griffin pastiche featuring Nick Velvet, but, although having some funny moments, they suffer from some of the same weaknesses of the earlier pastiches. So, a clever idea doesn’t quite come to fruition in these early Pachter stories, but the seeds were planted for a highly successful writing career to follow. non-Series: With “Invitation to a Murder” Pachter began exploring the less constraining field of “straight,” non-detective crime stories, which led him to a highly successful and celebrated career, publishing scores of his own stories mostly in EQMM and AHMM and publishing numerous translations in EQMM (from the Dutch and the Flemish) of other authors. Queen would have been immensely proud of Pachter’s long success—as this monograph is being written, the March/April 2018 issue of EQMM is published with a Pachter story: “It will soon be fifty years since Josh Pachter debuted in EQMM’s Department of First Stories. He was then a teenager, the second youngest person ever to contribute fiction to EQMM. In the years since, he’s produced many more short stories and has been a regular translator for us, from several languages” (p. 132).

2

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Pevehouse, Alan: Dean Weathergay weATHeRGAY: “The Kachina Dolls,” May 1957; “Bay of the Dead,” January 1959 nOn-SeRIeS: “The Fifth Element,” September 1958 weathergay: The debut story about the spry and unconventional octogenarian, Dean Weathergay, former Cathedral Dean and pastor, won the prize for best first story in the 12th Annual EQMM Contest. It is easy to see why it won, for it is an intriguing story about the retired Dean “who is inclined to great enthusiasms” from which his friends and associates are constantly trying to rescue him, as he gets involved in drug smuggling, Kachina Dolls, and murder. The puzzles and the detection are interesting and clever, but the main attractions of this story are the charming and amusing character of Dean Weathergay and the vivid and affectionate portrayal of a Mexican town. In the Introduction to this story, Queen expresses hope and confidence that there will be more of these charming Weathergay tales—“undoubtedly, we will be hearing from Mr. Pevehouse again with more adventures, we hope, of his lovable old doll fancier, Dean Weathergay” (May 1957, p. 43), and indeed there was another, but only one other, Dean Weathergay tale to follow, an equally charming and atmospheric tale of crime and culture in Mexico. This one, “Bay of the Dead,” is of an anthropological expedition in the Gulf of Mexico to collect bones and artifacts from Indian graves. Weathergay’s unquenchable energy and sharp mind help him solve another intriguing puzzle oozing with character and south-of-the-border atmosphere. It’s a shame that there weren’t more Weathergay detective stories, as the irrepressible Dean was much too young to retire, although EQMM did publish one more Pevehouse non-series detective story, “The Fifth Element,” in September 1958. Pierce, John: Inspector Seal SeAL: “Exercise Number One,” September 1971; “Once a Cop,” January 1972; “Abracadabra,” April 1972; “Inspector Seal Reminisces,” August 1972; “Farewell Banquet,” March 1974; “The World’s Softest Touch,” July 1974 non-Series: “The Chicken Game,” July 1968; “Something Damp and Green,” October 1968; “A Child’s Garden of Profits,” December 1968; “The Fur-Lined Goodbye,” March 1969; “Miss Paisley on a Diet,” February 1970; “The Pig Sticker,” January 1971; “The Rope Walker,” October 1971; “One Sock Inside Out,” January 1974 “Walking Hubert Down,” December 1974; “A Case of Jurisdiction,” August 1978 Seal: The six short stories of ex–Inspector Seal, all of which debuted in EQMM, are “wild, wacky, and wondrous … as clever as [they are] zany”

Seven. “’Tec Tyros” as Masters of the Future



(Introduction, March 1974, p. 52). In “Farewell Banquet,” Seal only just manages to avoid his farewell gift—assassination—by deciphering literary codes involving Gulliver’s Travels, aboriginal tribes in New Zealand, Wild Bill Hickok, cultural tabus (not spelled taboos), a midget, and a large musical instrument. non-Series: The ten non–Seal stories, also appearing first in EQMM, are just as unique, strange, and entertaining, for Pierce definitely “thinks his individual way, plots his distinct and different way, and most particular of all, he writes in his own style, a singular and particular style” (Introduction, December 1968, p. 57). Whether a most peculiar diet in the award-winning “Miss Paisley’s Diet” or the dog serving a sentence in “The Fur-Lined Goodbye,” Pierce looks at the world in a delightfully strange and illuminating way. Powell, James: Ambrose Ganelon, Maynard Bullock, Harry Grundig GAneLOn: “Coins in the Frascati Fountain,” May 1970; “The Gobineau Necklace,” March 1971; “Trophy Day at the Chateau Gai,” February 1972; “Ganelon and the Master Thief,” October 1972; “The Oubliette Cipher,” November 1974 BULLOCK: “The Stollmeyer Sonnets,” October 1966; “The Beddoes Scheme,” October 1967; “The Mandalasian Garotte,” July 1972 GRUnDIG: “Bianco and the Seven Sleuths,” June 1975 nOn-SeRIeS: “The Friends of Hector Jouvet,” April 1966; “The Altdorf Syndrome,” May 1969; “The Eye of Shafti,” February 1968; “Maze in the Elevator,” July 1968; “The Daring Daylight Melon Robbery,” October 1968; “The Great Paleontological Murder Mystery,” November 1968; “Kleber on Murder in 30 Volumes,” October 1969; “The Plot Against Santa Claus,” January 1971; “Three Men in a Tub,” September 1971; “The Pomeranian’s Whereabouts,” January 1973; “A Murder Coming,” September 1973; “The Theft of the Fabulous Hen,” November 1973 Ganelon: Unique in the annals of fictional detectives, Ambrose Ganelon is actually four separate detectives of four generations, all with the same name and all head of the celebrated detective agency of the small municipality, San Sebastiano, with a long and storied history. And each of the Ganelons was an entirely different type of detective: Ganelon I was an armchair detective, Ganelon II was scientific, Ganelon III was hard-boiled, and Ganelon IV was of the “impoverished school.” The five stories published in EQMM during our time of interest were supplemented by a couple other stories about San Sebastiano but not explicitly about any of the Ganelons, while the Ganelon saga was extended and deepened by twenty-nine more short stories published in EQMM from 1981 to 2013 and by the collection A Pocketful of Noses: Stories of One Ganelon or Another, 2009, with twelve Ganelon short stories.



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

This saga certainly fulfilled Queen’s hope after the debut story—“We certainly look forward to another deeply challenging and gently ironic story from Mr. Powell” (Introduction, April 1966, p. 50). The stories are rich with a vividly imagined and rather fantastical “history,” laugh-out-loud images (e.g., “a gang of Serbian midgets disguised as chimney sweeps” [October 1972, p. 55]), and clever epigrams (e.g., “logic by itself was like a bear in a zoo— logic lost its vigor and played tricks to please the crowd” [May 1970, p. 130]). Bullock: In all his stories, Powell shows a highly “unusual and individualistic point of view” (Introduction, Masterpieces of Mystery: Amateurs and Professionals, 1978, p. 256). The debut Bullock story—“The Stollmeyer Sonnets”—is typical (i.e., typically unique!) as Bullock, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, investigates a stamp scandal that could destroy three countries and stamp collecting as we know it, a pistol disguised as a lighter disguised as a pistol, a man shot by a sandwich, and a corpse hidden in a bubble bath. San Marino, Monaco, and Liechtenstein will never be the same. non-Series: Whether Ganelon or Bullock or non-series, Powell’s stories are truly one-of-a-kind—ironic, gently humorous, bizarre, even outrageous. Queen’s assessment of Powell as “one of the most promising new talents in the mystery field” (Introduction, May 1969, p. 144), was certainly prophetic as he became one of the most successful authors ever to debut in EQMM with over 130 short stories (more than 100 of which were after 1980), all but one of which debuted in EQMM. Perhaps Powell’s greatest strength was his ability to take an “old chestnut” (e.g., a precious jewel stolen from the eye of a religious idol) and “roast” it on a modern fire with a completely unexpected, and often preposterous (yet logical) twist. Prince, Harold, and Jerome: Inspector Magruder MAGRUDeR: “The Man in the Velvet Hat,” May 1944; “The Finger Man,” January 1945; “The Watcher and the Watched,” August 1946; “Can You Solve This Crime,” September 1950 These four stories comprise the detective opus of the Prince brothers— “one of the most promising collaborations among the new writers of detective stories” (Introduction, January 1945, p. 77). The first two stories, especially the debut tale, are remarkable for their “merging of detection and horror in a staccato style that was blood-brother to the stream-of-consciousness technique” (Introduction, August 1946, p. 96). Even Queen’s praise is insufficient to convey the haunting, brooding, frenetic quality of “The Man in the Velvet Hat” with its rapid-fire, sensory-laden descriptions and breathless story-line. The first two stories were so strange and dark that Queen called the authors “The Princes of Darkness” and, perhaps concerned that the tales were too much for readers, suggested to the authors that they tone down the style and leave behind the “expressive phrasing and word-color probing”

Seven. “’Tec Tyros” as Masters of the Future



(Introduction, August 1946, p. 96). They agreed to do this, and the resulting “more orthodox” third story was, according to Queen, their most popular, winning a 4th Prize in the 1st Annual EQMM contest. Four years intervened before the last story was submitted, which won a 3rd Prize in that year’s contest. So, it would seem that their more conventional stories, still highly creative and gripping, were even more popular and critically acclaimed than the first two, but there is something profoundly special about the first two—“The Man in the Velvet Hat” was one of the most remarkable, eerie, striking, and memorable tales ever published in EQMM, and “The Finger Man” was almost as good. Rafferty, S.S.: Jeremy Cork and Chick Kelly CORK: “Murder by Scalping,” July 1973; “Captain Cork’s Second Case,” November 1974; “The Margrave of Virginia,” August 1975; “The Rhode Island Lights,” September 1975; “The Bright Silver of Maryland,” October 1975; “The New Jersey Flying Machine,” November 1975; “The Georgia Resurrection,” February 1976; “The Witch of New Hampshire,” May 1976; “The Pennsylvania Thimblerig,” August 1976; “The Christmas Masque,” December 1976 KeLLY: “Hang in, Chick,” January 1974; “Call ’Em, Chick,” April 1974; “Right on, Chick,” July 1974; “Show ’Em, Chick,” September 1974; “Press on, Chick,” February 1975; “Live and Let Live, Chick,” May 1975; “Play It Cool, Chick,” July 1975; “Deal ’Em, Chick,” January 1976; “Keep ’Em Laughing, Chick,” March 1976; “Buzz ’Em, Chick,” June 1976; “Curtain Going Up, Chick,” June 1977; “Money Talks, Chick,” June 1979 nOn-SeRIeS: “No Visible Means,” December 1977 Cork: The debut Jeremy Cork story, “Murder by Scalping,” sets the tone and context for this charming series of Pre-Revolutionary Colonial America detective stories. The reader can “smell” the vividly and lovingly described historical period and colonial setting, which provide the backdrop for Captain Cork’s adventures in crime and detection, which he affectionately calls “social puzzles.” Cork’s “M-O-M Theory” of crime and detection (Means, Opportunity, and Motive) aligns him with a long line of classic, clue-puzzle, fictional detectives. Queen points out that Cork is that rarity—a true, “of-the-soil” American detective: “as homegrown as Melville Davisson Post’s Uncle Abner and William Faulkner’s Uncle Gavin, as American as James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking and Manly Wade Wellman’s Indian detective, David Return” (Introduction, November 1974, p. 49). Fatal Flourishes, 1979, which collected thirteen of the Cork stories (including all but the first two of those published earlier in EQMM) was



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

included in Douglas Green’s additions to Queen’s Quorum (1990)—a list of the most important books of detective short stories. Kelly: Rafferty wrote eighteen Chick Kelly stories, twelve of which appeared In EQMM, the other six appearing in AHMM. As you might suspect from Kelly’s occupation as stand-up comedian and the exclamatory, slangy titles of the stories, the “Chick” stories have a breezy, extroverted, “hip” feeling to them with a flippant humor—“A penny earned is another penny toward a lawsuit” (January 1974, p. 27). Reach, Alice: Father Crumlish CRUMLISH: “In the Confessional,” June 1962; “The Ordeal of Father Crumlish,” April 1963; “The Gentle Touch,” December 1963; “The Heart of Father Crumlish,” June 1964; “Father Crumlish and the Cherub Vase,” October 1965; “Father Crumlish and God’s Will,” May 1966; “Father Crumlish and the Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing,” October 1966; “Father Crumlish and His People,” May 1967; “Father Crumlish Celebrates Christmas,” January 1968; “Father Crumlish Defies the Impossible,” January 1969; “The Golden Gloves Watch,” April 1969; “Father Crumlish Remembers His Poe,” July 1969; “Father Crumlish’s Hot Summer,” September 1969 Alice Reach wrote seventeen detective-crime short stories, thirteen of which feature Father Crumlish, the Catholic Priest. All of these Crumlish stories were published first (and exclusively) in EQMM. Her other four stories were non-series and appeared in AHMM and The Saint Detective Magazine. From the first story through the last, Father Crumlish is established as a compassionate, sometimes world-weary, defender of his flock, who believed “his mission on earth was to meet the Devil head-on. In victory, he humbly knelt to thank him. In defeat, he prayed for greater strength” (“The Ordeal of Father Crumlish,” Masters of Mystery: Detective Directory II, p. 133). The plots, the clues, the detection, the atmosphere, the characters—they all are thick and nostalgic with Midwestern American culture in the 1960s. Revesz, etta nOn-SeRIeS: “Like a Terrible Scream,” May 1976; “Devil Over Your Shoulder,” November 1979; “The Look-Alike Murders,” May 1980 Revesz won an Edgar for her first story, “Like a Terrible Scream,” that debuted in EQMM. It is a remarkable story of innocence and faith and their corruption by prejudice and poverty told in the hesitant voice of an uneducated thirteen-year-old Mexican boy. Purity defiled and innocence betrayed by the harsh realities of life leads to a heart-breaking gift from the boy to his sister—“to lose your star when you are thirteen is to walk blind on the earth.

Seven. “’Tec Tyros” as Masters of the Future



Better this way than to see your star fall from the heavens and end in mud” (Ellery Queen’s Edgar Award Winners, 1992, p. 118). Schweik, Robert: Professor Engel ENGEL: “The Appearance of Fact,” March 1974; “The Thumbtack Puzzle,” January 1977; “Imagine a Murder,” June 1978 In Schweik’s debut story “The Appearance of Fact” Professor Engel establishes his approach to detection—take an appearance that others perceive as fact and postulate a different fact that could have created it, then (and only then) verify that alternative fact with outside corroboration. This first story demonstrates this “armchair” approach brilliantly. It was three years until the second story appeared, but according to Queen “the second story was well worth waiting for, since, like the first story, it is also classical in concept and execution” (Introduction, January 1977, p. 95). By “classical” Queen means a pure deduction type of story—“a welcome refresher and reminder of the ‘golden age’ of detective fiction” (p. 95). Queen draws comparisons with Jacque Futrelle’s Professor van Dusen, Orczy’s Old Man in the Corner and Harry Kemelman’s Professor Nicky Welt. Although these classic fictional detectives were “armchair” deducers like Professor Engel, the comparison with Nicky Welt seems most apt, especially to the debut Welt story, “The Nine Mile Walk,” 1947, for in that story as in the three Engel stories, the detective undergoes a mental exercise in which he hypothesizes a possible alternative sequence of events that could have produced the same outcome, amazingly a hypothesis that turns out to be true and to solve a murder. Segre, Alfredo: Bastia BASTIA: “Justice Has No Number,” April 1948 nOn-SeRIeS: “The Roses in Black Velvet,” January 1949 Bastia: Although Segre wrote only two detective-crime short stories (both published only in EQMM), his first—“Justice Has No Number”—won the 1st Prize in the 3rd Annual EQMM Contest. It is a deeply atmospheric story of the numbers that make sense of the world, the organ-grinder, and his remarkable “Watson”—he of only one word, “but it is the almighty word, the right word” (Introduction, Queen’s Awards, 3rd Series, 1950, p. 18). Slesar, Henry nOn-SeRIeS: “Alibi on the Steve Allen Show,” May 1956; “A Victim Must Be Found,” June 1956; “A Trip to Florida,” October 1956; “The Morning After,” February 1957; “M Is for the Many,” March 1957; “The Symbol of Authority,” May 1957; “The Mad Killer,” June 1957; “Personal Interview,” December 1957; “Ten Percent of Murder,” September 1958; “Not the Running Type,” January 1959; “The



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Crooked Road,” September 1960; “The Man in the Next Cell,” February 1961; “The Accomplice,” April 1961; “The Dirty Detail,” July 1961; “Museum Piece,” February 1962; “Mr. Justice,” September 1962; “The Return of the Morresby’s,” January 1964; “Federal Offense,” April 1964; “The Horse That Wasn’t for Sale,” May 1964; “The Cop Who Loved Flowers,” November 1966; “Don’t I Know You,” September 1968; “The Haunted Man,” April 1974; “The Memory Expert,” August 1974; “The Kidnaping,” January 1975

non-Series: Henry Slesar certainly fulfilled Queen’s early assessment as “one of the most promising new writers in the field” (Introduction, March 1957, p. 108), as he became one of the most prolific authors ever to have debuted in EQMM, having almost 200 detective-crime short stories published from 1956 to 2002, mostly in AHMM and EQMM. Most of his stories are short, terse narrations of crime more suggestive than explanatory, more innuendo than explication. These tales are the furthest thing from the classic cluepuzzle, but the reader is still challenged—not so much intellectually as emotionally—for many of the tales leave a lingering sense of futility and despair. wolson, Morton: Inspector Quin QUIn: “The Attacker,” January 1954; “The Glass Room,” September 1957 “The Attacker,” the debut story of Inspector Quinn, is a taut, tense, brooding tale of a series of vicious attacks on women by an unknown man and of a desperate attempt to find him. Queen calls this story “tough, sinewy, realistic, sexy, atmospheric, introspective—it has that private-eye kind of personal involvement that we have come to associate with the hardboiled school” (Introduction, January 1954). The follow-up story—“The Glass Room”—is as different from the first Inspector Quinn story as could be imagined—the intensity and brooding qualities are replaced by parody and sarcasm as several popular fictional detectives and their authors are skewered and ridiculed. Nero Wolfe, Ellery Queen, Hercule Poirot, and the impossible crimes of John Dickson Carr are lampooned, e.g., “I ain’t got the language to say what I think of this guy who’s always hocusin’ up impossible situations … like a room that’s been empty sealed for a hundred years, its windows warped shut, the bolt on the door rusted solid, and no other way in” (September 1957, pp. 36 and 39). The satire is mildly amusing, but it is a shame that the brooding, intense, haunting qualities of “The Attacker” which drew the reader into a personal involvement with the story are completely absent; perhaps Wolton felt the same regret, for this second tale of Inspector Quinn is Wolton’s last detective story—not only of Inspector Quinn but of any kind.

Seven. “’Tec Tyros” as Masters of the Future

9

Yaffe, James: Paul Dawn, Mom DAwn: “The Department of Impossible Crimes,” July 1943; “Mr. Kiroshibu’s Ashes,” March 1944; “The Seventh Drink,” September 1944; “Cul de Sac,” March 1945; “The Problem of the Emperor’s Mushrooms,” September 1945; “The Comic Opera Murders,” February 1946 MOM: “Mom Knows Best,” June 1952; “Mom Makes a Bet,” January 1953; “Mom in the Spring,” May 1954; “Mom Sheds a Tear,” October 1954; “Mom Makes a Wish,” June 1955; “Mom Sings an Aria,” October 1966; “Mom and the Haunted Mink,” March 1967; “Mom Remembers,” January 1968 nOn-SeRIeS: “On the Brink,” August 1953; “One of the Family,” May 1956 Dawn: Of all the authors who made their debut in EQMM, James Yaffe is one of Queen’s (and EQMM’s) greatest success stories, though one filled with challenges and setbacks. It certainly demonstrated Queen’s love of the classic clue-puzzle form and his fierce loyalty and support of young authors. When Yaffe’s first classic clue-puzzle, impossible crime story of Paul Dawn, head (and only member) of the Department of Impossible Crimes, was published in 1943, Yaffe was a 15-year-old New York City high-school student. Five more Paul Dawn stories followed in the next 2½ years, all of which demonstrated Yaffe’s “talent for ingenuity and youthful spontaneity that are irresistible” (John D. Carr in Introduction, July 1943, p. 48) as well as Queen’s passionate championing and encouragement of young talent. However, with the exuberance and ingenuity of youth also came some flaws in construction (“I was pretty sloppy and inaccurate from time to time—for two of the stories Fred Dannay had to append an editor’s note inviting the reader to figure out the big logical flaw that rendered them totally invalid. But I was also from time to time fiendishly ingenious” (Yaffe in Introduction to his My Mother the Detective, 2016). In the second Dawn story to be published—“Mr. Kiroshibu’s Ashes”— there was an inexplicable action on the part of the murderer, and in the fourth—“Cul de Sac”—Yaffe “pulled a collosal ‘boner,’ … and your Editor was, definitely and indefensibly, an accessory for permitting the blunder to slip though. This lack of basic knowledge (known to most high school students) invalidated the entire solution” (Introduction, September 1945, p. 88). What made it even worse was that Queen had first rejected this story for weaknesses of construction and had “proceeded to discuss this story in all its painful details” with Yaffe and had suggested several revisions and then had praised Yaffe for agreeing with “every criticism your editor had catapulted into the phone” and for painstakingly reworking the story while sick in a

0

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

hospital bed. Despite all the attention, the flaw made it through unscathed, much to the chagrin (and perhaps, in some cases, the delight) of alert readers. But despite this embarrassment for Yaffe and for Queen, Queen’s support for the young author and for the Paul Dawn stories never flagged—“But through thick and thin, as the letters from readers mounted to flood level, young Yaffe continued to be our favorite boy author. We do not lose faith ever” [p. 89]). Instead of losing faith, Queen urged Yaffe to “write another story and write the blanket-blank best story you ever wrote.” The resulting story—“The Problem of the Emperor’s Mushrooms”—was indeed Yaffe’s best story, an ingenious and brilliant story of the solution to a 2000-year-old impossible crime and the simultaneous solving of a contemporary crime that hadn’t yet occurred. Queen was exultant in Yaffe’s vindication—“Here is James Yaffe’s new story, and when you read it, you’ll be seeing young Jimmy rising from the canvas” (p. 89). This experience with “Cul-de-Sac,” however, may have contributed to Yaffe’s tiring with the clue-puzzle type of detective story as he wrote only one more Dawn story—“The Comic Opera Murders,” February 1946—before leaving Dawn and this type of detective story altogether. In his reflective introduction to My Mother the Detective, 2016, Yaffe explains that after 1946 his interest in the detective story changed (paralleling the changes the detective story at large was going through in the 1940s)—from fascination with the classic clue-puzzle with little attention to character to deep interest in the more realistic exploration of character and culture within the detective story framework. From 1952 to 1968, a series of “Mom” stories that explored Jewish culture were published in EQMM after which Yaffe turned to the even more realistic non-detective novels and plays (on and off Broadway) for which he is best known. Mom: The stories of Mom reflect Yaffe’s second phase of interest in detective stories, having made the transition from the “pure puzzle” of the Paul Dawn stories to more interest in character and (Jewish) culture. Mom is a wise woman with a sharp (often sarcastic) wit and a common sense approach to solving mysteries—“Mom is usually able to solve over the dinner table crimes that keep the police running around in circles for weeks” (June 1952, p. 20). She doesn’t have a very high opinion of her son’s detective ability or detectives in general: “But this detective work, this figuring out who killed who, and playing cops and robbers like the kiddies in the park, this is no work for a grown-up man. For all the brains it takes, you might as well be in business with your uncles” (p. 19). Ironically, while Yaffe, in the Mom stories was leaving behind the “pure puzzle” for more character development and social commentary, Queen lauded these stories as exemplifying the classic deductive armchair detection: “for in this rather chaotic period in ‘the life and times of the detective story’—

Seven. “’Tec Tyros” as Masters of the Future



when not only publishers and critics but many writers themselves consider a ‘mystery,’ a ‘detective story,’ a ‘tale of suspense,’ and a ‘thriller’ virtually synonymous, it is reassuring to discover that some ’tec traditions are still being kept alive and vital; that some classic patterns are neither dead nor moribund” (Introduction, June 1955, p. 23). He goes on to praise the Mom stories for combining the two classic detective methods—the intuitional and the logical. The eight Mom stories that first appeared in EQMM (“Mom Makes a Wish” won a 2nd prize in the 10th Annual EQMM Contest, while “Mom Knows Best” and “Mom in the Spring” won 3rd prizes in the 7th and 9th Annual contests) were collected in My Mother, the Detective, 1997. Five years later, Mom appeared in a new story commissioned by Crippen and Landru (“Mom Lights a Candle”), which then appeared along with the original eight stories in the new edition of My Mother, the Detective in 2016. Given all the drama in Yaffe’s experience with EQMM with his Paul Dawn stories, Yaffe’s dedication to Queen in this last edition of the collection (published just a year before Yaffe’s death) is especially touching: “This is the book you said you wanted somebody to publish someday. It owes its existence, of course, to the enthusiasm and dedication of the publisher, Douglas Greene, but first of all to your skill as an editor and your generosity as a friend. That was over 40 years ago. I was too young and foolish in those days to appreciate what you did for me. How I wish I could thank you now” (My Mother the Detective, 2016). non-Series: Queen calls “On the Brink” an illustration of Yaffe’s “third phase” of development in the detective-crime story—from “clever but artificial” [the Paul Dawn stories] to “retained the ingenuity but diluted the artificiality” [the Mom stories] to “a story that forgoes cleverness for cleverness’s sake, a story based on character and on emotional and psychological content” (Introduction, August 1953, p. 46). “On the Brink,” which won a 3rd Prize in the 8th Annual EQMM Contest, is indeed at another level than Yaffe’s earlier stories, addressing the potential for evil in all of us and the critical need for us to refuse to engage evil with more evil. Young, Alan: Professor Ponsonby POnSOnBY: “Letter from Mindano,” March 1968; “Reflection on Murder,” October 1968; “The Secret of the Golden Tile,” June 1969; “Ponsonby and the Shakespeare Sonnet,” October 1969; “Ponsonby and the Dying Words,” August 1970; “Ponsonby and the Classic Cipher,” December 1971; “Child’s Play,” January 1972; “Ponsonby and the Ransom Note,” June 1972; “To See Death Coming,” April 1973; “Truth Will Out,” June 1974; “Incident on a Bus,” February 1975 nOn-SeRIeS: “The Absolutely Safe Safe,” January 1970

2

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Ponsonby: From the very beginning of the debut story, it is apparent that Young is a mature writer with a great love of the English language and a finely honed skill with words and syntax. An English instructor with advanced degrees in Literature, Young uses his scholarship in language and etymology as part of the plot device, as the dying professor in the story uses his knowledge and love of etymology and Shakespearean English and the evolution of word meanings to leave a dying clue that Professor Ponsonby is able to de-code and interpret. The Shakespearean scholarship is fascinating, and the plot sustains interest. This is a case where Queen’s enthusiastic and optimistic assessment (“How can this man miss if he but persist…. It is triply delightful to report that Mr. Young is planning more puzzles for Ponsonby to which we, for two, look forward eagerly” [Introduction, p. 99]) turns out to be prophetic as over the next seven years Young followed Ponsonby’s debut with ten other stories, in most of which the literary scholarship continues to intrigue and is deftly integrated into the plot and the detection without much lecturing or didacticism. As the Ponsonby stories continued to come in and maintained their literary and detective interest, Queen was enthusiastic in his praise—“Long may the retired professor decode, decipher, and detect” (Introduction, June 1969, p. 67). As Queen avows, “Professor Ponsonby gains in stature with each new story” (Queen Introduction, October 1969, p. 40), as his erudition about Shakespeare, Thoreau and the Transcendentalists, Poe, Carroll, and other literary figures is key to his solving the puzzles and crimes that come his way. Finally, in the last Professor Ponsonby story, the literary and language scholarship is left behind, and only a rather ordinary story remains. It appears that Young’s reservoir of literary references and/or his passion for intertwining scholarship with the classic detective story have run out, so it is a good time for the retired English professor to retire from detecting. non-Series: “The Absolutely Safe Safe” is, in a way, about a code of a different sort—the more conventional “code” of a burglar-proof safe with a complex combination—but it turns out to be vulnerable to a clever crook using human nature to break it.

eIGHT

Other Significant Debuts As we’ve seen in Chapter Seven, EQMM and its anthologies were a springboard for some of the most noted new authors of detective-crime short stories. Of the over 550 authors who had their first short story published in the magazine, a couple dozen went on to “fame and fortune” in the detectivecrime genre—in prize-winning short stories, novels, drama, film, and criticism. Clearly Queen had a profound effect on encouraging and promoting novice authors, engaging new readers, and helping both authors and readers keep the genre alive and well. But publishing authors’ first stories was not the only way that Queen promoted authors and their stories and the detective-crime genre through debuts. He also encouraged established authors to create new detectives to appear in EQMM and to “translate” some of their famous “novel” detectives into the short story form for EQMM. And, of course, as we’ve seen in the chapters on “The Old Masters” and “The New Masters,” he was sometimes able to persuade established authors to write new stories especially for EQMM. It is clear from the extensive list of famous fictional detectives who appeared in a never-before-published short story in EQMM that Queen and his magazine had a reputation for being an important stage on which detective fiction and its authors could “play” to a large and receptive audience. This is especially striking given all the competitor magazines that sprang up in response to EQMM’s great success. When EQMM was first published, the “pulps” were the main competition, but by the mid–1950s there were scores of American and British competitors, including such well-known periodicals as the Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (December 1956–April 1976), the John Creasey Mystery Magazine (August 1956–April 1965), The Saint Detective Magazine (Spring 1953–October 1967), and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine (September 1956–1985). Notice that EQMM preceded and has outlived them all, including many others that lasted only a few issues. Within a few years from its inception in 1941, EQMM had gone from bimonthly to monthly and had become the primary voice and strongest proponent and champion for detective and mystery short stories. 



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Altogether over eighty series detectives who had already appeared in short stories had at least one short story make its debut in EQMM. It is apparent that authors with well-established detectives saw the benefits of publishing new stories about that detective in EQMM, and all of these EQMM debuts gave sustenance and new life to the detective-crime genre and to the short story form. In this chapter, we examine a few of the especially significant debuts of already established authors that Queen published (and often solicited). Asimov, Isaac: debut of detectives Black widowers: “The Acquisitive Chuckle,” January 1972; “The Phony PhD,” July 1972; “The Man Who Never Told a Lie,” July 1972; “The Matchbook Collector,” December 1972; “The Biological Clock,” March 1973; “The Obvious Factor,” May 1973; “The Pointing Finger,” July 1973; “A Warning to Miss Earth,” September 1973; “The Six Suspects,” December 1973; “When No Man Pursueth,” March 1974; “Quicker Than the Eye,” May 1974; “A Chip of the Black Stone,” July 1974; “All in the Way You Read It,” September 1974; “Confessions of an American Cigarette Smoker,” December 1974; “The One and Only East,” March 1975; “The Cross of Lorraine,” May 1976; “The Case of Income Tax Fraud,” September 1976; “The Sports Page,” April 1977; “The Next Day,” May 1978; “A Matter of Irrelevance,” March 1979; “None So Blind,” June 1977; “To the Barest,” August 1979; “64 Million Combinations,” May 1980; “The Man Who Pretended to Like Baseball,” June 1980; “The Good Samaritan,” September 1980 Isaac Asimov, most famous for his science fiction novels in the Foundation Series and in the Galactic Empire Series, his non-fiction works popularizing and explaining science, and hundreds of mostly science fiction short stories, also created the series characters The Black Widowers who debuted in EQMM in “The Acquisitive Chuckle,” January 1972. He was to go on to write forty-three Black Widowers short stories, all but one of which was published in EQMM and twenty-four of which were published in EQMM during our period of interest. After appearing in EQMM, the stories were collected in Tales of the Black Widowers, 1974; More Tales of the Black Widowers, 1976; Casebook of the Black Widowers, 1980; Banquets of the Black Widowers, 1984; and Puzzles of the Black Widowers, 1990. Although science fiction was always his first love, he “felt the itch to write mysteries that had nothing to do with science. One thing that held me back, though, was the fact that mystery had evolved in the last quarter-century and my tastes had not. Mysteries these days are heavily drenched in liquor, injected with drugs, marinated in sex, and roasted in sadism, whereas my

Eight. Other Significant Debuts



detective ideal is Hercule Poirot and his little gray cells” (Asimov, Introduction in Tales of the Black Widowers, p. 10). Fortunately for Asimov and his readers, EQMM contacted him asking if he was interested in writing a short story for the magazine: “Of course I jubilantly agreed, because I thought that if they asked for one, they couldn’t possibly have the cruelty to reject it once written, and that meant I could write my own kind of story—very cerebral” (pp. 10–11). Although he wrote his “own kind of stories” (a perfect match for Queen’s taste for the classic clue-puzzle), his “own kind of titles” were invariably changed by Dannay— something Dannay was renowned for, much to the chagrin of some authors (see Christianna Brand). Asimov, however, claimed to not care, for “I always look forward to book publication, in which I can change the titles back to what they should be. Sometimes I don’t [change them back] as, on rare occasions, an editorial change of title meets my approval” (p. 13) (as with the case of the debut story, which Dannay changed from “The Chuckle” to “The Acquisitive Chuckle”). All the Black Widowers stories follow the same pattern established in the debut story—one of the members of the Black Widowers Club brings an “unsolvable” mystery to the group (five professional men who are mystery aficionados and their waiter), challenging them (and readers) to unravel the mystery with pure logic and deduction. More often than not, the waiter turns out to be Holmes with five “Watsons.” The problems are puzzling, and the solutions are always completely logical, though sometimes they hinge on such fine points (e.g., of semantics) that they seem to be too “small” for the magnitude of the problem. Barker, Shirley: debut of stories nOn-SeRIeS: “The Fog on Pemble Green,” May 1955; “The Darkened Stair,” December 1957 Although a well-known and accomplished historical novelist, Shirley Barker had never written a detective-crime short story until “The Fog on Pemble Green” debuted in EQMM in 1955 (and won a 2nd Prize). In that story, and in her only other venture into the genre, “The Darkened Stair,” she continues in the “historical” vein, the former taking place in 17th century New England just after the Salem witch hunts, and the latter unfolding on the streets of 16th century London. It is quite an accomplishment for the first attempt at a detective-crime short story to win an EQMM Contest prize, but it is easily understood when reading this period piece, for the “historical data and 17th century flavor are compelling and convincing” (Introduction, May 1955, p. 125). The same could have been said of her second story, for the reader can feel the time and place vividly as they are as much characters in the tale as are the murderer and the “detective.”



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Bentley, Phyllis: debut of stories PHIPPS: “Chain of Witnesses,” May 1954; “Telegram for Miss Phipps,” June 1956; “Miss Phipps Goes to School,” November 1957; “A Midsummer Night’s Crime,” January 1961; “Miss Phipps Improvises,” October 1961; “Message in a Bottle,” May 1962; “Miss Phipps Discovers America,” March 1963; “Miss Phipps Jousts with the Press,” December 1963; “Miss Phipps in the Hospital,” July 1964; “Miss Phipps and the Invisible Murderer,” November 1966; “Miss Phipps Goes to the Hairdresser,” December 1967; “Miss Phipps and the Nest of Illusions,” August 1969; “Miss Phipps Exercises Her Métier,” February 1971; “Miss Phipps Is Too Modest,” December 1971; “Miss Phipps on the Telephone,” July 1973; “Miss Phipps and the Siamese Cat,” November 1973; “Miss Phipps Meets a Dog,” October 1974 nOn-SeRIeS: “The Way Round,” August 1953; “Conversations at an Inn,” February 1954; “The Secret,” March 1968 Phipps: After having one Miss Phipps story (“Author in Search of a Character”) reprinted in EQMM, December 1952, Bentley submitted a new story (“Chain of Witnesses”) to the 9th Annual EQMM Contest (it won a 3rd Prize), at which point Queen discovered that there were five other Phipps stories published in an obscure English periodical. After reprinting these five stories, Queen convinced Bentley to write a whole new series of eighteen Phipps stories, all but one of which appeared in EQMM. All of the Phipps stories demonstrated many of the qualities of her celebrated novels—“considered by many British critics to be the greatest regional novelist of her day” (Introduction, December 1952, p. 3). They are wonderful character studies as well as demonstrations, on the part of Miss Phipps, of astute armchair deduction—“in the classic ’tec tradition” (p. 3). In the series of new stories, Miss Phipps leaves behind her armchair deductive ways, becoming much more active in her sleuthing. In all the stories, her authorship of detective novels helps her immensely in her detection—her succinct descriptions and vivid creation of atmosphere help her understand how criminals create the scenes to mislead and the atmospheres to deceive. non-Series: “Conversations at an Inn” won a Special Award in the 8th Annual EQMM Contest. Bloch, Robert: debut of stories nOn-SeRIeS: “Dig That Crazy Grave,” June 1957; “Crime in Rhyme,” October 1957; “Sock Finish,” November 1957; “Is Betsy Blake Still Alive,” April 1958; “Show Biz,” May 1959; “The Man Who Looked Life Napoleon,” October 1961; “Life in Our Time,” October 1966;

Eight. Other Significant Debuts



“The Living Dead,” April 1967; “The Gods Are Not Mocked,” August 1968; “See How They Run,” April 1973; “A Most Unusual Murder,” March 1976 Bloch published numerous detective-crime short stories before his first appearance in EQMM in magazines like Dime Mystery, Mammoth Detective, and Thrilling Mystery and many more afterwards in The Saint Detective Magazine, AHMM, and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine as well as EQMM, so it seems that his debut in EQMM signaled, and perhaps precipitated, a change in the type of magazine that published his work. His stories often illustrate (and sometimes critique with violent outcomes) the superficiality of the “camp” cultures and “pop” pretensions of the 50s and 60s. The sometimes vitriolic critique of the artifice in modern culture in many of these stories may have appealed to Queen, the traditionalist, but he, nonetheless, remained a staunch and optimistic defender of the integrity and authenticity of “modern” life and the modern detective-crime story. It is much to Queen’s credit that he published such a diversity of stories, not just in type but in tone, attitude, and message. “Dig that Crazy Grave,” about the “jive jargon” and “kicks” in the world of jazz won a 2nd Prize in the 12th Annual EQMM Contest. Block, Lawrence: debut of detective eHRenGRAF: “The Ehrengraf Method,” February 1978; “The Ehrengraf Presumption,” May 1978; “The Ehrengraf Experience,” August 1978; “The Ehrengraf Riposte,” December 1978; “The Ehrengraf Obligation,” March 1979 nOn-SeRIeS: “Gentleman’s Agreement,” April 1977; “The Dangerous Game,” June 1977 ehrengraf: Lawrence Block was a prolific writer of detective/crime novels and short stories with four series detectives—Bernie Rhodenbarr, Matt Scudder, Evan Tanner, and Leo Haig—who appeared mostly in novels with a few scattered short stories. Martin Ehrengraf, Block’s fifth series detective, made his debut in EQMM and appeared in four more EQMM stories during our period of interest. In his Introduction to the debut story, “The Ehrengraf Method,” Queen compares Ehrengraf to another famous “unscrupulous” lawyer of classic detective fiction: “In this story Lawrence Block introduces a new character—Martin Ehrengraf, a lawyer filling the double pair of footprints left in the genre seventy years ago by Post’s Randolph Mason … an unscrupulous attorney who used the inadequacies and weaknesses of the law itself to defeat justice” (February 1978, p. 39). The reader soon suspects, however, that Ehrengraf is willing (and able) to go well beyond Mason in his use of the law to absolve his client. Block’s writing is superbly subtle so there is



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

no certainty, but the reader strongly suspects, as does the client, that murder has been committed in such a way as to clear the client of the same charge. Ehrengraf ’s guiding principle is that “any client of Martin H. Ehrengraf is presumed to be innocent, which presumption is invariably confirmed in due course, the preconception of the client himself notwithstanding” (May 1978, p. 43), and Ehrengraf will do anything—framing another person for the crime, forgery, planting clues, perhaps even murder—to justify the presumption, for, after all, Ehrengraf gets paid only if his client is cleared of all charges. Since he only defends wealthy and “innocent” clients and charges immense fees, it is not surprising that he dresses to the nines and lives a luxuriant life. non-Series: Block shows himself to be “a chip off the old Block” (Introduction, April 1977, p. 16) in his non-series stories as well as in the Ehrengraf tales—dry humor, irony, and malicious twists at the end. Boucher, Anthony: debut of detectives nOBLe: “Screwball Division,” September 1942; “QL696.C9,” May 1943; “Black Murder,” September 1943; “Rumor, Inc.,” January 1945; “Like Count Palmieri,” February 1946; “Crime Must Have a Stop,” February 1951; “The Girl Who Married a Monster,” February 1954 URSULA: “Coffin Corner,” Female of the Species, 1943; “The Stripper,” May 1945 Anthony Boucher wrote scores of non-series detective-crime stories, many published in EQMM, and created three series detectives—Sister Ursula, Fergus O’Breen, and the “most brilliant detective turned wino” Nick Noble. Both Noble and Ursula made their first appearance in Queen publications. noble: There are nine Noble short stories, seven of which, including the first one, debuted in EQMM. Boucher also translated stories by Simenon from the French for EQMM and was an influential critic, writing the “Criminals at Large” column for the New York Times Book Review as well as a column for EQMM. Nick Noble, despite his “reduced” state after taking the fall for a police scandal, is still a brilliant detective able to see the patterns and the “outliers” in murders where others cannot: “Easy. Find the pattern. See what isn’t pattern. That’s all” (September 1942, p. 19). Boucher’s extensive knowledge and love of literature and music shine through many of the stories as literary, semantic, and musical clues abound. Add in the more-than-occasional dying message and the frequent surprising twist at the end, and you have a very Queen-like tale in style, clues, and solutions; no wonder Queen held these Noble stories in such high regard. “The Girl Who Married a Monster” won a 3rd Prize in the 8th Annual EQMM Contest. Ursula: Sister Ursula made her debut in the short story “Coffin Corner,”

Eight. Other Significant Debuts

9

which first appeared not in EQMM, but in the Queen anthology of 1943, The Female of the Species. Two more short stories (only one of which appeared in EQMM) and two novels followed. “The Stripper,” though unusual for its ecclesiastical detective, is otherwise typical Boucher with, the academic background and scholarly clue. Brand, Christianna: debut of detective in short story COCKRILL: “Rabbit Out of a Hat”/“After the Event,” January 1958; “Blood Brothers,” September 1965; “Twist for Twist”/“The Hornet’s Nest,” May 1967; “Poison in the Cup,” February 1969; “The Last Short Story,” January 1973 nOn-SeRIeS: “My Lady’s Tears,” February 1965; “Here Lies…,” November 1967; “The Wicked Ghost,” February 1968; “The Gemminy Crickets Case,” April 1968; “King of the Air,” June 1968; “The Skipping Game,” July 1968; “The Scapegoat,” August 1970; “Such a Nice Man,” March 1972; “The Niece from Scotland,” November 1972; “Clever and Quick,” March 1974; “Upon Reflection,” August 1977; “Over My Dead Body,” August 1979 Cockrill: Brand was already well along toward establishing her reputation as a writer “in the classic Christie-Carr-Queen manner, a brilliant juggler of clues and deductions” (Boucher in Introduction, January 1958, p. 36) by the time her debut short story of Inspector Cockrill appeared in EQMM, for she had already published six Cockrill novels. There were to be four more Cockrill short stories in EQMM during our period of interest and three others published elsewhere as well as one more in EQMM in 1984 (“The Man on the Roof ”). Her Cockrill stories, and her many non-series detective-crime stories, proved so popular that there were four collections (What Dread Hand, 1968; Brand X, 1974; Buffet for Unwelcome Guests, 1983; and The Spotted Cat, 2002, the last of which was the only one to include all nine of the Inspector Cockrill tales). Brand, of course, was greatly appreciative of the opportunity the magazine provided her to present her stories to a wide and welcoming audience; however, she was quite upset by his changing of her titles—something he did frequently even to the most established authors: “He had a compulsion to change the title, sending one quietly mad when one had written the whole thing around the title, only to find it replaced with something really quite pointless” (The Spotted Cat, p. 219). Even with Queen’s altered title, “Rabbit Out of the Hat,” the first Cockrill short story, which missed the key clue of Brand’s original title “After the Event,” was, as Queen said, “a detectival debut of considerable importance” (Introduction, January 1958, p. 36). It is a brilliant and complex tale of parallels between the drama and the reality as Iago strangles Desdemona more than once and the stage make-up covers as much as reveals.

0

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

The follow-up Cockrill stories, especially the haunting and deceptive “The Hornet’s Nest,” (which won an Edgar, as did “Poison in the Cup”) maintain the high level of complexity, intrigue, and deception. Brand’s stories are known for the kicker at the end, often in the very last sentence, that “do more than give the final twist to the plot. They often carry an emotional or psychological burden which resonates with the mind long after plot details have faded” (Briney, Introduction to Buffet for Unwelcome Guests, p. xi). non-Series: Brand doesn’t need her series detective to create a taut tale of mystery or horror hiding beneath a thin veil of the commonplace. Her skill at deception and surprise ranges wide from a simple child’s game (“The Skipping Game”) and a hungry bird of prey (“King of the Air”) to the elaborate, classic “parry and thrust” of clue, detection, and misdirection of “The Scapegoat”—“a highly intricate mystery, with a wide range of possible answers, every theory pursued, analyzed, discarded, until only one solution covering all the facts remains—and then, even then, beware!” (Introduction, August 1970, p. 64). Although it didn’t win an Edgar, “The Scapegoat” rightfully won a “Special Award” in a Crime Writers of America contest, for it is a masterpiece, a renaissance detective story that bobs and weaves toward a stunning finale. Carr, A.H.Z.: debut of stories nOn-SeRIeS: “The Trial of John Nobody,” November 1950; “Murder at City Hall,” July 1951; “Tyger! Tyger!” October 1952; “If a Body…,” July 1953; “A Case of Catnapping,” July 1954; “A Sudden Dread … of Nothing,” January 1955; “The Black Kitten,” April 1956; “The Man Who Understood Women,” January 1960; “A Handful of Dust,” December 1960; “The Washington Party Murder,” July 1964; “The Nameology Murder,” July 1965; “The Options of Timothy Merkle,” July 1969 After his first five stories were published in Harpers, Esquire, and Vanity Fair, Carr debuted in EQMM with “The Trial of John Nobody” in 1950. To say his debut was a success is quite an understatement, as his first four stories in EQMM won a 2nd Prize in four consecutive years of the Annual EQMM Contest—“every single one of Mr. Carr’s tales was a distinguished example of the modern detective story” (Introduction, April 1956, p. 4). But the best was yet to come, as his “The Black Kitten” a few years later was the 1st Prize winner in the 1955 contest. It is a multi-layered story rich in emotion and symbolic meaning—“On one level it is a heart-gripping yet deeply compassionate story, and on another level it will move you by its racial symbolism and religious significance, both of which you will find to be profound and disturbing in their ‘inner turbulence’” (p. 4). Although Carr wrote stories in a variety of styles and types (including

Eight. Other Significant Debuts



the “straight-forward” deduction story), most of his stories are less about crime itself than about the potential for crime in the human heart and the implications of that potential for the human condition, free choice, and morality. The stories often have a religious tone to them, not as doctrine or creed but as a spirit of brotherhood, a sense of the sacred, and love of the vulnerable. The heart-wrenching but ultimately uplifting “The Black Kitten” is a prime example of Carr’s spiritual sense as a horrible accident peels away rhetoric and self-deception to allow truth and ultimately compassion and redemption. Child, Charles: debut of stories CHAFIK: “A Time to Mourn,” April 1957; “A Lesson in Firearms,” December 1965; “The Dwelling Place of the Proud,” October 1966; “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” April 1969 Twenty-five short stories about Chafik Chafik, Chief Inspector of the Baghdad police, were published in Colliers Magazine between 1947 and 1956, twenty of which EQMM reprinted. After several of the reprints appeared, EQMM published four new Chafik stories. In his Introduction to the fourth new story, April 1969, p. 19, “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” Queen bemoaned the gap between the third and fourth stories: “It has been 2½ years since we published a new Chafik Story—much too long (as we hope Mr. Child agrees, and does something about).” Mr. Chafik may have agreed, but he didn’t do anything about it, as this was the last Chafik story to be written. These tales are not only interesting “fair-play” detective stories, but are charming character portrayals and depictions of an “exotic” culture and society. Chafik is a fastidious man—a “weaver” who uses facts as threads, and insists on a neat, tightly woven fabric before he concludes or accuses. He speaks softly but incisively, capturing thought with precision and clarity— “Although you are silent, your thoughts are noisy” (“The Inspector Had a Wife,” December 1952, p. 60). The puzzles are interesting and often culturally flavored, but Chafik’s gentle humanity is universally appealing and touching. Throughout the long series of stories, Chafik, the human filing cabinet, never forgot a fact and sometimes seemed as old as time, calling up ancient images and ancient wisdom—“Inspector Chafik turned a face cast from bronze—in profile, a plague from the death pile of Ur, the likeness of an ancestor who had lived before Noah” (p. 26). For Chief Inspector Chafik, no matter how odd or bizarre was the mystery, there was always a precedent. Coles, Manning: debut of detective in short story HAMBLeDOn: “Handcuffs Don’t Hold Ghosts,” May 1946 Manning Coles, actually the writing team of Adelaide Manning and Cyril Coles, had already published several novels featuring the secret service

2

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

agent Tommy Hambledon before they submitted this first Hambledon short story to the 1st Annual EQMM Contest. It won a 2nd prize, probably partly because of its wild combination of story types—“here in a single story you will find ghostbreaking, the supernatural, mystery, horror, detection, secret service work, humor, hair-raising adventure, suspense…” (Introduction, May 1946, p. 5)—and partly because of its gasp-inducing ending. There were eventually eleven more Hambledon short stories (the second not appearing until twelve years after this first one), but none of them were published in EQMM, all appearing instead in the English magazine Suspense. Cornier, Vincent: debut of story HILDReTH: “The Monster,” February 1951 Eight Barnabas Hildreth short stories were published in EQMM, what Queen called “one of the great series of modern detective stories” (quoted in Ashley Introduction, The Duel of Shadows, 2011, p. 7). Seven of these eight tales, including the famous “Duel of Shadows” (retitled by Queen as “The Shot that Waited”) were reprints from Pearson’s Magazine in the 1930s; the one story that debuted in EQMM (and which won a 4th Prize in the 4th Annual EQMM contest) was a “monstrous” story of “no baby this. It lay there, its cold and malevolent eyes steadily regarding this passing show. It was as though there existed within that small and dimpled flesh an adult spirit, monstrous and malignant” (p. 146). As with almost all the Hildreth stories, “The Monster” is haunting, malignant, and brilliant in its tension and description and devastating in its conclusion—“bloodily spotted tiger lilies, co-joined, each upon a single stem” (p. 158). Hildreth is prescient in his detection, more than equal to the singular and bizarre mysteries he is called upon to solve— “even after all these years there is still nothing like them in the annals of mystery fiction” (Introduction, The Duel of Shadows, p. 13). The appearance of these “forgotten” stories in EQMM spurred renewed interest in Cornier and was a contributing factor to their eventual re-publication in Crippen and Landru’s Duel of Shadows, part of their Lost Classics Series. Queen compares this “rich and strange” series of Barnabas Hildreth stories to the Dr. Thorndyke stories of R. Austin Freeman in that both detectives are scientific, but there, Queen goes on to say, the comparison ends, for there is “no academic dryness in the Hildreth tales, no lack of warmth or humor or stylistic richness; and most important, while Barnabas Hildreth is a scientific detective, he deals with scientific material in a more romantic sense than Dr. Thorndyke did” (Introduction, December 1946, p. 89). Queen feels that “there is something peculiarly exotic in the mysteries Barnabas Hildreth unravels—something that will remind you of H.G. Wells, and the Professor Challenger stories of Conan Doyle” (p. 89). He might also have drawn comparisons with Ambrose Bierce, M.P. Shiel, or even Edgar Allen Poe, as

Eight. Other Significant Debuts



these “scientific” stories of Hildreth are heavily laden with the eerie and the bizarre. Creasey, John/J.J. Marric: debut of stories GIDeOn: “Gideon and the Shoplifting Ring,” November 1969; “Gideon and the Teenage Hooligans,” March 1970; “Gideon and the Young Toughs,” August 1970; “Gideon and the Pickpockets,” April 1970; “Gideon and the Pigeon,” February 1971; “Gideon and the Chestnut Vendor,” February 1972; “Gideon and the Vintage Car Thefts,” May 1972; “Gideon and the Flu Epidemic,” November 1973; “Gideon and the Inside Job,” April 1973; “Gideon and the East End Gang,” January 1974; “Gideon and the Innocent Shoplifter,” March 1975 John Creasey was an amazingly prolific writer, authoring more than six hundred books under twenty-eight pseudonyms. He created several series detectives, probably the most popular being George Gideon, Commander of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard. There are twenty one Gideon novels and an equal number of Gideon short stories. Eleven of these stories debuted in EQMM (or at least made their first American appearance in EQMM, as there is some suggestion that they were published somewhere in Britain earlier). These stories are short and to-the-point procedurals, but usually there is a deeper, more sinister crime hiding behind the surface rather trivial one. Gideon was “a born detective. He has a built-in radar system for ratiocination, invisible antennas that pick up even the tiniest crime waves” (Introduction, February 1972). Crispin, edmund: debut of stories Fen: “Nine Minus Nine Equals One”/“Beware of the Trains,” March 1951; “All in the Way You Look at It,” April 1953; “A Message to Herr Dietrick,” November 1955; “What’s His Line,” May 1956 Gervase Fen, professor of English language and literature at Oxford University, was an established detective well before his first appearance in EQMM in the brilliant short story “Lacrimae Rerum” (winner of a 3rd Prize in the 4th Annual EQMM Contest) reprinted in the June 1949 issue. He had already been featured in six novels and several short stories published in The London Evening Standard. “All in the Way You Look at It” was the first of the Fen stories to debut in EQMM, joining nine reprints. The same year the first collection of Fen stories, Beware of the Trains, 1953 (QQ#0), was published containing sixteen stories. It was another twenty-six years (just a year after Crispin’s death) before another collection appeared, Fen Country, 1979, which included twenty-six Fen tales. Only “Nine Minus Nine Equals One” (originally



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

titled “Beware of the Trains”) of the four Fen stories published in EQMM was included in either of these collections. Crispin is as erudite and literary as Professor Fen, so the third-person narration in all the stories is exquisite and captivating—“Rain was falling indecisively. It tattooed in weak, petulant spasms against the station roof, and the wind on which it rode had a cutting edge” (March 1951, p. 123). But the plots are as clever and engaging as the prose is literary; the stories in the collection Beware of the Trains are “blurbed” as “classic examples of Fen’s mastery of his art—solving the most insoluble crimes where even the best brains in the police force are frankly baffled. They also allow you to flex your own crime-solving muscles; each story contains all the clues needed to anticipate the outcome, using logic and common sense with a bit of ingenuity thrown in! Do you dare to take them on?” Dunsany, Lord: debut of stories LInLeY: “The Most Dangerous Man in the World,” July 1951; “A Simple Matter of Deduction,” December 1951 JORKenS: “Near the Back of Beyond,” November 1955; nOn-SeRIeS: “The Murder in Netherby Gardens,” May 1952; “Three Men in a Garden,” August 1959 Linley: Lord Dunsany was the author of some of the most enchanting, beautifully written “fantasy” novels and short stories ever written. His mythic tales of Pagana and the Edge of the World collected in such fantasy classics as The Gods of Pegana, 1905; The Sword of Welleran, 1908; A Dreamer’s Tales, 1910; and The Book of Wonder, 1912; and his apocryphal “reminiscences” of the peripatetic Mr. Jorkens (e.g., The Travel Tales of Jorkens, 1931; Jorkens Has a Large Whiskey, 1940) have charmed readers for decades. As with many “fairy tales,” in many of Dunsany’s stories there is at least a suggestion of wickedness and peril lurking just beneath the surface. This peril most definitely came full-fledged to the surface in Dunsany’s infamous short story about the detective Linley, “Two Bottles of Relish,” judged by many to be one of the best (and most gruesome) detective stories ever. Apparently “Lord Dunsany had become amused to notice that people were reading gruesome stories of murder in preference to his own more delicate tales. He wondered if he could write a story ‘gruesome enough for them.’ So, with tongue in cheek but writing with grim seriousness, Lord Dunsany fashioned ‘Two Bottles of Relish’ [which proved gruesome enough indeed to satisfy the public taste]” (Introduction, July 1951, p. 81). This famous story of Linley’s horrible solution to a murder without a corpse was first published in Time and Tide, November 1932, and was anthologized many times in horror magazines as well as in detective ones. EQMM reprinted it in their March 1951 issue, thinking it was the only Linley story

Eight. Other Significant Debuts



Dunsany ever wrote, but Dunsany himself informed Queen that there were eight others (all eventually collected in The Little Tales of Smethers, 1952, QQ#109), and then, much to Queen’s surprise and delight, Dunsany submitted a brand new Linley tale to EQMM, “The Most Dangerous Man in the World,” which won a special award for Best Spy Story. And then, to put the icing on the cake, Dunsany submitted another original Linley story, “A Simple Matter of Deduction,” a few months later, which although involving a murder, was more of a classic Sherlock Holmes–type exercise in pure deduction. These two Linley stories published in EQMM were never published by anyone else in magazine, anthology, or author collection. Jorkens: The one Jorkens tale published in EQMM, which won an “Honor Roll” in the 10th Annual EQMM Contest, is typical Jorkens and typical Dunsany—an outrageous “shaggy-dog” story which is so outlandish it must be true. non-Series: Although not Linley or Jorkens or the creatures of myth at “the edge of the world” and at the “back of the beyond,” the characters in his few “independent” stories (e.g., “Three Men in a Garden”) also have the “scent” of fantasy and the fantastic, leaving the reader with a questioning but amused shake of the head and a protesting “but.” Faulkner, william: debut of story STeVenS: “An Error in Chemistry,” June 1946 Gavin Stevens, county attorney in a small southern town, played a role in Faulkner’s renowned novel Intruder in the Dust, 1948, but actually appeared sixteen years earlier in “Smoke” in Harper’s Magazine, April 1932, which then was reprinted in EQMM. How delighted and honored Queen was to be able to publish a new story of Stevens (“An Error in Chemistry”)—this “strange story of almost pure detection is stylized, morbid, mystical, and sharply and brilliantly narrated” (Introduction, Queen’s Awards, 1946, p. 23). Queen expressed the hope that Faulkner would submit more Stevens stories to EQMM, but instead they were collected in Faulkner’s Knight’s Gambit (QQ#0). In all these stories, Stevens is a passionate advocate for justice in an unjust world, astute at observing and deducing from minor clues and not averse to creating some of those clues himself. Frazee, Steve: debut of stories non-Series: “My Brother Down There,” April 1953; “All Legal and Proper,” March 1960 Frazee’s second story (his debut in EQMM), which won 1st Prize in the 8th Annual EQMM Contest, is a story about a bond of humanity in a most unlikely place—the hunting down of ruthless killers on the run. It’s difficult to know where sympathy lies and where it should, and who our brothers are.



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

This story was followed by five others, two in Manhunt—certainly an appropriately named magazine for Frazee’s tales—all, in one way or another, about our search for what makes us human. Gilbert, Anthony: debut of detective in short story CROOK: “You Can’t Hang Twice,” November 1946; “Once Is Once Too Many,” December 1955 nOn-SeRIeS: “Remember Madame Clementine,” October 1955; “The Goldfish Button,” February 1958; “The Eternal Chase,” August 1965; “Sleep Is the Enemy,” February 1966; “The Dove and the Hawk,” June 1966; “Cat Among the Pigeons,” October 1966; “The Intruders,” December 1967; “Point of No Return,” May 1968; “Who Cares About an Old Woman,” October 1968; “The Puzzled Heart,” March 1969; “The Mills of God,” April 1969; “The Quiet Man,” June 1969; “Tiger on the Premises,” September 1969; “The Funeral of Dendy Watt,” January 1970; “Door to a Different World,” March 1970; “When Suns Collide,” April 1971; “A Day of Encounters,” February 1972; “Fifty Years After,” March 1973; “The Invisible Witness,” January 1974 Crook: Arthur Crook, the rather not-by-the-book lawyer-detective who will do practically anything, legal or not, for his clients, appeared in fifty-one novels, nineteen of which were published before the appearance of the first of two Crook short stories, both of which were published first in EQMM. Gilbert also wrote ten novels about detective Scott Egerton and two about M. Dupuy as well as numerous short stories, two (both published in EQMM) about series detective Inspector Field. The debut Arthur Crook story “You Can’t Hang Twice” won a second prize in the 1st Annual EQMM Contest. Crook is an interesting and engaging character “who catered specially for the lawless and the reckless and who was known in two continents as the Criminals’ Hope and the Judges’ Despair” (November 1946, p. 111), as shadowy and hard to pin down as the blanket of fog that weighs heavily through the story as murder is committed behind the curtain of darkness and a party game. The only other Crook short story, “Once Is Once Too Many,” is just as engaging and tension-filled and could easily have been a prize-winner too; this time the fog isn’t the only thing that hangs heavy over the story, but it is also the knowledge that a man has brought his wife to the mountain chalet to kill her. The suspense mounts, Crook is fierce and persevering though cleverly misled, and the ending twists … twice. non-series: “Door to a Different World” and “Fifty Years After” won Edgars in the 1970s.

Eight. Other Significant Debuts



Gilbert, Michael: debut of stories PeTReLLA: “A Case of Shoplifting,” May 1976; “License Plate UGC 368M,” July 1976; “Rough Justice,” March 1977; “The Happy Brotherhood,” May 1977; “Captain Crabtree,” July 1977; “The Last Tenant,” August 1977; “Mutiny at Patton Street,” September 1977 eLFe: “Snap Shot,” September 1957; “A Sense of History,” July 1980 Other debut stories: “One-Tenth Man,” October 1956; “Professional Riposte,” May 1965; “Verdict of Three,” February 1979; “The Man at the Bottom,” April 1979; “The Man in the Middle,” May 1979; “The Man at the Top,” June 1979 Petrella: There were twenty-three Petrella stories published mostly in Argosy, 1953–1972, before the first Petrella story debuted in EQMM, after which all the remaining Petrella tales appeared there. Petrella used his “knowledge of an infinity of small, everyday facts, unimportant in themselves, deadly when taken together” (August 1977, p. 6) to knit together the solutions to several puzzling cases. elfe: Commander Elfe deals with government cases with international implications, seeking help wherever he can get it—mathematicians and magicians included. non-Series: “One-Tenth Man,” which won a 2nd Prize in the 11th Annual EQMM contest, is a charming story of romance, betrayal, smuggling, and the one-tenth man ceding to the nine-tenths policeman. Godfrey, Peter: debut of stories Le ROUX: “Kill and Tell,” January 1950; “A Dagger of the Mind,” March 1956; “The Newtonian Egg,” December 1951; “Shoemaker’s Last,” April 1952; “And Turn the Hour,” September 1952; “The Fifth Dimension,” November 1952 nOn-SeRIeS: “The Lady and the Dragon,” September 1950; “Hail and Farewell,” November 1954; “The Ellery Queen Murder Mystery,” February 1977; “To Heal a Murder,” August 1977 Le Roux: The series of stories about the South African detective, Rolf le Roux, are ingenious examples of the classic “impossible crime” and “lockedroom” types of stories intertwined with the “who-why-and-how-dunit” with a dash of fiction-merging-with fact thrown in. Several of these stories were first published in South Africa, but EQMM was a major factor in introducing them to American audiences. The first Le Roux story to debut in EQMM, “Kill and Tell,” cleverly merges fact and fiction, as the murder suspect is an author of detective stories whose plots foreshadowed and shortly preceded actual murders. In the Introduction to “A Dagger of the Mind” Queen praises Godfrey as having “a great talent” and predicts “a bright detective story future”



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

(p. 92), which Godfrey certainly fulfilled with several more Le Roux stories in EQMM and in the collections Death Under the Table, 1954, and The Newtonian Egg and Other Cases of Rolf le Roux, 2002. “The Newtonian Egg” is probably the most ingenious and novel le Roux story—“It cannot be fully described as a whodunit, or a whydunit, or a howdunit—for the simple reason that the tale has in it solid elements of all three ’tec types. It is also an impossible crime story and a sealed room story” (Introduction, December 1951, p. 81). This story, which references the classic “locked-room” mysteries of Futrelle’s “The Problem of Cell 13” and John Dickson Carr’s Three Coffins, certainly rivals Clayton Rawson’s “The World’s Smallest Locked Room” as, indeed, the most minuscule of sealed-room murders. In most of these Le Roux tales, his role as detective takes center stage, but in at least a couple, his degree in abnormal psychology also plays an important role. Queen’s comments about the first Le Roux story to appear in EQMM, the reprinted “Time Out of Mind,” could equally apply to all of his le Roux tales—“a grimly fascinating story, well-knit technically, subtly contrived and with more than one bright flash in its conception” (Introduction, March 1949, p. 48). non-Series: Godfrey’s reputation was further enhanced by the appearance of several non–Le Roux stories in EQMM over the next couple decades. “The Lady and the Dragon” is another expression of Godfrey’s interest in psychology, especially its stranger aspects. A story teeming with manifestations of the unconscious mind, complexes, fantasies, dinosaurs, and dragons leaves many questions unanswered although who committed the murder is not one of them. Halliday, Brett: debut of stories NON-SERIES: “Extradition,” October 1948; “Second Honeymoon,” July 1959 Although best known for his many Michael Shayne stories, his “engineering” stories may be better, as they weave knowledge of the craft, a tough realism of character, and clever plot twists together to create memorable stories. “Extradition,” a taut tale of justice delayed, won a 2nd Prize in the 3rd Annual EQMM Content. Heard, H.F: debut of detective in short story MYCROFT: “The Adventure of Mr. Montalba, Obsequist,” September 1945, “The Enchanted Garden,” March 1949 nOn-SeRIeS:—“The President of the United States, Detective,” March 1947 Mycroft: The two novels featuring Mr. Mycroft—A Taste for Honey, 1941, and Reply Paid, 1942—were critically acclaimed—“the most original contribution

Eight. Other Significant Debuts

9

to detective story literature in many years” (Vincent Starrett in Introduction, September 1945, p. 98). The name “Mycroft” and “a taste for honey” are certainly suggestive of a certain classic detective named “Sherlock,” and Mr. Mycroft, with his coolly objective, eccentric, rather arrogant deductive mind, plays the part marvelously. After the success of the two novels, Queen wrote to Heard asking him to write a Mr. Mycroft short story for EQMM, and “The Adventure of Mr. Montalba, Obsequist” was the result. It is a remarkable story—in plot, style, character, and detection. The premise of this debut Mr. Mycroft short story is fantastic and bizarre, and its interweaving with the classic detective story is ingenious and unique. The follow-up story, “The Enchanted Garden,” is also fantastic—enchantingly so in the garden of red hibiscus, hummingbird, and deadly typhoid. Thank goodness Queen reached out to Heard to bring Mr. Mycroft to the short story form, and thank goodness that Queen was Heard and Heard was willing! non-Series: Although it doesn’t seem possible, “The President of the United States, Detective,” which was awarded 1st Prize in the 2nd Annual EQMM Contest, may be an even more unusual detective story than the two bizarre Mr. Mycroft tales. The premise is fantastic, and the consequences of a failure of detection would be world-shattering. Hoch, edward: debut of detectives LeOPOLD: “Death in the Harbor,” December 1962; “The Clever Mr. Carton,” January 1965; “The Rainy-Day Bandit,” May 1970; “Christmas Is for Cops,” December 1970; “End of the Day,” February 1971; “The Leopold Locked Room,” October 1971; “Captain Leopold Does His Job,” December 1971; “Captain Leopold Gets Angry,” March 1973; “Captain Leopold Plays a Hunch,” July 1973; “Captain Leopold Swings a Bat,” October 1973; “Captain Leopold and the Ghost Killer,” August 1974; “Captain Leopold Goes Home,” January 1975; “Captain Leopold and the Arrow Murders,” July 1975; “No Crime of Captain Leopold,” December 1975; “Captain Leopold Tries Again,” June 1976; “The Murder of Captain Leopold,” October 1976; “Captain Leopold and the Impossible Murder,” December 1976; “No Holiday for Captain Leopold,” August 1977; “Captain Leopold Looks for the Cause,” November 1977; “Captain Leopold Incognito,” May 1978; “Captain Leopold and the Three Hostages,” September 1978; “Captain Leopold on the Spot,” January 1979; “Captain Leopold and the Vanishing Man,” July 1979; “The Most Dangerous Man Alive,” May 1980; “Captain Leopold Goes to the Dogs,” July 1980 InTeRPOL: “The Case of the Third Apostle,” February 1973; “The

0

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Case of the November Club,” June 1973; “The Case of the Modern Medusa,” November 1973; “The Case of the Musical Bullet,” March 1974; “The Case of the Lapidated Man,” September 1974; “The Case of the Broken Wings,” February 1975; “The Case of the Terrorists,” August 1975; “The Case of the Flying Graveyard,” February 1976; “The Case of the Devil’s Triangle,” April 1977; “The Case of the Battered Wives,” June 1977; “The Case of the Five Coffins,” April 1978; “The Case of the Straw Serpent,” January 1980; “The Case of the Chloroformed Clerics,” March 1980 HAwTHORne: “The Problem of the Covered Bridge,” December 1974; “The Problem of the Old Gristmill,” March 1975; “The Problem of the Lobster Shack,” September 1975; “The Problem of the Haunted Bandstand,” January 1976; “The Problem of the Locked Caboose,” May 1976; “The Problem of the Little Red Schoolhouse,” September 1976; “The Problem of the Christmas Steeple,” January 1977; “The Problem of Cell 16,” March 1977; “The Problem of the Country Inn,” September 1977; “The Problem of the Voting Booth,” December 1977; “The Problem of the County Fair,” February 1978; “The Problem of the Old Oak Tree,” July 1978; “The Problem of the Revival Tent,” November 1978; “The Problem of the Whispering House,” April 1979; “The Problem of the Boston Common,” August 1979; “The Problem of the General Store,” November 1979; “The Problem of the Courthouse Gargoyle,” June 1980; “The Problem of the Pilgrim’s Windmill,” September 1980 VeLVeT: “The Theft of the Clouded Tiger,” September 1966; “The Theft of the Onyx Pool,” June 1967; “The Theft of the Toy Mouse,” June 1968; “The Theft of the Brazen Letters,” November 1968; “The Theft of the Wicked Tickets,” September 1969; “The Theft of the Beavers,” December 1969; “The Theft of the Laughing Lions,” February 1970; “The Theft of the Coco Loot,” September 1970; “The Theft of the Blue Horse,” November 1970; “The Theft of the Dinosaur’s Tail,” March 1971; “The Theft of the Satin Jury,” June 1971; “The Theft of the Leather Coffin,” November 1971; “The Theft of the Seven Ravens,” January 1972; “The Theft of the Mafia Cat,” May 1972; “The Theft from the Empty Room,” September 1972; “The Theft of the Foggy Film,” November 1972; “ The Theft of the Crystal Crown,” January 1973; “The Theft of the Circus Poster,” May 1973; “The Theft of the Cuckoo Clock,” September 1973; “The Theft of Nick Velvet,” February 1974; “The Theft of the General’s Trash,” May 1974; “The Theft of the Legal Eagle,” July 1974; “The Theft of the Bermuda Penny,” June 1975; “The Theft of the Venetian Window,” November 1975; “The Theft of the Admiral’s Snow,”

Eight. Other Significant Debuts



April 1976; “The Theft of the Wooden Egg,” July 1976; “The Theft of the Sherlockian Slipper,” February 1977; “The Theft of Nothing at All,” May 1977; “The Theft of the Child’s Drawing,” October 1977; “The Theft of the Family Portrait,” March 1978; “The Theft of the Turquoise Telephone,” August 1978; “The Theft of Yesterday’s Newspaper,” March 1979; “The Theft of the Firefighter’s Hat,” June 1979; “The Theft of the Sahara’s Water,” December 1979; “The Theft of the Banker’s Ashtray,” February 1980; “The Theft of the Four of Spades,” October 1980; “The Theft of the Thanksgiving Turkey,” December 1980 Rand: “The Spy Who Did Nothing,” May 1965; “The Spy Who Had Faith in Double-C,” August 1965; “The Spy Who Came to the Brink,” December 1965; “The Spy Who Took the Long Route,” March 1966; “The Spy Who Came to the End of the Road,” July 1966; “The Spy Who Walked Through Walls,” November 1966; “The Spy Who Came Out of the Night,” April 1967; “The Spy Who Worked for Peace,” August 1967; “The Spy Who Didn’t Exist,” December 1967; “The Spy Who Clutched a Playing Card,” February 1968; “The Spy Who Read Latin,” August 1968; “The Spy Who Purchased a Lavender,” April 1969; “The Spy and the Shopping List Code,” July 1969; “The Spy and the Calendar Network,” November 1969; “The Spy and the Bermuda Cypher,” June 1970; “The Spy Who Travelled with a Coffin,” October 1970; “The Spy and the Diplomat’s Daughter,” January 1971; “The Spy and the Nile Mermaid,” May 1971; “The Spy Who Knew Too Much,” August 1971; “The Spy Without a Country,” February 1972; “The Spy Who Didn’t Remember,” April 1972; “The Spy and the Reluctant Courier,” June 1972; “The Spy in the Pyramid,” September 1972; “The Spy Who Was Expected,” December 1972; “The Spy with the Knockout Punch,” August 1973; “The Spy and the Intercepted Letters,” January 1974; “The Spy at the End of the Rainbow,” April 1974; “The Spy and the Talking Horse,” November 1974; “The Spy Who Took a Vacation,” April 1975; “The Spy and the Mysterious Card,” October 1975; “The Spy Who Collected Lapel Pins,” March 1976; “The Spy at the Writers Congress,” November 1976; “The Spy Who Died Twice,” July 1977; “The Spy in the Toy Business,” January 1978; “The Spy and the Cats of Rome,” June 1978; “The Spy in the Labyrinth,” December 1978; “The Spy Who Had a List,” May 1979; “The Spy Who Was Alone,” September 1979; “The Spy Who Wasn’t Needed,” December 1979; “The Spy Who Came Back from the Dead,” June 1980; “The Spy and the Snowman,” November 1980 PIPeR: “The Pawn,” April 1971; “The Rook,” May 1971; “The Knight,”

2

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine June 1971; “The Bishop,” July 1971; “The Queen,” August 1971; “The King,” September 1971 ARK: “The Treasure of Jack the Ripper,” October 1978; “The Man Who Shot the Werewolf,” February 1979; “The Avenger from Outer Space,” October 1979; “The Weapon Out of the Past,” April 1980; “The Sorceress of the Sea,” August 1980

Leopold: Edward Hoch was the most prolific contributor to EQMM (even more so than Ellery Queen themselves), for under his own name and under a few pseudonyms, he contributed over 500 stories to the magazine (one or more in every issue for an astounding thirty-five consecutive years from May 1973 until his death in January of 2018, most of them about Sam Hawthorne, Nick Velvet, Captain Leopold, Jeffrey Rand, and Interpol, but also a few about Simon Ark and David Piper. During our period of interest, not one of the Leopold stories printed in EQMM was a reprint from another magazine. Many of the Leopold stories were collected in Leopold’s Way, 1985. Although Captain Leopold is in many ways Hoch’s most “conventional” detective—head of the Violent Crimes Squad of a city police department— the crimes he confronts are often the Hoch-usual unusual, sometimes even including locked- room and other “impossible” crimes (e.g., the classic “Leopold’s Locked Room,” October 1971, in which it appears Leopold himself committed murder in a cleverly contrived locked room). “The Most Dangerous Man Alive” won an Edgar. Interpol: There were fourteen Interpol cases of the team Sebastian Blue and Laura Charme, all of which were published in EQMM and all but one of which is within our period of interest. In practically every story, there is a crime committed across national borders, thus calling in Interpol to some exotic location, which results in a murder attempt on one or both of the team, but they manage to survive it with professional expertise and panache. The stories confirm Laura’s belief in “dark human forces and the corruption of man” (April 1977, p. 143), but also of the power of man (and woman) to feel compassion and to find justice. Hawthorne: Edward Hoch was the master of the short story, publishing over his life-time over 950 of various genres, but most in the detective-crime vein. He was one of the very few authors who was able to make a living writing short stories. When he submitted the first of his stories to EQMM about the detective who would become Dr. Sam Hawthorne, his detective was named “Dr. Sam,” but Queen told Hoch that he needed a surname to avoid confusion with Lilian de la Torre’s Dr. Sam: Johnson whose tales were then appearing in the magazine, so Hoch came up with “Hawthorne,” what he thought was a perfect name for a New England detective. It probably is not a coincidence

Eight. Other Significant Debuts



that his detective’s initials (SH) are the same as his legendary predecessor. Whether this was intentional or not, Hoch was not unaware of it—“Our own Sherlock Holmes! You even got the same initials—Sam Hawthorne and Sherlock Holmes” (March 1975, p. 150). After his second “impossible crime” Hawthorne story appeared in EQMM in March 1975, Queen suggested that every story in the series be a “locked-room” or “impossible crime” tale, a suggestion that Hoch followed religiously for the next seventy-two stories, eighteen of which appeared during our time of interest (there were fifty-four more from 1981 to 2008). Fiftyseven of the Hawthorne tales were published in four collections: Diagnosis: Impossible, The Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, 1996; More Things Impossible, The Second Casebook of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, 2006; Nothing Is Impossible, Further Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, 2013; and All but Impossible, The Impossible Files of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, 2017. All the stories are in the form of “ratiocinative reminiscences” (Introduction, January 1977, p. 141), which start with a sigh and a small drink to grease the palate and the memory—“You want to hear about it? Heck, it won’t take too long to tell. Pull up your chair while I get us—ah—a small libation” (December 1974, p. 11). The problems are imaginative, fascinating, and “impossible”—a horse and buggy driven into a covered bridge and disappearing, a man stabbed in a voting booth, a newly murdered corpse in a sealed tomb in a cemetery, an entire room appearing and disappearing, a murder in a locked cockpit of a plane in flight, a new corpse in a time capsule sealed years earlier; the solutions are always ingenious if perhaps occasionally a bit contrived, but the “impossible” can’t always be easily or convincingly achieved! Velvet: Amazingly, there are even more stories of Nick Velvet (86) than there are of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (72). Only three of the eighty-six were not published in EQMM—two in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine and one in Argosy. Forty-seven of the total were published in EQMM after our period of interest—from 1981 to 2007. Nick Velvet is an extraordinary thief, only stealing things of no value— for a hefty fee ($20,000 for an ordinary theft, $30,000 for one that involves extra danger). A glance at the titles will show some amazing and puzzling thefts—a dinosaur’s tail, a toy mouse, a Venetian window, yesterday’s newspaper, a used teabag, twenty-nine minutes, an entire baseball team, the water from a swimming pool, even nothing at all. In “The Theft of the Sherlockian Slipper,” February 1977, Velvet is hired to steal the slipper in which Sherlock Holmes kept his tobacco for a new ski resort overlooking the Reichenbach Falls. “Like many fictional thieves before him, Nick evolved into an amateur sleuth as well, forced to solve crimes in order to accomplish his mission, free himself from a frame-up, or collect his fee” (Hoch, Introduction, The Velvet Touch, p. 9).



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Rand: The Spy and the Thief, 1971, contained seven Rand stories (including “The Spy Who Had Faith in in Double-C” and “The Spy Who Came to the Brink”) along with an equal number of Velvet stories. Altogether there were 84 Rand stories, all but one of which made its debut in EQMM and about half of which appeared during our period of interest. After only the 12th story, Queen called it “a comparatively long and interesting series” (Introduction, April 1969, p. 141). After the 84th Rand story appeared in EQMM, Queen undoubtedly would have eliminated the “comparatively.” Piper: Hoch’s six David Piper stories, published under the pseudonym “Mr. X,” were “a new kind of serial which, to the best of our recollection, has never been done before. Each of the six installments will be a complete story, but each will end with a cliffhanger” (Introduction, April 1971, p. 6). The six installments tell one continuous criminal and detection story, but each installment completes one part of the story. The cohesion of the overall story is enhanced by the names of the installments—each is cleverly named for a piece in the overall “chess game” but also has reference to some aspect of the characters or plot of the particular installment. Ark: Although Hoch’s first story of Simon Ark, “Village of the Dead,” was published in Famous Detective Stories in 1955 and he wrote more Ark stories over the years, it wasn’t until twenty-three years later that EQMM published its first Ark story, “The Treasure of Jack the Ripper.” Hoch explains that Ark, apparently a 2,000-year-old former Egyptian Coptic Priest who “was doomed to roam the world like some Flying Dutchman or Wandering Jew, undying, seeking a final confrontation with Satan and all that was evil on this earth” (October 1978, p. 7), was never one of Queen’s favorite characters. Queen did finally accept the premise with, however, a major disclaimer: “It should be made clear that the stories scrupulously avoid fantasy. True, there are ‘suggestions’ of fantasy, but as a detective Simon Ark has no magical powers; his solutions to mysteries, however bizarre, are always based on deductive reasoning and logical inference” (Introduction, October 1978, p. 6). Clearly, Queen subscribed in many ways to the Detective Club’s distaste for “hocus pocus” and “mumbo jumbo” in its detective tales. These stories, though clearly with “suggestions of fantasy” and a hint of “hocus pocus” all have logical and rational solutions, and despite Ark’s claims that he is “not a private investigator, but merely an appraiser of irregular phenomena with special attention to the black arts and the occult” (February 1979, p. 13), he does turn out to be quite a logical detective with highly developed deductive powers. Keating, H.R.F.: debut of detective CRAGGS: “The Five Senses of Mrs. Craggs,” November 1973; “Mrs. Craggs’ 6th Sense,” September 1978; “Mrs. Craggs in the House of Lords,” February 1979; “The Locked Bathroom,” June 1980

Eight. Other Significant Debuts



H.R.F. Keating wrote scores of non-series detective-crime short stories, but he is best known for his many novels and stories of Inspector Ghote (several of which were reprinted in EQMM). A much less known but interesting series “'detective” is Mrs. Craggs, the former charwoman at the House of Lords, whose revealing tales of various questionable incidents, embarrassing peccadillos, and scandalous “capers” in that venerable institution comprise the Craggs corpus—six stories published in EQMM (including the debut Craggs story) and ten more stories that appeared in the collection Mrs. Craggs: Crimes Cleared Up, 1985. The droll, delicious humor about the functioning and personalities of The House of Lords is the main attraction of these tales—“Lord Grey had counted a particularly corpulent peer as ten Lords and so a Bill had been passed that never should have been” (February 1979, p. 122); although the crimes include murder, the plots and detection are slight, and laughter prevails. King, C. Daly: debut of stories TARRAnT: “Lost Star,” September 1944; “The Episode of the Sinister Inventor,” December 1946; “The Episode of the Absent Fish,” April 1979 Eight short stories of Trevis Tarrant were collected in The Curious Mr. Tarrant, 1935 (QQ#9). Queen was so taken with these “adventures-in-deduction” that he called “the most imaginative detective stories of our times” (Queen’s Quorum, p. 94), that he reprinted two and urged King to write some new Tarrant tales for EQMM. The first of the new stories, “Lost Star,” was “something of a tour-de-force—the kind of story that demands careful reading. In many ways it’s an object lesson in point-counter-point ingenuity” (Introduction, September 1944, p. 69). Two other new stories followed in EQMM, but the last “The Episode of the Absent Fish,” didn’t appear until thirty five years later. There was one other story in this new series, “The Episode of the Perilous Talisman,” which was published in 1951, but not in EQMM but in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1951. All of these four new tales, along with the original eight were collected in The Complete Curious Mr. Tarrant, 2003. King also wrote six novels featuring series detectives Michael Lord and Dr. L. Rees Pons including the fascinating “Obelists” series: “Obelists at Sea,” 1933, “Obelists en Route,” 1934, and “Obelists Fly High,” 1935. According to Queen, “C. Daly King has just completed the manuscript of the first Trevis Tarrant novel—The Episode of the Demoiselle D’ys. Publishers get busy! Snag that manuscript!” (Introduction, December 1946, p. 46). Unfortunately this novel was never published. Tarrant is the classic cool, detached deducer—“The matter has been



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

merely the impersonal one of drawing the required deductions and following them to the only logical conclusion” (December 1946, p. 60). “The Episode of the Nail and the Requiem” may be the finest of the early stories—a puzzling locked-room murder which was a perfect stage for Tarrant to demonstrate his “unusual aptitude to see clearly, to welcome all the facts, no matter how apparently contradictory, and to think his way through to the only possible solution by sheer logic, while everyone else boggled at the impossibilities” (May 1944, p. 39). The bizarre nature of so many of Tarrant’s cases is in sharp contrast to his coolly logical approach based on the assumption that “cause and effect rule this world; they may be a mirage but they are a consistent mirage; everywhere, except possibly in subatomic physics, there is a cause for each effect, and that cause can be found” (pp. 39–40). King, Rufus: debut of detective DRISCOLL: “The Patron Saint of the Impossible,” December 1958; “A Little Cloud … Like a Man’s Hand,” May 1959; “The Seeds of Murder,” August 1959; “The Faces of Danger,” November 1960; “Gift for the Bride,” May 1962; “The Gods, to Avenge,” June 1963; “The Caesar Complex,” September 1963; “The Perfect Stranger,” September 1964; “Anatomy of a Crime,” December 1966 nOn-SeRIeS “The Body in the Pool,” February 1955; “Miami Papers Please Copy,” October 1956; “To Remember You By,” August 1957; “Agree—or Die,” October 1957; “Malice in Wonderland,” December 1957; “Each Drop Guaranteed,” March 1958; “Rendezvous with Death,” August 1958; “Happy Ending,” October 1958; “The Tigress of the Chateau Plage,” March 1959; “A Borderline Case,” December 1959; “The Bluebeard Persuaders,” May 1960 Driscoll: Rufus King wrote numerous non-series detective novels and short stories and created several series detectives, one appearing only in novels (Lt. Valour) and several appearing only in short stories (Reginald de Puyster, Chief Bill Duggan, Lt. Ben Coll, Dr. Colin Starr, and Stuff Driscoll). There are three collections of short stories (Malice in Wonderland, 1958; The Steps to Murder, 1960; and The Faces of Danger, 1964), the last two of which contain some of the Stuff Driscoll stories, but Driscoll had his debut in EQMM in “The Patron Saint of the Impossible.” Stuff Driscoll is tough in a modern sort of way—well-read, sophisticated, humorous, unconventional, and sociable, a “smooth apple of the neo-school of law enforcer” (“The Faces of Danger,” The Faces of Danger, 1964, p. 14). The writing is of the same sort—sophisticated, ironic at times, filled with asides and commentary to the reader. The setting is as breezy and sophisticated as are the stories and as is Driscoll—a resort town in Florida where “both the upper and lower crusts of the glittering crowd that comes South

Eight. Other Significant Debuts



in search of sun, sand, and sin” (Introduction, The Faces of Danger) parade their innocence and guilt for all to see but for only Driscoll to truly understand. non-Series: Two of the non-series stories—“Miami Papers Please Copy” and “Malice in Wonderland”—won 2nd Prizes in consecutive EQMM Annual contests. Each shows a different side of King—the breezy, romantic, and tongue-in-cheek and the serious, literary, and mysterious. MacDonald, Ross: debut of detective ARCHeR: “Find the Woman,” June 1946; “Wild Goose Chase,” July 1954 Although Ross MacDonald published his first mystery novel The Dark Tunnel in 1944, by far his best-known detective—Lew Archer—made his first appearance in the short story “Find the Woman” in EQMM, June 1946. This first Archer story was “a hard-boiler that was more than a run-of-the-murder tough ‘tec’ that had overtones and undertones not usually found in the realistic school” (Introduction July 1954, p. 122). Archer appeared in eleven more short stories from 1946 to 1965, one of which (“Wild Goose Chase”) made its first appearance in EQMM and seven others of which were reprinted in EQMM. There were also 18 Archer novels beginning with The Moving Target, 1948, and concluding with The Blue Hammer, 1977. (Four of the novels in the early 1950s were under the author name John Ross MacDonald.) Queen rhapsodizes about MacDonald’s writing in the short stories— “goes beyond the sheer sensationalism of the guts-gore-gals gambit … is tough and terse, clipped and compressed, but it is also more than that—it has its moments of poetry” (p. 122). MacDonald is certainly best known for his Archer novels—“considered by many critics, if not most of them, as one of the finest practitioners of the hardboiled school since the ‘golden days’ of Hammett and Chandler” (p. 122), but Archer was born in the short story in the pages of EQMM in the June 1946 edition and got another boost into adolescence in the second debut of an Archer short story eight years later, both stories winning prizes in the EQMM Annual contests. After his success in EQMM and then in novels, short stories were published in Manhunt, Argosy, American Magazine, and Ed McBain’s Mystery Magazine, which were then reprinted in EQMM. The two Lew Archer stories that had first publication in EQMM were similar in plot (direct and indirect responsibility for murder) and were filled with the vivid writing and psychological insight that all the Archer stories and novels would be noted for—“Nothing could have looked more innocent than the quiet cove held in the curve of the white beach like a benign blue eye in a tranquil brow” (“Find the Woman,” The Archer Files, p. 39). Archer, from the very first short story to the last novel, was tough and compassionate,



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

somewhat sad and alone but empathetic and devoted to justice and fair-play. There was subtle psychological exploration and explanation of motives; there was eloquence and poetry and atmosphere in the prose descriptions of characters and place. Archer, “in the course of a thirty-year professional life, moved away from a Technicolor-vision of himself as a sort of Sunset Strip culture hero, into a life-sized portrait, in muted tones, of a much more ordinary man. As a person, though, he grew from a rather brash if self-deprecating wise-guy into a poetically observant and almost religiously empathetic human being” (“Biographical Sketch,” The Archer Files, p. 11). McCloy, Helen: debut of stories wILLInG: “Through a Glass Darkly,” September 1948; “The Singing Diamonds,” October 1949; “Murder Ad Lib,” November 1964; “The Pleasant Assassin,” December 1970; “A Case of Innocent Eavesdropping,” March 1978; “Murphy’s Law,” May 1979; “The Bug That’s Going Around,” August 1979 nOn-SeRIeS: “Chinoiserie,” July 1946; “The Other Side of the Curtain,” September 1947; “Number Ten Q Street,” November 1963 willing: One of America’s foremost mystery and detective writers, Helen McCloy took the psychological mystery into uncharted territory with her novels about psychiatrist-detective Basil Willing beginning in 1938. Seven of the ten Willing short stories appeared first in EQMM; the other three appearing as reprints. All the Willing stories explore psychological phenomena, some more disturbed and disturbing than others. “Through a Glass Darkly,” which was later transformed into a novel, is a gripping tale of a doppelganger haunting and a murder, but the most remarkable and mysterious tale is “The Singing Diamonds,” winner of a “Special Prize” in the 4th Annual EQMM Contest, in which McCloy manages to intertwine a classic detective tale with an apparently supernatural mystery. It is a bit reminiscent of Anthony Berkeley’s famous novel version of The Poisoned Chocolates Case in its offering of numerous logical explanations for an apparently inexplicable event, all but one of which turn out to be wrong. However, there the similarities end, for Berkeley’s stories are pure clue-puzzle, while McCloy’s combine this with the supernatural and bizarre. In all the stories, “supernatural” or just psychological, Willing uses clues from the unconscious—“You’re thinking only of the physical evidence. You’ve missed the psychological clue to the murderer…. There is no such thing as accident in any human action…. No one has seen the unconscious mind, so when a criminal is trapped by a blunder, his own or his victim’s, he is trapped by the testimony of the Invisible Witness” (“Thy Brother Death,” July 1957, pp. 43–45). non-Series: In “Chinoiserie,” a 2nd Prize winner in the 1st Annual EQMM contest, McCloy has replaced western psychology with eastern meta-

Eight. Other Significant Debuts

9

physics and romance, as she has enveloped this “straightforward” crime story—complete with murders, motives, clues, and deception—in the mystique of Chinese culture in the mid–1800s. The clever title not only means “imitation of the Chinese style in art,” but also “an act of mimicry or malice.” Both meanings are evidenced in this atmospheric tale as McCloy’s prose shimmers like the river in Wang Wei’s classic painting, which is at the heart of this tale, flowing “before enchanted eyes” from a bubbling spring to, at last, a “foam-flecked sea.” Millar, Margaret: debut of detective in short story SAnDS: “The Couple Next Door,” July 1954 Margaret Millar, wife of detective story author John Ross MacDonald, wrote three novels featuring Inspector Sands, two of which (Iron Gates and Wall of Eyes) are considered to be near-classics in the detective genre. “The Couple Next Door,” the only Inspector Sands short story, debuted in EQMM. It demonstrates much of the same subtle character portrayal and slowly mounting tension present in the novels—a difficult accomplishment in the short span of a short story—“the shape of the idea forming in the back of his mind was so grotesque and ugly that he wanted to run out of the office to join the normal people passing on the streets below” (July 1954, p. 117). Miller, wade: debut of stories nOn-SeRIeS: “Invitation to an Accident,” July 1955; “A Bad Time of Day,” September 1956; “The Memorial Hour,” March 1960 In all his stories the writing is crisp, the characters and their motivations are clearly described, and the plot inexorably builds to the end, then twists in a way that you didn’t see coming but felt. Miller had written several detective-crime stories a decade before that appeared in Mammoth Detective and Famous Detective, but he hit pay dirt with these for EQMM, two of which (“Invitation to an Accident” and “A Bad Time of Day”) won 2nd Prize in EQMM Annual contests. nebel, Frederick: debut of stories nOn-SeRIeS: “Try It My Way,” June 1956; “No Kid Stuff,” April 1958; “Wanted: An Accomplice,” July 1958; “Pity the Poor Underdog,” August 1958; “The Fifth Question,” January 1959; “Killer at Large,” September 1961; “Needle in a Haystack,” August 1962 “Try It My Way,” winner of a 2nd Prize in the 11th Annual EQMM Contest, is a tender story amid hopeless violence with just enough told or shown about the characters to lead readers to care about their lives. Nebel was a veteran of well over a hundred stories, mostly in Black Mask, Detective Fiction, and Dime Detective in the 20s and 30s before his first appearance in

0

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

EQMM, so it was certainly no amateur whose debut EQMM story was a winning one. Palmer, Stuart, and Craig Rice: debut of collaboration of detectives wITHeRS AnD MALOne—“Once Upon a Train,” October 1950; “Cherchez la Frame,” June 1951; “Autopsy and Eva,” August 1954; “Rift in the Loot,” April 1955; “Withers and Malone, BrainStormers,” February 1959; “Withers and Malone, Crime-Busters,” November 1963 This is an unusual “debut” because Palmer and Rice, individually, had already published many novels and short stories about their detectives— Hildegard Withers and John J. Malone respectively—but their first collaborative story with both detectives made its debut in EQMM and was followed by several others. The teaming of the “ever-battling Miss Withers and the ever-bibulous Mr. Malone” (Introduction, People vs. Withers and Malone, 1963—QQ#20) was inspired, as the perennial and argumentative busybody and the endlessly imbibing and philandering lawyer were a match made in heaven (or perhaps purgatory). Originally the plan was just one collaborative story, but “the two characters seemed to complement each other and one thing led to another,” (Palmer, Preface, p. 14). Rice passed away after the first four stories were written, but Palmer had enough notes and odds and ends from Rice’s letters to fashion the last two stories. All six debuted in EQMM. In Palmer’s stories of Withers on her own, much of the charm is the ongoing, affectionate but bristly repartee between Hildegard and Inspector Piper; in these tandem stories Malone takes over the role of Piper but with a younger, brasher energy. Again most of the plots hinge on a bit of a gimmick, but the characters, the energy, and the humor carry the stories. Few of the plots are remembered, but Withers and Malone, especially together, are hard to forget—“the two are as contrasty as oil and vinegar, and go just about as well together” (Palmer in Introduction, October 1950, p. 3). Pentecost, Hugh: debut of detectives in short story and debut of stories CHAMBRUn: “Murder de Luxe,” October 1963; “Pierre Chambrun and the Black Days,” December 1968; “Pierre Chambrun and the Sad Song,” April 1969; “The Masked Crusader,” December 1969; “Pierre Chambrun and the War for Peace,” January 1970; “Pierre Chambrun and His Last Fling,” September 1971; “Pierre Chambrun Defends Himself,” November 1972; “Pierre Chambrun Plays It Cool,” July 1973; “Pierre Chambrun and the Electronic Ear,” March 1974; “Pierre Chambrun and the Melting Swan,” April 1975; “Pierre Chambrun and the Matter of Inches,” February 1977; “Chambrun Corrects an

Eight. Other Significant Debuts



Imperfection,” October 1978; “Chambrun and the Double Event,” April 1979; “Chambrun and the Obvious Clue,” June 1979 JeRRICHO: “Jericho and the Skiing Clue,” November 1964; “Jericho and the Painting Clue,” July 1965; “Jericho and the Dying Clues,” October 1965; “Jericho and the Silent Witness,” November 1965; “Jericho and the Go-Go Clue,” May 1966; “Jericho and the Nuisance Clue,” August 1966; “Jericho and the Dead Clue,” December 1971; “Jericho and the Two Ways to Die,” September 1972; “Jericho and the Deadly Errand,” January 1973; “Jericho Plays It Cool,” July 1973; “Jericho and the Missing Boy,” October 1973, “Jericho and the Sea of Faces,” June 1974; “Jericho and the Frightened Woman,” November 1974; “Jericho and the Unknown Lover,” February 1975; “Jericho and the Studio Murders,” November 1975; “Jericho on Campus,” October 1976; “The Birthday Killer,” July 1978; “Jericho and the Million-to-One Clue,” February 1979; “The Man Who Stirred Champagne,” September 1979; “Jericho and the Assassin,” December 1979; “Jericho and the Cardboard Box,” April 1980; “Jericho and the Memorial Night,” August 1980 DARK: “The Dark Plan,” February 1976; “The Dark Gambit,” March 1976; “The Dark Encounter,” April 1976; “The Dark Maneuver,” August 1976; “The Dark Intuition,” December 1976; “The Dark Gamble,” October 1977 PASCAL: “The Contradictory Case,” August 1951 nOn-SeRIeS: “Challenge to the Reader,” May 1947; “An End to Fear,” August 1957; “The Man with Half a Face,” December 1958; “Know Your People,” April 1959; “The Unpunishable Murder,” July 1959; “The Missing Miss Maydew,” September 1959; “The Lame Duck House Party,” November 1959; “Far, Far Better Things,” March 1960; “The Bottomless Pit,” May 1960; “Waterfront Shakedown,” July 1960; “Who Wants to Be a Dead Hero,” December 1960; “Frightened Star,” September 1961; “Hover Through the Fog,” February 1962; “A World of Envelopes,” May 1962; “A Kind of Murder,” August 1962; “The Man with the Sixteen Beards,” December 1962; “Delinquent Account,” February 1963; “The Man in Seat Twelve,” January 1964; “The Needle Sharp as Ever,” April 1964; “The False Face Murder,” August 1967; “Blood-Red in the Morning,” September 1970; “The Long Cry for Help,” August 1975 Chambrun: These fourteen short stories of Pierre Chambrun, the always-in-control manager of the Hotel Beaumont, along with four more stories in EQMM from 1981 to 1985, appeared after the first Chambrun novel in 1962. Queen considered “Murder de Luxe” a short novel rather than a short

2

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

story, so he regarded “Pierre Chambrun and the Black Days” to be the actual first short story appearance of Chambrun: “Mr. Pentecost is going to write a series of detective short stories about that formidable perfectionist Pierre Chambrun—and, indeed, the second story, ‘Pierre Chambrun and the Sad Song,’ has already been finished” (Introduction, December 1968, p. 7). The hotel setting is an interesting combination of “the desert island” closedenvironment mystery stories (à la Agatha Christie) and the wide-open “anywhere/anything” mysteries, for Hotel Beaumont is “like a city in the heart of Manhattan, and it has all the heartaches and heartbreaks of a contemporary small city” (April 1969, p. 6). Pascal: Although there eventually were four novels and three novelettes about Lieutenant Pascal of the Homicide Squad, these all were published after “The Contradictory Case” made its debut in EQMM. However, there was one previous Pascal short story, “Tomorrow Is Yesterday,” which originally appeared (before being reprinted in EQMM) in American Magazine, February 1950. Jerricho: John Jericho—passionate advocate of social justice and defender of the innocent and downtrodden—is certainly one of Pentecost’s most interesting and provocative characters. Jericho appeared in six novels and in more than twenty short stories (all of which were published first in EQMM). Later fifteen of these Jericho tales were collected in The Battles of Jericho, 2008. The fiery, red-headed Jericho, former commando in Korea, burly and intimidating, can be physical but also, with his trained painter’s eye, can be subtle and delicately perceptive of obscure clues. He is a “fighter in the arena of living-to-the-hilt—a champion of lost causes, a defender of the underdog” (Introduction, May 1966, p. 6). Sometimes his passion for the helpless can be used against him, but he always sticks to his principles, for life with integrity is more important to him than just life—“Because I would have to live with myself if I let you have your way” (p. 16). His outrage at man’s inhumanity to man motivates both his detection and his painting, both of which reflect a personality and a passion larger than any canvas can hold. Dark: These six stories of Jason Dark comprise a Dark saga indeed, an ongoing tale of one man’s heroic and violent crusade to take down a huge multinational corporation that intends to control the minds and pocketbooks of the world’s population. non-Series: “Challenge to the Reader” won a 2nd Prize in the 2nd Annual EQMM Contest, and “The Fourth Degree” (a Dr. John Smith story) won the same in the 3rd Annual Contest. Rawson, Clayton: debut of detective in short story MeRLInI: “The Clue of the Tattooed Man,” December 1946; “The

Eight. Other Significant Debuts



Clue of the Broken Legs,” January 1947; “The Clue of the Missing Motive,” February 1947; “The Case of the Stuttering Sextant,” March 1947; “From Another World,” June 1948; “Off the Face of the Earth,” September 1949; “Merlini and the Lie Detector,” July 1955; “Merlini and the Vanished Diamonds,” October 1955; “Merlini and the Sound Effect Murder,” December 1955; “Nothing Is Impossible,” July 1958; “Miracles,” October 1958; “Merlini and the Photographic Clue,” August 1969; “The World’s Smallest Locked Room,” August 1971 Clayton Rawson, a magician himself, wrote four novels and twelve short stories “in which the magician is detective and the detective is magician…. The stories provide trick after trick and treat after treat and prove page after page how easy and how much fun it is to be fooled by the wonderful wizard of crime that was Clayton Rawson” (Sullivan, Introduction, The Great Merlini, p. x). Half of the twelve Merlini stories were short-shorts which stopped abruptly just before Merlini was to reveal his solution and asked readers to send in their solutions to an EQMM contest. Queen, famous for their “Challenge to the Reader” gambit in their early novels, of course loved this gimmick and published every short-short that Rawson wrote. These six stories are fun challenges for the reader, but it’s the other six stories (longer and without the gimmick) that are the true Merlini treasures, especially the brilliant “lockedroom” puzzle “Off the Face of the Earth,” (winner of a “Special Award” in the 4th Annual EQMM Contest), which was written in response to a challenge from John Dickson Carr to write a phone-booth locked-room mystery. It is one of the very best of its kind. “From Another World” won an Edgar. In his Introduction to “The World’s Smallest Locked Room” in the August 1971 issue of EQMM, Queen hoped for the publication of a book of all the Merlini short stories, a book that he said: “was destined without question to be included in an updated Queen’s Quorum list of the most important books of detective-crime short stories.” The book, The Great Merlini: The Complete Short Stories of the Magician Detective was published eight years later in 1979, but Queen’s Quorum was never updated beyond 1967 as Dannay’s health was failing. Rendell, Ruth: debut of detective in short story weXFORD: “The Case of Shaggy Caps,” November 1977; “Inspector Wexford on Holiday,” July 1978; “Inspector Wexford and the Winchurch Affair,” July 1979; “Clutching at Straws,” October 1979 nOn-SeRIeS: “Venus’s-Flytrap,” January 1973; “Trapped,” September 1973; “The Long Corridor of Time,” February 1974; “The Fallen Curtain,” August 1974; “A Spot of Folly,” November 1974; “The Clinging Woman,” February 1975; “The Fall of the Coin,” June 1975;



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine “Almost Human,” September 1975; “Meeting in the Park,” December 1975; “You Can’t Be Too Careful,” March 1976; “The Strong and Weak,” February 1977; “The Price of Joy,” April 1977; “Dinner at Potters,” July 1977; “A Glowing Future,” September 1977; “Born Victim,” September 1978; “Truth Will Out,” September 1978; “On the Path,” February 1979; “The Haunting of Shawley Rectory,” December 1979; “The Paintbox Houses,” March 1980; “A Case of Coincidence,” June 1980; “A Needle for the Devil,” November 1980

wexford: Inspector Wexford appeared in nine novels before the first Wexford short story was published in EQMM (and five more novels afterwards). Although the novels and stories were all published in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s and are quite modern in their psychological perspective on character, they are in some ways throwbacks, for they demonstrate “pure deductive reasoning, which we don’t see enough of these days” (Introduction, November 1977, p. 6). Apparently the blending of modern and classic is quite appealing to modern readers, for the Wexford stories have generated a very popular television series. non-Series: Rendell had already had eleven novels published before the appearance of her first short story, the non-series “Venus’s-Flytrap,” which debuted in EQMM. Many more novels and short stories and several collections of short stories were to follow. So, although EQMM didn’t launch her career or “deliver” her detective into the world, it did foster Rendell’s transition to the detective-crime short story, introducing readers to both her first non-series short story and her first short Inspector Wexford tale. Rendell’s non-series tales are rich and sophisticated in their psychological insight. They are not the “standard” detective-crime stories, for often it is the psychological impact of the crime more than the crime itself that is at the heart of the tale, and often the only “detecting” is the exploration, often by the victim, of that impact. “The Fallen Curtain” is a wonderful example of Rendell’s subtle exploration of psychological crime—crime much closer to home than you are led at first to believe. Rice, Craig: debut of detective in short story MALOne: “His Heart Could Break,” March 1943; “Goodbye Goodbye,” June 1946; “Goodbye Forever,” December 1951; “And the Birds Still Sing,” December 1952; “Beyond the Shadow of a Dream,” February 1955; “Wry Highball,” March 1959 FAIRR: “How Now, Ophelia,” June 1947 Malone: There were seven John J. Malone novels published before the first Malone short story, “His Heart Could Break” appeared in EQMM, after which Rice wrote four more Malone novels. Eventually there were over forty

Eight. Other Significant Debuts



Malone short stories (not counting those in which Malone collaborated with Hildegard Withers), ten of which were published in EQMM, six of which were new stories. In contrast to the usual pattern where EQMM would reprint some stories then persuade the author to write some especially for EQMM, in the case of the Malone stories three of the six that debuted in EQMM appeared before the first reprint. Ten of the Malone short stories were collected in The Name is Malone, 1958—QQ#, including four of the stories that had already been published in EQMM. Although Malone is sometimes “hard-boiled” in his physicality and toughness, a droll humor cuts through it all, lightening the mood and defusing the atmosphere. Queen calls “His Heart Could Break” a “nostalgic and emotional tale of the modern school, about that hard-living, hard-drinking, little criminal lawyer” (Introduction, To the Queen’s Taste, pp. 89–90). “Of the modern school” means “hard-boiled,” although there is always a strong dose of humor in these Malone tales, at times almost parodying the “wellcooked” Hammett-Chandler-Cain violence-and-sex tales so popular at the time. Rice’s “special blend of humor-and-homicide, gags-and-gore” (Introduction, December 1952, p. 34), give “the screwy, cockeyed, thoroughly unscrupulous John J. Malone” (p. 34), a taste of sympathy and an aura of humanity. Fairr: There were three Melville Fairr novels, but no short stories until “How Now, Ophelia” was written especially for EQMM. Queen felt the story was “an important ‘first’” and hoped “that Melville Fairr will return to our pages again and again” (Introduction, June 1947, p. 25). There was one more Fairr short story, but Dannay’s hopes were disappointed as it was published in Popular Detective, March 1953, not EQMM. Rice’s Melville Fairr stories (written under the pseudonym “Michael Venning”) are more “serious” than her John Malone tales—“the wisecracks are inconspicuous by their absence” (p. 25). Fairr is “quiet and small, and gray as a shadow” (p. 30), and he and his stories are rich with “poetry”— “Late afternoon sunlight poured over the well-kept lawn like honey over a warm griddle-cake. The trees made a weary pretense of rustling in the faint breeze and relaxed again, their leaves drooping” (p. 25). He is a private detective, though at times he seems more like a psychiatrist. Shore, Viola Brothers: debut of detective BenDOVID: “Bye Bye Bluebeard,” October 1951; “Everybody’s Name Is Jones,” March 1952 PARODY: “A Case of Facsimile,” October 1948 nOn-SeRIeS: “Tell It to the Judge,” May 1942; “Opals Are Bad Luck,” January 1943; “Rope’s End,” October 1947; “The Case of Karen Smith,” July 1950; “A Case of Facsimile,” October 1958



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Bendovid: Although Viola Shore’s other series female sleuth—Gwynn Leith—is probably better known (having appeared in two novels as well as a short story), it is the elderly grandmother Fayga Bendovid who makes her appearance (her first appearance) in EQMM. The debut story, about a “blackbeard” as much as a “bluebird,” is rich with subtlety, psychology, and human relations. As Queen says about Shore’s style and technique in his Introduction to the story, “breaking down the wall of ’tec technique which never rises above mere gimmicks and violence to build another out of the social, human, and psychological stuff of our times” (October 1951, p. 110). Shore, who taught short story writing at New York University, won a Second Prize in the 6th Annual EQMM Contest with this debut Bendovid story, and two of the students in her writing class also won prizes in that contest (Lisa Robineau for “Perchance to Dream,” October 1951, and Guy de Vry for “Vertigo,” January 1952). The second, and last, Fayga Bendovid story, though also subtle and intricate in its psychology, is of a very different style and mood as disjointed fragments, almost stream of consciousness, jar up against each other in a wild blur until finally they start coming into focus and fitting together. The process is a little disconcerting, but fascinating, for the reader as he is forced to give up the objective distance of the observer and plunge headlong into the story. In all Shore’s writing, the female characters are strong and central. Parody: It is quite obvious that Shore had fun writing “A Case of Facsimile” in which a variety of favorite fictional sleuths are parodied through their female counterparts, all students at the Edgar Allan Poe School—Shirley Holmes, Samantha Spade, Regina Fortune, Nerissa Wolfe, Elsie Queen, and Charlotte Chan. For at least Holmes, Spade, and especially Fortune, Shore does more than invoke names; she captures and parodies the character and methods of these detectives with a few words and affectionate humor. non-Series: “Rope’s End” won a 2nd Prize in the 2nd Annual EQMM Contest. Steele, wilbur Daniel: debut of story nOn-SeRIeS: “Dust to Dust,” November 1949; “The Lady Killer,” July 1950 non-Series: “Dust to Dust” and “The Lady Killer” won back-to-back 2nd Prizes in the 4th and 5th Annual EQMM contests—not surprising for “one of America’s finest short story writers,” November 1949, p. 34. Both stories vividly portray the seething passions and hopeless dreams lying deep in simple minds and hearts—passions and dreams that just lead to further hopelessness, irony, and murder. van Doren, Mark: debut of detective THe InSPeCTOR: “An Episode at the Honeypot,” August 1952;

Eight. Other Significant Debuts



“Only on Rainy Nights,” September 1956; “This Other Honor,” September 1962; “The Luminous Face”/“Testimony after Death,” August 1963; “The Wild Thing,” February 1964; “This Terrible Thing,” July 1968 In all six of van Doren’s short stories about the unnamed Inspector, it is wonderfully apparent that van Doren is a skillful and accomplished poet. As Queen implies in his Introduction to “The Luminous Face” (August 1963, p. 85), all of the Inspector tales are radiant with a unique poetic quality— “another ‘purely luminous’ story by the famous American poet.” In “The Luminous Face,” the boy who was killed (almost incidentally by a gang) could see the soul inside the dingiest of men and could see the meaning of a life and the great mind permeating it. All this understanding shows on the boy’s dead face—“the pale features on which peace sat as if it were a bird with no intention of flying away … as if it were the boy’s soul, determined not to leave the boy yet” (p. 86)—and enthralls the Inspector, who pursues this “cold case” with a determined serenity. Although the other Inspector tales don’t shine quite so radiantly, they all are told with a poet’s grace and shine with a poet’s light: in “This Terrible Thing” the Inspector’s compassion almost dooms him, but his wife comes to his rescue. “An Episode at the Honeypot” won a Special Award in the 7th Annual EQMM Contest, and “Only on Rainy Nights” won “Honor Roll” in the 11th Annual Contest. wellman, Manly wade: debut of detective ReTURn: “A Star for a Warrior,” April 1946; “A Knife Between Brothers,” February 1947 nOn-SeRIeS: “The Mayor Calls His Family,” July 1957; “The Richard Cory Murder Case,” February 1963 Return: Although Wellman wrote numerous crime-detective stories for such magazines as Popular Detective, Weird Tales, and G-Men Detective in the late 1930s and early 1940s, his first great success was the debut story (“A Star for a Warrior”) of David Return, full-blooded American Indian bridging the gap between ancient and modern worlds in his role as Agency policeman. This tale won 1st Prize in the 1st Annual EQMM Contest—quite an accomplishment and honor. Queen explains that the judges deemed this “the most original detective-crime story among the 838 submissions. It introduces a new detective character and a new type of detective character against a background hitherto unexploited in the field of crime fiction…. David Return is the first truly American detective to appear in print—even more authentically American than Melville D. Post’s Uncle Abner” (Introduction, The Queen’s Awards, 1946, p. 3). This debut story is a fascinating and beautifully written exploration of



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Indian culture as Return uses his knowledge of Indian tradition and ceremonial rites to solve the murder of a young woman trying to steal sacred Indian songs. The Southwestern reservation locale is vividly portrayed as are the characters, the culture, and Return’s balancing act between two worlds. After being awarded his police badge and solving his first crime, “His star was dull and filmy from the steam of the sweat lodge. It should shine like all the high hopes of all young warriors. Proudly David burnished the metal with his sleeve until it shone with the wisdom of the Shining Lodge and the strength of the white man’s star” (p. 70). The follow-up David Return story, “A Knife Between Two Brothers,” maintains the cultural and detective interest of the debut tale as well as its vivid and atmospheric writing. Truly, as Queen says in his introduction to “A Star for a Warrior” (p. 3), “There is a new star in the West, a new star in detective-storydom.” non-Series: It was a loss to detective fiction that Wellman didn’t write any more Return stories, but he did write a few other crime-mystery tales, two published in EQMM (“The Richard Cory Murder Case” and “The Mayor Calls His Family,” winner of a 2nd Prize in the 12th Annual EQMM Contest), and he won an Edgar from Mystery Writers of America for best fact-based crime book of 1955 (Dead and Gone). He also created two more short story series detectives—John Thunstone and Judge Pursuivant, psychic detectives— who appeared in the collection Lonely Vigils, 1981. His fantasy-science fiction collection of short stories, Sherlock Holmes and the War of the Worlds, featured not only Holmes but also Doyle’s other celebrated creation, Professor Challenger.

nIne

The Fine Arts of Parody, Pastiche and Spoof As Queen pointed out, one of the signs that an author (or detective) has achieved success is when (s)he is subject of a parody or pastiche. Not surprisingly Sherlock Holmes is the most frequent subject of both, but Queen also published parodies and pastiches of such established authors as Earl Derr Biggers, John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie, Edward Hoch, Maurice Leblanc, Hugh Pentecost, Edgar Allan Poe, Melville Davisson Post, Ellery Queen, Georges Simenon, and Rex Stout, and such well-known detectives as Uncle Abner, Pierre Chambrun, Charlie Chan, August Dupin, Gideon Fell, Arsene Lupin, Inspector Maigret, Hercule Poirot, Nick Velvet, Philo Vance, and Nero Wolfe. A pastiche is probably the most difficult to write, as it is a “serious” homage to the author (and detective) by attempting to replicate or at least suggest the author’s style and tone as well as theme and character. Queen’s comments about the pastiches of Narcejac describe the most effective pastiche—“If this story had been signed as by Georges Simenon, wouldn’t you have accepted it, without question, as the genuine article?” (Introduction, October 1960, p. 39). An effective parody is challenging to write as well, but it is more in the vein of “making fun” and is often quite broad and sometimes even slapstick in its humor. Many of the most effective and entertaining examples of this genre—e.g., the Schlock Homes tales of Robert Fish and the Hair of the Sleuthhound tales of Jon Breen—are a blend of parody and pastiche, making a bit of fun but with serious intent and genuine affection. Note: The story titles in bold debuted in EQMM; the others were reprints. Arthur, Robert (Sherlock Holmes, the locked room) “The Adventure of the Single Footprint,” July 1948; “The st Sealed Room,” October 1951 9

0

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

In “The 51st Sealed Room” Arthur has somehow managed to write not only an entertaining spoof of locked-room detective stories but at the same time an ingenious, “serious” locked-room detective tale on its own. As a bonus, it features (and lightly skewers) several famous members of the Mystery Writers of America and the Annual EQMM contests. Bentley, e.C. (Lord Peter Wimsey)—see Chapter Five: New Masters Berkeley, Anthony (Sherlock Holmes)—see Chapter Five: New Masters Breen, Jon (Chan, Chambrun and Jerricho, 81st Precinct, Gideon, Merrivale, Merriwell, Poirot, Queen, Vance)—see Chapter Seven: Masters-to-Be Boucher, Anthony (Arsene Lupin) “Arsene Lupin vs. Colonel Linnaeus,” November 1944 Arsene Lupin, that renowned exuberant, arrogant, almost Peter Pan– like Gallic rogue and detective of Maurice LeBlanc, would be easy to parody, but this story of Anthony Boucher is a faithful, deeply satisfying pastiche, serious and sincere in its replication of the spirit and style of Lupin. It also is a bit reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes’ “His Last Bow” as Lupin serves the French resistance and helps combat the cold wind that threatens to engulf the world. Christie, Agatha (Sherlock Holmes, H.C. Bailey, Old Man in the Corner, Roger Sheringham, Max Carrados Dr. Thorndyke, Father Brown, Hercule Poirot)—see Chapter Five: New Masters Derleth, August (Solar Pons) “The Adventure of the Six Silver Spiders,” October 1950 The four Solar Pons novels and the seventy short stories received widespread critical acclaim as among the finest pastiches of Sherlock Holmes ever written: “His adventures are no mere literary echoes; they are time-spirals, rich in the prickling sensation of I-have-been-here-before—and where would one rather be?” (Anthony Boucher in Introduction, October 1950, p. 65). Upon reading any of the stories of this Solar Pons saga, the reader will undoubtedly agree with Queen, for “Once again in old London ‘the game is afoot,’ the nostalgic charm has been recaptured” (p. 66). The image of Pons deeply engaged in a case of theft or fraud or murder recalls the Sydney Paget illustrations of Holmes—“To Pons’ face had now come that intentness of expression so characteristic of him; he was plainly ‘on the scent’—the keenness of his eyes, the pursed lips, the angular line of the jaw” (October 1950, p. 73). Even the titles of the several collections of the tales of Pons takes the reader back to foggy London and the adventures of the Master: The Adven-

Nine. The Fine Arts of Parody, Pastiche and Spoof



tures of Solar Pons, 1945; The Memoirs of Solar Pons, 1951; The Return of Solar Pons, 1961; The Casebook of Solar Pons, 1965; The Chronicles of Solar Pons, 1973. Finally, in 1982 all seventy short stories were collected in The Solar Pons Omnibus. As Vincent Starrett so eloquently put it, Pons is “an ectoplasmic emanation of the great prototype” (p. 65), as these pastiches are indeed serious and sincere testimonials and re-incarnations of “the master” and his Watson. Fish, Robert (Sherlock Holmes)—see Chapter Seven: Masters-to-Be Harrison, Michael (Auguste Dupin) “The Vanished Treasure,” May 1965; “The Mystery of the Fulton Documents,” September 1965; “The Man in the Blue Spectacles,” May 1966; “The Mystery of the Gilded Cheval-Glass,” January 1967; “The Fires in the Rue Honore,” November 1967; “The Murder in the Rue Royale,” January 1968; “The Facts in the Case of the Missing Diplomat,” April 1969; “The Assassination of Sir Ponsonby Brown,” September 1968; “The Clue of the Single word,” October 1969; “Murder in the Rue St. Andre’ des Arts,” December 1970; “The Jewel of Childeric,” April 1973 “The Vanished Treasure,” which was Michael Harrison’s debut story of Auguste Dupin, is believed to be the first pastiche of Dupin to appear in fiction anywhere. To attempt a pastiche of the acknowledged “Father of the Detective Story” takes courage, scholarship, and devotion—all qualities Harrison (a British technical writer, historian, and cryptanalyst) had in abundance. As Queen says in his Introduction to the American edition of The Exploits of the Chevalier Dupin, 1968, “It is too much to hope that anyone can write an absolutely perfect pastiche of Poe … but Michael Harrison has performed a Herculean task. His ‘new’ Dupin stories are ‘near to the original,’ and make fascinating reading. They are truly ’tec tours de force” (p. xi). Harrison’s Dupin is brilliant and arrogant, delighting in showing up the police and his “Watson” with his demonstrations of cold logic and deduction. In these twelve tales (all but one appearing only in EQMM before later being collected in book form), Dupin deals with murder, theft, arson, forgery, espionage, assassination, and disappearance, and even the Poe-esque lockedroom crime. To Dupin, of course, the solutions are quickly apparent, but not to the police, the narrator, and probably the reader—“Is it all clear now? Surely the clews point to the inevitable solution? No? Then permit me to unriddle the riddle” (September 1965, p. 28). Heidenfeld, w. (Watson) “The Unpleasantness at the Stooges Club,” February 1953 This highly entertaining story is a parody, not of the famous detectives of fiction, but of their “Watsons”—all members of the “Stooges Club.” It is a

2

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

locked-room mystery, reminiscent of Robert Arthur’s “51st Sealed Room,” which even quotes passages from Dr. Gideon Fell’s famous lecture on the permutations of locked-room solutions (from Carr’s The Three Coffins). The spoofs on not only Dr. Watson but other famous “Watsons” (Poirot’s Captain Hastings, Hanaud’s Ricardo, Uncle Abner’s Squire Randolph, Auguste Dupin’s unnamed narrator, and even Ellery Queen’s Nikki Porter) are entertaining and telling; they all get their chance to shine (or not) as the detectives themselves have gone off to the First International Congress of Fictional Sleuths. This story won a Special Award in the 7th Annual EQMM Contest. Hoffmann, Banesh (Sherlock Holmes) “Sherlock, Shakespeare, and the Bomb,” February 1966 Written by a theoretical physicist and member of the Baker Street Irregulars, this serious spoof is, as Queen says, “one of the superspoofs of our time—a brilliant pseudo-serious piece of Sherlockiana” (Introduction, February 1966, p. 88). Before being reprinted in EQMM, it was published in The Baker Street Journal, April 1960, after first appearing in shorter form as “Shakespeare the Physicist” in Scientific American, April 1, 1951—this has to be a first for combination of journals! The premise is novel and fascinating—Holmes has been studying Shakespeare and is asserting the need for a re-evaluation of the Bard’s works as concealing, “beneath a cloak of poetry and drama, unparalleled feats of clairvoyance and prognostication” (pp. 90–91). Holmes goes on to convince the skeptical Watson that Shakespeare has foreseen Einstein’s relativity, Quantum theory, and the nuclear bomb. The line from The Tempest—“Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve” leaves Watson glum for the future, but Holmes, of course, is optimistic that man will show more wisdom and have a rosier future. Kendrick, Baynard (with Clayton Rawson) “The Case of the Stuttering Sextant,” March 1947 With “The Case of the Stuttering Sextant” readers get a double dose of parody as Clayton Rawson introduces Kendrick’s parody of the “fact-detective” story with a parody of Queen’s usual introductory comments: “EQMM fans will be tickled pink to learn the story has not previously appeared in any other language (including the Sanskrit) and comes to you piping hot direct from the typewriter on which the young prodigy, Baynard Kendrick (age 5½) writes his novels” (Rawson Introduction, March 1947, p. 70). Queen responds (of course) with “Messrs. Kendrick and Rawson have taken your Editors for a ride—and we love it” (p. 75). narcejac, Thomas (Jules Maigret, Nero Wolfe, Arsene Lupin) “Maigret’s Next-to-Last Case,” October 1960; “The Red Orchid,” January 1961; “The Oliveira Affair,” April 1961

Nine. The Fine Arts of Parody, Pastiche and Spoof



Narcejac wrote three series of pastiches of famous literary detectives (in French) collected in three books long out of print in 1959 when they were recollected in Usurpation D’Identite. Critics have praised these pastiches for their faithfulness to the detective and the authors—“not only does Narcejac cleverly imitate the authors’ individual styles, but he also reproduces—sometimes uncannily—the special manner each has for writing a detective story” (Maurice Renault in Introduction, October 1960, p. 39). After this pastiche of Maigret had its first appearance in English in EQMM, Queen selected two more featuring Nero Wolfe (“The Red Orchid”) and Arsene Lupin (“The Oliveira Affair”) in addition to three other “straight” stories (not pastiches). All the pastiches were translated by Lawrence Blochman. Narcejac’s Maigret is certainly true to form—not the epitome of enthusiasm or energy: “Maigret said nothing. He thought nothing. His head ached and he was bone-weary. The words of Inspector Janvier came to him confusedly as he yielded to the kind of invincible somnolence that sometimes overcame him in the summer time as he sat in a barber’s chair” (p. 41). And yet, in his subdued and perceptive way, he notices the clues of place and character and solves the crime. The response to Queen’s question—“If [this story] had been signed as by Georges Simenon, wouldn’t you have accepted it, without question, as the genuine article?”—would have to be an enthusiastic affirmative, as it would for the other two pastiches—Wolfe loves his orchids and armchair detection, and Lupin cavorts with Gallic enthusiasm in all his disguises and cocky scorn of the police. norris, Margaret (Sherlock Holmes) “A Case of Identities,” April 1966 Queen calls this “the Sherlock Holmes parody-pastiche to end all Sherlock Holmes parody-pastiches” (Introduction, April 1966, p. 135). Since he has used almost the same wording to describe several other Holmes takeoffs, the reader is a bit skeptical of the accolades; however, after reading the story Queen’s phrase takes on a new meaning and significance, and the reader is forced to agree with his assessment—this parody-pastiche is even beyond the end all for Holmes, Watson, and Moriarty. Pachter, Josh (Ellery Queen, Nick Velvet)—see Chapter Seven: Masters-toBe Peirce, J.F. (Nick Velvet) “The Theft That wasn’t a Theft,” December 1980 J.F. Peirce wrote a score or so of non-series detective-crime stories and several about William Shakespeare, Detective. His pastiche about Ed Hoch’s Nick Velvet (Vic Velour) as written by Ad Hoch is a faithful rendition of



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Velvet, the thief who gets paid thousands to steal nothing of value and the detective who figures out the scam. Velour may not be as smooth as Velvet, but he is a sign that Velvet has arrived, for “an author’s character has reached general popularity and acceptance when other authors begin to write pastiches or parodies of that character” (Introduction, December 1980, p. 22). Porges, Arthur (Sherlock Holmes) HOLMeS: “Her Last Bow,” February 1957 GReen: “The english Village Mystery,” December 1964; “The Indian Diamond Mystery,” June 1965 Holmes: Arthur Porges was an amazingly prolific short story writer with over a hundred and thirty detective and crime stories published in magazines, mostly in EQMM, AHMM, The Saint Mystery Magazine, and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, including stories of his series detectives Celery Green, Cyriack Skinner Gray, and five parody-pastiche tales of Stately Homes. The Homes debut story—“Her Last Bow”—was published in EQMM in 1957 (and won “Honor Roll” in the 11th Annual EQMM Contest) as were three others over forty years later after the death of Fred Dannay (so outside our period of discussion). Queen praised the debut story as being “as ingenious a spoof of Sherlock Holmes as it has been our good fortune to offer you in years…. It’s not only a parody-pastiche of The One and Only but also an equally clever parodypastiche of Carter Dickson’s (John Dickson Carr’s) Sir Henry Merrivale” (Introduction, February 1957, p. 26). In some ways, however, this story is actually more a spoof of Merrivale than of Holmes as it parodies Merrivale’s incessant locked-room cases (“Who’s been stabbed in a locked bank vault behind four feet of reinforced concrete and no weapon to be found, or strangled in a sunken submarine under three hundred fathoms of icy water?” [p. 27]), and has very little to say about Holmes. Nonetheless, it is a clever and entertaining story introducing an intriguing murder victim—an old lady sleuth from “the most depraved little town I’ve ever heard of ” (p. 29)—and fascinating suspects including Dr. Jekyll, Quasimodo, and the mad pursuer of the white whale, Captain Ahab. Green: Although Arthur Porges wrote the “serious” detective stories about Cyriack Grey, his best known detective fiction had a decidedly satiric flavor to it—he wrote parodies and pastiches as well as these tongue-in-cheek stories of Celery Green. With that name, what else could Green be but a spoof—“East’s superior, Commissioner North, a cold, blustery type” (December 1964, p. 46). Green, a brash and “infallible” American private detective, meets his match in the case of the murders in England’s smallest town, Tottering-on-the-Brink. When twelve of the town’s fifteen inhabitants are murdered by one of the other residents, you’d think it would be easy to deter-

Nine. The Fine Arts of Parody, Pastiche and Spoof



mine the killer, but the murders turn out to have motive and methods but neither rhyme nor reason, and Green almost experiences a moment of humility—“If I weren’t infallible, I’d almost think my solution was wrong” (p. 49). Richardson, Maurice (Sherlock Holmes and many other classic detectives) “The Last Detective Story in the World,” February 1947 This “Armageddon of the detective story—the final battle between the powers of good and evil” (Introduction, February 1947, p. 63) has an incredible cast including “villains” Professor Moriarty and Colonel Moran, Count Fosco, Dracula, Fu Manchu, and Jack the Ripper contesting with a honor roll of detectives including Holmes, Father Brown, Peter Wimsey, Inspector French, The Old Man in the Corner, Philo Vance, Dr. Thorndyke, Auguste Dupin, Ellery Queen, Hercule Poirot, Reggie Fortune, Dr. Fell, Nero Wolfe, and Perry Mason. There is more in-fighting than other-fighting (on both sides), characters are too numerous to be well-portrayed, and the battle (for the Atomic Bomb) ends up as a cricket match and a farce. This unique story was first published in Liliput, May 1946, and in the June 2, 1946, issue of Crusader. Queen hoped there would be a “last story plus one,” but the last turned out to be just that. Shore, Viola Brothers (Sherlock Holmes)—see Chapter Eight: Other Debuts Starrett, Vincent (Sherlock Holmes) “The Adventure of the Empty Cupboard,” September 1961; “The Adventure of the Cat and the Fiddle,” October 1961 Renowned scholar and author of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and the The Unique Hamlet: A Hitherto Unchronicled Adventure of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Starrett also wrote these two Holmes pastiches, both of which originally appeared in The Baker Street Journal in 1948. Suter, John (Uncle Abner) “The Oldest Law,” December 1979; “The Angel’s Hair,” April 1980; “The Fairy Ring,” June 1980; “The Desecration of the Temple,” July 1980; “The Ax of elisha,” September 1980; “The wise Men’s Gold,” October 1980; “The Shades of Death,” December 1980 John Suter has been called a “writer’s writer” who “in a genre with an increasing emphasis on the novel, and an ever-shrinking market for short stories … has remained a constant, a shining planet for four decades, crafting his well-written, meticulously observed slices of ordinary life into gems of crime fiction, and helping to sustain the short story as an art form for those who love the tale well told” (McCrumb, Introduction, Old Land, Dark Land, Strange Land, 1996, p. vi).



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

At the request of the Melville Davisson Post estate, Suter wrote fifteen “new” Uncle Abner stories to carry on the saga of Abner, the righteous, godfearing detective and enforcer of God’s will. Post’s Uncle Abner stories are regarded by many to be the best American detective tales after Poe’s Auguste Dupin tales of the 1840s. These Suter Abner stories are wonderfully “authentic” in their portrayal of the small-town West Virginia in the early 1800s, of the disputes, usually over property, and crimes, and of the observant detecting methods and imposing character of Uncle Abner—“Although the white in my uncle’s hair and beard was now more noticeable, Abner still seemed as one who might have been molded in that very forge. The chestnut he rode could almost have been sired by the great horse which had been his companion when I was a boy, so that the pair seemed to present an unchanging picture” (December 1980, p. 75). In most of the stories, as in the originals of Post, the solution to the crime hinges on a small and, to others, insignificant clue—“Most of all, he respected the insignificant, for the Lord was as infinite in patience as He was mighty in colossal works” (p. 4).

Ten

Queen as Champion, Cheerleader, Critic and Patron Every writer and reader and lover of mystery fiction owes him debts none of us can pay. What he gave us—as writer, editor, and friend—will live as long as any of us who remember.—Nevins, The Tragedy of Errors, 1999, p. 139. We are proud to be its guardian angel, patron saint, and publisher.—Queen Introduction, May 1946

In the preceding chapters we have seen how Ellery Queen as author, historian and critic, and especially as editor had a profound impact on preserving and nurturing the detective-crime short story at a time when it was beginning to fade from public attention and interest. In England, the longpopular showcases for detective-crime short stories were dying off—“With the killing of that excellent periodical, Argosy, the night finally fell. Along with the Strand and the Grand and Pearson’s and the Windsor, they had been condemned, one after the other, to death” (M. Gilbert in The Tragedy of Errors, p. 181). But, Gilbert goes on to say, “there was a gleam of light from across the Atlantic…. The steady flame of Ellery Queen was alive” (p. 181). Queen had a deep love for the classic detective stories of the past which he helped return to the public’s eye by his own classic clue-puzzle novels and short stories of the “Ellery I” period, his annotated list of the 125 most important books of detective-crime short stories (Queen’s Quorum), and especially by publishing in EQMM and in scores of anthologies hundreds of reprints of some of the most famous detective-crime authors, often obscure or “lost and forgotten” stories that hadn’t been seen since their original publication decades earlier. For Queen, searching through his vast collection of books of short stories 



Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

and early magazines for obscure stories of the detective-crime writers of the past was one of his greatest thrills. His excitement in this hunt for lost treasures moved him to wax poetic: “On these forays into ferretry your editor is a combination hunter, explorer, researcher, and archaeologist: we track down, blaze forgotten trails, seek among lost ruins, and excavate for Queen’s treasures” (Introduction, February 1947, p. 9). He had some “epic” finds both among the Old Masters and the New Masters which excited readers and stimulated their love of the classics: Old Masters Chesterton, G.K. (Dr. Hyde, Philip Swayne, and Mr. Traill): three virtually unknown Chesterton minor classics, Futrelle, Jacques (The Thinking Machine): three stories not included in either of the Thinking Machine collections in 1907 and 1908 but part of a third and fourth series of tales published only in obscure magazines, the fourth series tales being the only ones of that series to survive Futrelle’s perishing on the Titanic, Post, Melville Davisson (Uncle Abner and Colonel Braxton): three of the four Uncle Abner stories not included in the classic collection Uncle Abner: Master of Mysteries, 1918, and not discovered until decades later, and two Colonel Braxton stories not included in the only collection of those tales, The Silent Witness, 1930, and published only in The American Magazine in The 1920s, Shiel, M.P. (Prince Zaleski and Cummings King Monk): a brand new Prince Zaleski story and a story of Shiel’s “other detective” Cummings King Monk that had never been reprinted anywhere (after appearing in his The Pale Ape, 1911), Anderson, F.I. (Oliver Armiston/Deputy Parr): three previously unpublished Armiston/Parr stories, including one that was discovered and sent to EQMM only after Anderson’s death. new Masters Allingham, Margery: eight Albert Campion stories which had never previously appeared in the United States, being published only in The Strand in England in the 1930s, and four new stories, Ambler, eric: all six Dr. Czissar stories which had never previously been published in the United States, Bailey, H.C.: one Reggie Fortune story which had never appeared in any of the numerous Fortune collections or in any form in the United States, whose only previous publication was in an obscure English anthology, Queen’s Book of the Red Cross, 1939, Bentley, e.C.: a Philip Trent story not included in the only collection

Ten. Queen as Champion, Cheerleader, Critic and Patron

9

of Trent short stories, Trent Intervenes, 1938, appearing only in The Strand, November 1938, Berkeley, Anthony: two virtually unknown Roger Sheringham stories which had appeared only in obscure periodicals in the early 1940s, Blake, nicholas: the first short story about Strangeways which had only been published once in an English anthology, Detection Medley, 1939, Carr, John Dickson: one Henri Merrivale story never before published (“one of the most distinguished firsts it has been your Editor’s privilege to introduce to American readers” [November 1947, p. 4]), three Gideon Fell stories never previously published in the United States and unknown to most readers and even to most critics, and two Colonel March stories that did not appear in the only March collection, The Department of Queer Complaints, 1940, and had been published only in England in The Strand. Queen called these two stories “a discovery of epic proportions for American Readers” (Queen Introduction, November 1944, p. 5), Charteris, Leslie: Three Simon Templar (the Saint) stories never before published, Christie, Agatha: three Hercule Poirot stories never previously published in a Christie collection in the U.S., and a Harley Quin story not included in the only Quin collection, The Mysterious Mr. Quin, 1930, and published only in the English periodical Flynn’s Weekly in 1926, Crofts, Freeman wills: one Inspector French story which had been published only in an obscure English periodical Holly Leaves, November 21, 1937, and two French stories never before published, Hammett, Dashiell: three “almost unknown” Continental Op stories all of which had been previously published only in Black Mask in the 1920s, and the one Robin Thin story which had never before been published, Innes, Michael: sixteen of the Inspector Appleby stories which had never before appeared anywhere, MacDonald, Phil: the only Anthony Gethryn story and the first of the Dr. Alcazar stories, both of which had never been previously published, Marsh, ngaio: the first Roderick Alleyn short story which had never been previously published, Sayers, Dorothy: one Peter Wimsey story which had never been anthologized after appearing only in Lord Peter Views the Body, 1928, Simenon, George: all his Maigret, G7, Leborgne, Little Doctor,

90

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Kachoudas, and Froget stories which had never previously appeared in English, Stribling, T.S.: the entire 3rd series of Poggioli stories (13 stories) never before published, Vickers, Roy: an entire new series of Department of Dead Ends stories (26 stories) never before published, wilde, Percival: the series of P. Moran stories which had never been previously published.

But despite his love of the classic authors and their stories and his excitement in bringing them back to contemporary readers, Queen was well aware that this wasn’t enough for the detective-crime short story to survive and to appeal to new audiences. To ensure that the detective-crime short story would thrive into the future, it was necessary to encourage and cultivate new authors and to encourage the continuing development of the genre with new types of detectives and detective-crime stories. With this in mind, Queen’s own stories evolved into the more modern, socially conscious, human-interest tales of his “Ellery II” phase, and Queen as editor actively recruited, through contests, personal requests, and other inducements, hundreds of new authors with a variety of new types of stories. Of all the ’tec tyros who had their beginnings in EQMM, some went on to brilliant careers in the field and helped carry the detective-crime short story into the present day. Some of the ’Tec Tyros who Debuted in EQMM and Became “Modern Masters”: James Yaffe –seventeen stories 1943–1968 (all in EQMM), novels, Broadway plays Lilian de la Torre—thirty-eight stories 1943–1993 (all but four in EQMM), four collections of short stories Harry Kemelman—April 1947, eight stories 1947–1967 (all in EQMM), award-winning novels Jack Finney—ten stories 1947–1962 (three in EQMM), novels, films Stanley ellin—forty-three stories 1948–1985 (all but one in EQMM), Edgars Thomas Flanagan—seven stories 1949–1958 (all in EQMM), awardwinning and best-selling novel Henry Slesar—170 stories 1956–2002 (forty-two in EQMM), teleplays, novels Robert Fish—fifty stories 1960–1981 (all but five in EQMM) Reach, Alice—seventeen stories 1962–1969 (all but four in EQMM) James Powell—139 stories 1966–2017 (all but three in EQMM) Jon Breen—fifty-two stories 1967–2016 (all but eight in EQMM), many articles, book reviews, “The Jury Box” 1977–1981, 1988–present

Ten. Queen as Champion, Cheerleader, Critic and Patron

9

Young, Alan—fifteen stories 1970–1974 (all but one in EQMM) nevins, Francis—thirty-four stories 1972–2008 (twenty-two in EQMM), articles, columns, tributes, biographies, novels Harrington, Joyce—thirty stories 1972–1993 (twenty-two in EQMM), novels S.S. Rafferty—thirty-three stories 1973–1983 (fifteen in EQMM), collection of short stories The Queen magic continues to flourish even after Queen is gone, for there are numerous authors who debuted in EQMM after 1980 who have achieved great popularity and success and have been instrumental in breathing life back into the genre, carrying the detective-crime story into the 21st century. Queen’s words in 1949 were a prophetic glimpse into the future: “So long as young writers like James Yaffe keep coming on, we have no fears for the future of the detective story. It is here to stay—and more important, to flourish, develop, and expand—yes, even to blaze new trails and discover new frontiers” (Introduction, July 1943, p. 48). Queen was never shy about urging authors in print to continue to write and submit more stories, traditional and innovative, detective and crimemystery. Over and over in his introductions to the stories, he encouraged, solicited, requested, beseeched, and implored authors to write more stories. His passion and enthusiasm made it clear that these entreaties were motivated not only by his personal joy in reading the stories but also by his ardor for the survival and growth of the detective-crime short story. Only rarely did Queen’s pleas fall on deaf ears, his biggest disappointments probably being: (1) Anthony Berkeley—after the first American publication of “Mr. Bearstowe Says” in EQMM—“We urge Mr. Berkeley “to make ‘Mr. Bearstowe Says’ the first of a series of Roger Sheringham shorts to be written especially for EQMM” (Introduction, July 1945). Other than a couple revisions of earlier Sheringham stories, no more tales of that detective appeared, (2) William Faulkner (after the debut of the Gavin Stevens tale “Smoke” in EQMM—“We hope that Mr. Faulkner will prolong the saga, continue to mold it in the pure detection vein, and send further exploits of Uncle Gavin to your Editors. Indeed, we would be honored if from now on Mr. Faulkner would consider EQMM his crime-story crucible and detective story domicile” (Introduction, October 1947, p. 24). Indeed Faulkner did write further exploits of Stevens, but, to the disappointment of Dannay, rather than submit them to EQMM, he collected them in Knight’s Gambit, and (3) Earl Biggers—despite repeated urging from Queen, Biggers never wrote a single Charlie Chan short story. But the vast majority of authors (including such luminaries as Allingham,

92

Frederic Dannay and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Boucher, Breen, Cornier, de la Torre, Ellin, Hand, Heard, Kendrick, C.D. King, Philip MacDonald, Palmer, Jerome and Harold Prince, Rawson, Shiel, Stribling, Vickers, Wilde, Yaffe) “heeded the call” and at Queen’s urging and solicitation submitted new stories, often turning a one-time detective into a series sleuth or initiating a whole new series of stories about an established detective. Queen’s pleas and encouragements (and the lure of a large audience for EQMM) brought numerous new stories to readers, helping move EQMM and the detective-crime short story genre into the future. And Queen (Dannay) didn’t just provide new authors a platform and an eager audience, but he worked tirelessly as editor to help them improve and refine their craft—a process infinitely rewarding for the author and the genre (and for EQMM and Queen) but also not infrequently difficult and trying: He wasn’t easy on his contributors. He made them work and rework stories until every detail had taken its place in a harmonious mosaic, and thereby taught them more about the storyteller’s art than any course or textbook could possibly teach [Nevins in The Tragedy of Errors, p. 134]. “Don’t you take any pride in your craft?” This has been his most precious—and sometimes most uncomfortable—legacy [Yaffe in The Tragedy of Errors, p. 146]. A year and a half ago Mr. Fife submitted a detective short story through the mail. Your Editor did not accept the story, but he did write Mr. Fife a long letter of praise and encouragement. There followed three more stories, all about the same central character, and without exception they too went back; but in each instance your editor wrote more praise and encouragement. Then one day the mail brought “Pattern for Murder”—and this time we felt that Mr. Fife had won his detectival spurs. A new writer had been born and a new detective made his literary debut [Introduction, May 1945, p. 65].

In so many ways, then, for fifty years as author, historian and critic, and editor, Ellery Queen was the detective-crime short story, preventing it (and its authors) from “dying on the vine” by helping it celebrate its past and move into the future as a viable, thriving, and developing genre. The Queen influence and impact on the genre was profound and unparalleled; his legacy and his story will long endure.

Appendix: Story Titles Story Titles by Author (and Detective): Author’s Original Title with Queen’s in Parentheses Bailey, H.C. (Reggie Fortune) “The Young Doctor” (“The Superfluous Clues”) “Zodiacs” (“The Affair of the Zodiacs”) Blochman, Lawrence (Dr. Daniel Webster Coffee) “Stacked Deck” (“A Case of Poetic Justice”) Bramah, Ernest (Max Carrados) “Said It with Flowers” (“The Bunch of Violets”) Brand, Christianna (Inspector Cockrill) “After the Event” (“Rabbit Out of Hat”) “The Hornets’ Nest” (“Twist for Twist”) “The Telephone Call” (“The Last Short Story”) Brown, Fredric (Henry Smith) “Whistler’s Murder” (“Mr. Smith Protects a Client”) Butler, Ellis Parker (Philo Gubb) “Philo Gubb’s Greatest Case” (“The Correspondence-School Detective”) Carr, John Dickson (Colonel March) “Error at Daybreak” (“The Lion’s Paw”) “Hot Money” (“Right Before Your Eyes”) “The New Invisible Man” (“The Man Who Saw the Invisible”) Carr, John Dickson (Dr. Gideon Fell) “Guest in the House” (“The Incautious Burglar”) “King Arthur’s Chair” (“Death by Invisible Hands”) Chandler, Raymond (Philip Marlowe) “Marlowe Takes on the Syndicate” (“Philip Marlowe’s Last Case”) Child, Charles (Chafik Chafik)

193

194

Appendix

“Death Danced in Baghdad” (“The Face of the Assassin”) “Death Had a Birthday” (“The Lady of Good Deeds”) “Death Had Strange Hands” (“Do Not Choose Death”) “Death Starts a Rumor” (“The Chicken Feather of Rumor”) “Death Was a Tempter” (“Murder Weaves a Pattern”) “The Invisible Killer” (“The Thumbless Man”) “The Revenge of the Bedouin” (“The Caller After Death”) “Royal Theft” (“The Holy-Day Crimes”) “There Is a Man in Hiding” (“The Army of Little Ears”) “The Web Caught the Spider” (“The Cockroaches of Baghdad”) Christie, Agatha (Harley Quin) “At the Bells and Motley” (“The Disappearance of Captain Harwell”) “At the Crossroads” (“The Love Detectives”) “The Dead Harlequin” (“The Man in the Empty Chair”) “The Shadow on the Glass” (“Jealousy Is the Devil”) Christie, Agatha (Hercule Poirot) “The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly” (“At the Stroke of Twelve”) “The Adventure of the Cheap Flat” (“Poirot Indulges a Whim”) “The Adventure of the Clapham Cook” (“Find the Cook”) “The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman” (“The Regent’s Court Murder”) “The Adventure of the ‘Western Star,” (“Poirot Puts a Finger in the Pie”) “The Affair at the Victory Ball” (“The Six China Figures”) “The Capture of Cerberus” (“Hercule Poirot in Hell”) “The Case of the Missing Will” (“Sporting Challenge”) “The Chocolate Box” (“The Time Hercule Poirot Failed”) “Dead Man’s Mirror” (“Hercule Poirot and the Broken Mirror”) “The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim” (“Hercule Poirot, Armchair Detective”) “The Disappearance of Winnie King” (“The Case of the Missing Schoolgirl”) “The Dream” (“The Three Strange Points”) “The Horses of Diomedes” (“The Case of the Drug Peddler”) “Invisible Enemy” (“The Case of the Gossipers”) “The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan” (“The Theft of the Opalsen Pearls”) “The King of Clubs” (“Beware the King of Clubs”) “The Lost Mine” (“Poirot Makes an Investment”) “Midnight Madness” (“The Case of the Family Taint”) “Murder in the Mews” (“Good Night for a Murder”) “The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge” (“Investigation by Telegram”) “The Nemean Lion” (“The Case of the Kidnapped Pekinese”) “The Plymouth Express” (“The Girl in Electric Blue”) “Problem at Sea” (“The Quickness of the Hand”) “The Stymphalean Birds” (“The Case of the Vulture Women”) “The Submarine Plans” (“Shadow in the Night”) “The Tragedy at Marsden Manor” (“Hercule Poirot, Insurance Investigator”) “Triangle at Rhodes” (“Before It Is Too Late”)

Story Titles “The Veiled Lady” (“The Chinese Puzzle Box”) “Yellow Iris” (“Hercule Poirot and the Sixth Chair”) Christie, Agatha (Miss Jane Marple) “The Bloodstained Pavement” (“Miss Marple and the Wicked World”) Christie, Agatha (Parker Pyne) “The Case of the Distressed Lady” (“The Cat and the Chestnut”) “The Gate of Baghdad” (“The Gate of Death”) “Have You Got Everything You Want?” (“Express to Stamboul”) “The House of Shiraz” (“The Dream House of Shiraz”) “The Pearl of Price” (“Once a Thief ”) Christie, Agatha (Tommy and Tuppence Beresford) “The Affair of the Pink Pearl” (“Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives”) “The Case of the Perfect Maid” (“The Servant Problem”) “A Christmas Tragedy” (“Never Two Without Three”) “The Clergyman’s Daughter” (“Seek, and Ye Shall Find”) “Death by Drowning” (“Village Tragedy”) “The Four Suspects” (“Some Day They Will Get Me”) “The Herb of Death” (“Foxglove in the Sage”) “The Idol House of Astarte” (“The ‘Supernatural’ Murder”) “Ingots of Gold” (“Miss Marple and the Golden Galleon”) “Sanctuary” (“The Man on the Chancel Steps”) “Tape-Measure Murder” (“Village Murder”) “The Thumb Mark of Saint Peter” (“Ask and You Shall Receive”) Cornier, Vincent (Barnabas Hildreth) “The Catastrophe in Clay” (“The Smell That Killed”) “The Duel of Shadows” (“The Shot That Waited”) “The Mantle That Laughed” (“The Cloak That Laughed”) “The Masterpiece” (“Oh Time! In Your Flight”) Coxe, George Harmon (Kent Murdock) “Speak No Evil” (“Seed of Suspicion”) Coxe, George Harmon (Paul Standish) “Black Target” (“The Appearance of Truth”) Eberhart, Mignon (James Wickwire) “The Bride Cried Murder” (“Mr. Wickwire Adds and Subtracts”) “Murder by Night” (“The Hound of the Wellingtons”) “The Rain Dropped Death” (“Murder in the Rain”) “The Valentine’s Murder” (“Murder on St. Valentine’s Day”) Gardner, Erle Stanley (Lester Leith) “Lester Leith, Magician” (“The Hand Is Quicker Than the Eye”) “Something Like a Pelican” (“Lester Leith, Financier”) “A Thousand to One” (“Lester Leith, Impersonator”) Gardner, Erle Stanley (Sydney Zoom) “The First Stone” (“The Case of the Scattered Rubies”)

195

196

Appendix

Gilbert, Michael (Inspector Patrick Petrella) “The Battle of Bank Street” (“London Manhunt”) “Bonny for Value” (“The Invisible Loot”) “The King in Pawn” (Pick up the King”) “The Man Who Hated Banks” (“C12: Department of Bank Robberies”) “Mr. Duckworth’s Night Out” (“A Case for Gourmets”) “The Oyster Catcher” (“The Second Skin”) “A Real Born Killer” (“The Terror of Pardoe Street”) Gruber, Frank (Sam Cragg) “The Sad Serbian” (“1000-to-1 for Your Money”) Halliday, Brett (Mike Shayne) “Dead Man’s Code” (“Not-Tonight-Danger”) Hammett, Dashiell (Continental Op) “Bodies Piled Up” (“House Dick”) “Crooked Souls” (“The Gatewood Caper”) “It” (“The Black Hat That Wasn’t There”) “Women, Politics, and Murder” (“Death on Pine Street”) Kelland, Clarence (Alpin Stone) “Alias Scarface” (“The Inconspicuous Man”) King, Rufus (Dr. Colin Starr) “The Case of the Buttoned Collar” (“Three Paths to Choose”) “The Case of the Jet-Black Sheep” (“You Must Ride with the Wind”) “The Case of the Sudden Shot” (“The Tenth Case Out of Ten”) Leasor, James (Dr. Jason Love) “Dr. Love Strikes Again” (“The Seventy-Sixth Face”) Leblanc, Maurice (Arsene Lupin) “The Twelve Little Nigger Boys” (“The Twelve Little Pickaninnies”) Lockridge, Frances, and Richard (Captain Heimrich) “Allergic to Murder” (“The Accusing Smoke”) “Boy Kidnaped” (“Dead Boys Don’t Remember”) “The Cat and the Killer” (“The Searching Cats”) “Death and the Fiery-Eyed Cat” (“Cat of Dreams”) “Death on a Foggy Morning” (“Hit-And-Run”) “Murder by the Clock” (“If They Give Him Time’) “Too Early for Murder” (“Nobody Can Ask That”) MacDonald, Ross (Lew Archer) “The Bearded Lady” (“Murder Is a Public Matter”) “The Suicide” (“The Missing Sister Case”) MacHarg, William (O’Malley) “The Checkered Suit” (“East Side Homicide”) “The Fourth Girl” (“Manhattan Murder”) “Soiled Diamonds” (“Tell ’Em at Headquarters”)

Story Titles Marric, J.J. (George Gideon) “Crook’s Harvest” (“Gideon’s War”) McCloy, Helen (Basil Willing) “Murder Stops the Music” (“The Silent Informer”) “Thy Brother Death” (“Shock Tactics”) Nebel, Frederick (Donny Donahue) “Shake Up” (“Dead Date”) Palmer, Stuart (Hildegard Withers) “A Fingerprint in Cobalt” (“The Blue Fingerprint”) “The Puzzle of the Scorned Woman” (“The Lady from Dubuque”) “The Riddle of the Doctor’s Double” (“The Doctor’s Double”) Patrick, Q. (Timothy Trant) “Footlights and Murder” (“Farewell Performance”) “Revolvers and Roses” (“On the Day of the Rose Show”) “Two Deadly Females” (“Lioness Vs. Panther”) Pentecost, Hugh (George Crowder) “A Black Eye for Miss Millington” (“The Sooty Man”) “Murder Throws a Curve” (“Murder by a Southpaw”) Pentecost, Hugh (Jeff Larigan) “The Cassandra Club” (“The Trail of the Crescent Moons”) “An Element of Risk” (“The Girl Who Lived Dangerously”) Pentecost, Hugh (Dr. John Smith) “Volcano” (“Volcano in the Mind”) Pentecost, Hugh (Lt. Pascal) “Eager Victim” (“Tomorrow Is Yesterday”) Post, Melville Davisson (Uncle Abner) “An Act of God” (“The Three Threads of Justice”) “The Adopted Daughter” (“The Instrument of Darkness”) “The Age of Miracles” (“Dead Man’s Gloves”) Post, Melville Davisson (Colonel Braxton) “The Metal Box” (“The Witness in the Metal Box”) “The Mute Voices” (“The Great Game”) “The Survivor” (“No Way to Win’) Queen, Ellery (Ellery Queen) “The Backboard Gangsters” (“Object Lesson”) “Crime Syndicate Payoff ” (“Payoff ”) “Enter Ellery Queen” (“Mystery at the Library of Congress”) “The Lady Couldn’t Explain” (“The Lonely Bride”) “Lady, You’re Dead” (“Driver’s Seat”) “Man They All Hated” (“No Place to Live”) “Murder Without Clues” (“The Three Widows”) “The Phantom Train” (“Snowball in July”) “The Sound of Blackmail” (“Money Talks”)

197

198

Appendix

“Terror in a Penthouse” (“No Parking”) “Terror Town” (“The Motive”) “The Vanishing Wizard” (“Double Your Money”) Reynolds, Quentin (Baron von Genthner) “Berlin Dinner Party” (“The Bluebeard Murderer”) Rice, Craig (John J. Malone) “Dead Men’s Shoes” (“The Bad Luck Murders”) “The Dead Mr. Duck” (“The Man Who Swallowed a Horse”) “The Little Knife That Wasn’t There” (“Malone and the Missing Weapon”) “Motive” (“Smoke Rings”) Roos, Kelley (Haila and Jeff Troy) “Final Performance” (“The ‘Watch Out!’ Girls”) Sayers, Dorothy (Peter Wimsey) “The Image in the Mirror” (“Something Queer About Mirrors”) “The Incredible Elopement of Lord Peter Wimsey” (“The Power of Darkness”) Starrett, Vincent (Sally Cardiff) “A Box at the Opera” (“Murder at the Opera”) Stout, Rex (Alphabet Hicks) “By His Own Hand” (“Curtain Line”) Stout, Rex (Nero Wolfe) “The Body in the Hall” (“A Dog in the Daytime”) “Fourth of July Picnic” (“The Fourth of July Murder”) “Home to Roost” (“Nero Wolfe Devises a Stratagem”) “Scared to Death” (“The Zero Clue”) “The Squirt and the Monkey” (“The Dazzle Dan Murder Case”) Symon, Julia Stratagems Quarles) “Centre Court Mystery” (“The Wimbledon Mystery”) “The Grand National Case” (“Murder on the Racecourse”) “The Hiding Place” (As If By Magic”) “Time for Murder” (“The Humdrum Murder”) Treat, Lawrence (William Decker) “Homicide Expert” (“B as in Bloodstain”) Van Doren, Mark (The Inspector) “Testimony After Death” (“The Luminous Face”) Vickers, Roy (Department of Dead Ends) “The Clew Proof Murders” (“The Man Who Played the Market”) “The Cowboy of Oxford Street” (“The Case of the Merry Andrew”) “The Three Foot Grave” (“The Impromptu Murder”) Wallace, Edgar (Anthony Smith) “The Seventy-Fourth Diamond” (“Diamond Cut Diamond”) Wallace, Edgar (Felix Jenks) “The Buoy That Did Not Light” (“The Father Christmas Job”)

Story Titles Wylie, Philip (Willie Perkins) “Perkins Takes the Case” (“Perkins’ Second ‘First Case’”)

Story Titles by Author (and Detective): Queen’s Revised Titles with Author’s Original in Parentheses Bailey, H.C. (Reggie Fortune) “The Affair of the Zodiacs” (“Zodiacs”) “The Superfluous Clues” (“Young Doctor”) Blochman, Lawrence (Dr. Daniel Webster Coffee) “A Case of Poetic Justice” (“Stacked Deck”) Bramah, Ernest (Max Carrados) “The Bunch of Violets” (“Said It with Flowers”) Brand, Christianna (Inspector Cockrill) “The Last Short Story” (“The Telephone Call”) “Rabbit Out of Hat” (“After the Event”) “Twist for Twist” (“The Hornets’ Nest) Brown, Fredric (Henry Smith) “Mr. Smith Protects a Client” (“Whistler’s Mother) Butler, Ellis Parker (Philo Gubb) “The Correspondence-School Detective” (“Philo Gubb’s Greatest Case”) Carr, John Dickson/Carter Dickson (Dr. Gideon Fell) “Death by Invisible Hands” (“King Arthur’s Chair”) “The Incautious Burglar” (“Guest in the House”) Chandler, Raymond (Philip Marlowe) “Philip Marlowe’s Last Case” (“Marlowe Takes on the Syndicate”) Child, Charles (Chafik Chafik) “The Army of Little Ears” (“There Is a Man in Hiding”) “The Caller After Death” (“The Revenge of the Bedouin”) “The Chicken Feather of Rumor” (“Death Starts a Rumor”) “The Cockroaches of Baghdad” (“The Web Caught the Spider”) “Do Not Choose Death” (“Death Had Strange Hands”) “The Face of the Assassin” (“Death Danced in Baghdad”) “The Holy-Day Crimes” (“Royal Theft”) “The Lady of Good Deeds” (“Death Had a Birthday”) “Murder Weaves a Pattern” (“Death Was a Tempter”) “The Thumbless Man” (“The Invisible Killer”) Christie, Agatha (Harley Quin) “The Disappearance of Captain Harwell” (“At the Bells and Motley”) “Jealousy Is the Devil” (“The Shadow on the Glass”) “The Love Detectives” (“At the Crossroads”) “The Man in the Empty Chair” (“The Dead Harlequin”)

199

200

Appendix

Christie, Agatha (Hercule Poirot) “At the Stroke of Twelve” (“The Adventure of Johnnie Waverley”) “Before It Is Too Late” (“Triangle at Rhodes”) “Beware the King of Clubs” (“The King of Clubs”) “The Case of the Drug Peddler” (“The Horses of Diomedes”) “The Case of the Family Taint” (“Midnight Madness”) “The Case of the Gossipers” (“Invisible Enemy”) “The Case of the Kidnapped Pekinese” (“The Nemean Lion”) “The Case of the Missing Schoolgirl” (“The Disappearance of Winnie King”) “The Case of the Vulture Women” (“The Symphalean Birds”) “The Chinese Puzzle Box” (“The Veiled Lady”) “Find the Cook” (“The Adventure of the Clapham Cook”) “The Girl in Electric Blue” (“The Plymouth Express”) “Good Night for a Murder” (“Murder in the Mews”) “Hercule Poirot and the Broken Mirror” (“Dead Man’s Mirror”) “Hercule Poirot and the Sixth Chair” (“Yellow Iris”) “Hercule Poirot, Armchair Detective” (“The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim”) “Hercule Poirot in Hell” (“The Capture of Cerberus”) “Hercule Poirot, Insurance Investigator” (“The Tragedy at Marsden Manor”) “Investigation by Telegram” (“The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge”) “Poirot Indulges a Whim” (“The Adventure of the Cheap Flat”) “Poirot Makes an Investment” (“The Lost Mine”) “Poirot Puts a Finger in the Pie” (“The Adventure of the Western Star”) “The Quickness of the Hand” (“Problem at Sea”) “The Regent’s Court Murder” (“The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman”) “Shadow in the Night” (“The Submarine Plans”) “The Six China Figures” (“The Affair at the Victory Ball”) “Sporting Challenge” (“The Case of the Missing Will”) “The Theft of the Opalsen Pearls” (“The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan”) “The Three Strange Points” (“The Dream”) “The Time Hercule Poirot Failed” (“The Chocolate Box”) Christie, Agatha (Miss Jane Marple) “Ask and You Shall Receive” (“The Thumb Mark of Saint Peter”) “Foxglove in the Sage” (“The Herb of Death”) “The Man on the Chancel Steps” (“Sanctuary”) “Miss Marple and the Golden Galleon” (“Ingots of Gold”) “Miss Marple and the Wicked World” (“The Bloodstained Pavement”) “Never Two Without Three” (“A Christmas Tragedy”) “The Servant Problem” (“The Case of the Perfect Maid”) “Some Day They Will Get Me” (“The Four Suspects”) “The Supernatural Murder” (“The Idol House of Astarte”) “Village Murder” (“Tape-Measure Murder”) “Village Tragedy” (“Death by Drowning”) Christie, Agatha (Parker Pyne)

Story Titles “The Cat and the Chestnut” (“The Case of the Distressed Lady”) “The Dream House of Shiraz” (“The House of Shiraz”) “Express to Stamboul” (“Have You Got Everything You Want”) “The Gate of Death” (“The Gate of Baghdad”) “Once a Thief ” (“The Pearl of Price” Christie, Agatha (Tommy and Tuppence Beresford) “Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives” (“The Affair of the Pink Pearl”) “Seek, and Ye Shall Find” (“The Clergyman’s Daughter”) Cornier, Vincent (Barnabas Hildreth) “The Cloak That Laughed” (“The Mantle That Laughed”) “Oh Time! In Your Flight” (“The Masterpiece”) “The Shot That Waited” (“The Duel of Shadows”) “The Smell That Killed” (“The Catastrophe in Clay”) Coxe, George Harmon (Kent Murdock) “Seed of Suspicion” (“Speak No Evil”) Coxe, George Harmon (Paul Standish) “The Appearance of Truth” (“Black Target”) Eberhart, Mignon (James Wickwire) “The Hound of the Wellingtons” (“Murder by Night”) “Mr. Wickwire Adds and Subtracts” (“The Bride Called Murder”) “Murder in the Rain” (“The Rain Dropped Death”) “Murder on Saint Valentine’s Day” (“The Valentine’s Murder”) Gardner, Erle Stanley (Lester Leith) “The Hand Is Quicker than the Eye” (“Lester Leith, Magician”) “Lester Leith, Financier” (“Something Like a Pelican”) “Lester Leith, Impersonator” (“A Thousand to One”) Gardner, Erle Stanley (Sydney Zoom) “The Case of the Scattered Rubies” (“The First Stone”) Gilbert, Michael (Inspector Patrick Petrella) “C12: Department of Bank Robberies” (“The Man Who Hated Banks”) “A Case for Gourmets” (“Mr. Duckworth’s Night Out”) “The Invisible Loot” (“Bonny for Value”) “London Manhunt” (“The Battle of Bank Street”) “Pick Up the King” (“The King in Pawn”) “The Second Skin” (“The Oyster Catcher”) “The Terror of Pardoe Street” (“A Real Born Killer”) Gruber, Frank (Sam Cragg) “1,000-to-1 for Your Money” (“The Sad Serbian”) Halliday, Brett (Mike Shayne) “Not-Tonight-Danger” (“Dead Man’s Code”) Hammett, Dashiell (Continental Op) “The Black Hat That Wasn’t There” (“It”) “Death on Pine Street” (“Women, Politics, and Murder”)

201

202

Appendix

“The Gatewood Caper” (“Crooked Souls”) “House Dick” (“Bodies Piled Up”) Kelland, Clarence (Alpin Stone) “The Inconspicuous Man” (“Alias Scarface”) King, Rufus (Dr. Colin Starr) “The Tenth Case Out of Ten” (“The Case of the Sudden Shot”) “Three Paths to Choose” (“The Case of the Buttoned Collar”) “You Must Ride with the Wind” (“The Case of the Jet-Black Sheep”) Leasor, James (Dr. Jason Love) “The Seventy-Sixth Face” (“Dr. Love Strikes Again”) Leblanc, Maurice (Arsene Lupin) “The Twelve Little Pickaninnies” (“The Twelve Little Nigger Boys”) Lockridge, Frances, and Richard (Captain Heimrich) “The Accusing Smoke” (“Allergic to Murder”) “Cat of Dreams” (“Death and the Fiery-Eyed Cat”) “Dead Boys Don’t Remember” (“Boy Kidnapped”) “Hit-and-Run” (“Death on a Foggy Morning”)” “If They Give Him Time” (Murder by the Clock”) “Nobody Can Ask That” (“Too Early for Murder”) “The Searching Cats” (“The Cat and the Killer”) MacDonald, Ross (Lew Archer) “The Missing Sister Case” (“The Suicide”) “Murder Is a Public Matter” (“The Bearded Lady”) MacHarg, William (O’Malley) “East Side Homicide” (“The Checkered Suit”) “Manhattan Murder” (“The Fourth Girl”) “Tell ’Em at Headquarters” (“Soiled Diamonds”) Marric, J.J. (George Gideon) “Gideon’s War” (“Crook’s Harvest”) McCloy, Helen (Basil Willing) “Shock Tactics” (“Thy Brother Death”) “The Silent Informer” (“Murder Stops the Music”) Nebel, Frederick (Donny Donahue) “Dead Date” (“Shake Up”) Palmer, Stuart (Hildegard Withers) “The Blue Fingerprint” (“A Fingerprint in Cobalt”) “The Doctor’s Double” (“The Riddle of the Doctor’s Double”) “The Lady from Dubuque” (“The Puzzle of the Scorned Woman”) Patrick, Q. (Timothy Trant) “Farewell Performance” (“Footlights and Murder”) “Lioness Vs. Panther” (“Two Deadly Females”) “On the Day of the Rose Show” (“Revolvers and Roses”)

Story Titles

203

Pentecost, Hugh (George Crowder) “Murder by a Southpaw” (“Murder Throws a Curve”) “The Sooty Man” (“A Black Eye for Miss Millington”) Pentecost, Hugh (Jeff Larigan) “The Girl Who Lived Dangerously” (“An Element of Risk”) “The Trail of the Crescent Moons” (“The Cassandra Club”) Pentecost, Hugh (Dr. John Smith) “Volcano in the Mind” (“Volcano”) Pentecost, Hugh (Lt. Pascal) “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” (“Eager Victim”) Post, Melville Davisson (Uncle Abner) “Dead Man’s Gloves” (“The Age of Miracles”) “The Instrument of Darkness” (“The Adopted Daughter”) “The Three Threads of Justice” (“An Act of God”) Post, Melville Davisson (Colonel Braxton)” “The Great Game” (“The Mute Voices”) “No Way to Win” (“The Survivor”) “The Witness in the Metal Box” (“The Metal Box”) Queen, Ellery (Ellery Queen) “Double Your Money” (“The Vanishing Wizard”) “Driver’s Seat” (“Lady, You’re Dead”) “The Lonely Bride” (“The Lady Couldn’t Explain”) “Money Talks” (“The Sound of Blackmail”) “The Motive” (“Terror Town”) “Mystery at the Library of Congress” (“Enter Ellery Queen”) “No Parking” (“Terror in a Penthouse”) “No Place to Live” (“Man They All Hated”) “Object Lesson” (“The Blackboard Gangsters”) “Payoff ” (“Crime Syndicate Payoff ”) “Snowball in July” (“The Phantom Train”) “The Three Widows” (“Murder Without Clues”) Reynolds, Quentin (Baron von Genthner) “The Bluebeard Murderer” (“Berlin Dinner Party”) Rice, Craig (John J. Malone) “The Bad Luck Murders” (“Dead Men’s Shoes”) “Malone and the Missing Weapon” (“The Little Knife That Wasn’t There”) “The Man Who Swallowed a Horse” (“The Dead Mr. Duck”) “Smoke Rings” (“Motive”) Roos, Kelley (Haila and Jeff Troy) “The Watch Out Girls” (“Final Performance”) Sayers, Dorothy (Lord Peter Wimsey) “The Power of Darkness” (“The Incredible Elopement of Lord Peter Wimsey”) “Something Queer About Mirrors” (“The Image in the Mirror”)

204

Appendix

Starett, Vincent (Sally Cardiff) “Murder at the Opera” (“A Box at the Opera”) Stout, Rex (Alphabet Hicks) “Curtain Line” (“By His Own Hand”) Stout, Rex (Nero Wolfe) “The Dazzle Dan Murder Case” (“The Squirt and the Monkey”) “A Dog in the Daytime” (“The Body in the Hall”) “The Fourth of July Murder” (“Fourth of July Picnic”) “Nero Wolfe Devises a Stratagem” (“Home to Roost”) “The Zero Clue” (“Scared to Death”) Symons, Julian (Francis Quarles) “As If by Magic” (“The Hiding Place”) “The Humdrum Murder” (“Time for Murder”) “Murder on the Racecourse” (“The Grand National Case”) “The Wimbledon Mystery” (“Centre Court Mystery”) Treat, Lawrence (William Decker) “B as in Bloodstain” (“Homicide Expert”) Van Doren, Mark (The Inspector) “The Luminous Face” (“Testimony After Death”) Vickers, Roy (Department of Dead Ends) “The Case of the Merry Andrew” (“The Cowboy of Oxford Street”) “The Impromptu Murder” (“The Three Foot Grave”) “The Man Who Played the Market” (“The Clew Proof Murders”) Wallace, Edgar (Anthony Smith) “Diamond Cut Diamond” (“Seventy-Fourth Diamond”) Wallace, Edgar (Felix Jenks) “The Father Christmas Job” (“The Buoy That Did Not Light”) Wylie, Philip (Willie Perkins) “Perkins’ Second ‘First Case’” (“Perkins Takes a Case”)

References Works Cited Anderson, Frederick Irving. 1930. The Book of Murder. New York: Dover. Asimov, Isaac. 1974. Tales of the Black Widowers. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Crest. Berkeley, Anthony. 1925. Jugged Journalism. London: Herbert Jenkins. Borges, Jorge Luis. 1964. Labyrinths. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation. Brand, Christianna. 1983. Buffet for Unwelcome Guests. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Brand, Christianna. 2002. The Spotted Cat. Norfolk, VA: Crippen and Landru Publishers. Breen, Jon. 1982. Hair of the Sleuthhound. London: Scarecrow Press. Chesterton, G.K. 1905. The Club of Queer Trades. New York: Harper and Brothers. Chesterton, G.K. 1987. Thirteen Detectives. Edited by Marie Smith. New York: Penguin. Cornier, Vincent. 2011. The Duel of Shadows. Norfolk, VA: Crippen and Landru Publishers. Gardner, Earl Stanley. 2006. The Casebook of Sydney Zoom. Norfolk, VA: Crippen and Landru Publishers. Hammett, Dashiel. 1946. The Adventures of Sam Spade. Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Co. Harrison, Michael. 1968. The Exploits of Chevalier Dupin. Sauk City, WI: Mycroft and Moran. King, Rufus. 1964. The Faces of Danger. New York: Doubleday. MacDonald, Philip. 1952. Something to Hide. New York: Doubleday. MacDonald, Ross. 2007. The Archer Files. Norfolk, VA: Crippen and Landru Publishers. Palmer, Stuart, and Craig Rice. 1963. People Vs. Withers and Malone. New York: International Polygonics. Pentecost, Hugh. 1970. Around Dark Corners. New York: Dodd Mead and Co. Pronzini, Bill, and Marcia Muller. 1986. 101 Midnights. New York: Arbor House. Queen, Ellery. 1941. 101 Years’ Entertainment. New York: Modern Library. Queen, Ellery. 1942. The Detective Short Story: A Bibliography. Boston: Little, Brown. Queen, Ellery. 1943. Female of the Species. Garden City, NY: Blue Ribbon Books. Queen, Ellery. 1944. Best Stories from EQMM. New York: Detective Book Club. Queen, Ellery. 1944. The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes. Boston: Little, Brown. Queen, Ellery. 1945. Rogues’ Gallery. Boston: Little, Brown. Queen, Ellery. 1946. The Queen’s Awards 1st Series. Boston: Little, Brown. Queen, Ellery. 1946. To the Queen’s Taste. Boston: Little, Brown. Queen, Ellery. 1950. The Queen’s Awards 3rd Series. London: Victor Gallanz. Queen, Ellery. 1950. The Queen’s Awards 4th Series. Boston: Little, Brown.

205

206

References

Queen, Ellery. 1957. In the Queen’s Parlor. New York: Simon & Schuster. Queen, Ellery. 1961. Ellery Queen’s 16th Mystery Annual. New York: Random House. Queen, Ellery. 1969. Queen’s Quorum. New York: Biblo and Tannen. Queen, Ellery. 1978. Masterpieces of Mystery: Amateurs and Pros. Davis Publications. Queen, Ellery. 1978. Masterpieces of Mystery: Detective Directory II. Davis Publications. Queen, Ellery. 1988. The Ellery Queen Omnibus: The Roman Hat Mystery, Calamity Town, and Cat of Many Tails. New York: Dorset Press. Queen, Ellery. 1992. Ellery Queen’s Edgar Award Winners. London: Robert Hale. Queen, Ellery. 1999. Tragedy of Errors. Norfolk, VA: Crippen and Landru Publishers. Queen, Ellery. 2005. Queen’s Ransom. Mystery Guild. Rawson, Clayton. 1979. The Great Merlini. Boston: Gregg Press. Sayers, Dorothy. 1995. Hangman’s Holiday. New York: HarperCollins. Stribling, T.S. 2004. Dr. Poggioli: Criminologist. Norfolk, VA: Crippen and Landru Publishers. Suter, John. Old Land, Dark Land, Strange Land. Charleston, WV: University of West Virginia Press. Wright, Willard Huntington, ed. 1925. The Great Detective Stories. New York: Scribner’s. Yaffe, James. 2016. My Mother the Detective. Norfolk, VA: Crippen and Landru Publishers.

Other Works Referenced Contento, William, and Martin Greenberg. 1991. Index to Crime and Mystery Anthologies. Boston: G.K. Hall and Co. Cook, Michael. 1982. Monthly Murders: A Checklist and Chronological Listing of Fiction in the Digest-Size Magazines in the United States and England. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Hagan, Ordean, ed. 1969. Who Done It? New York: R. R. Bowker and Co. Hubin, Allen, ed. 1994. Crime Fiction II: A Comprehensive Bibliography 1749–1990. New York: Garland Publishers Inc. Mundell, E.H., and G. Jay Rausch, eds. 1974. The Detective Short Story: A Bibliography and Index. Manhattan: Kansas State University Library. Nieminski, John. 1974. EQMM350: An Author/Title Index to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Fall 1941 Through January 1973. White Bear Lake, MN: The Armchair Detective Press. Queen, Ellery. 1947. The Queen’s Awards 2nd Series. Boston: Little, Brown. Queen, Ellery. 1950. The Queen’s Awards 5th Series. New York: Ace Books. Queen, Ellery. 1951. Queen’s Awards 6th Series. Boston: Little, Brown. Queen, Ellery. 1952. Queen’s Awards 7th Series. Boston: Little, Brown. Queen, Ellery. 1953. Queen’s Awards 8th Series. Boston: Little, Brown. Queen, Ellery. 1954. Queen’s Awards 9th Series. Boston: Little, Brown. Queen, Ellery. 1955. Queen’s Awards 10th Series. Boston: Little, Brown. Queen, Ellery. 1956. Queen’s Awards 11th Series. New York: Simon & Schuster. Queen, Ellery. 1957. Queen’s Awards 12th Series. New York: Simon & Schuster. Queen, Ellery. 1970. Ellery Queen’s the Golden 13. New York: The World Publishing Co. Queen, Ellery. 1987. Masters of Mystery. New York: Galahad Books. Sobin, Roger, ed. 2007. The Essential Mystery Lists. Scottsdale, AZ: Poisoned Pen Press. Stephensen-Payne, Phil. 2018. Crime, Mystery, and Gangster Fiction Magazine Index. www. philsp.com. Stine, Kate, ed. 1989. The Armchair Detective Book of Lists. New York: Otto Penzler Books. Sullivan, Eleanor, ed. 1991. Fifty Years of the Best from EQMM. New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers.

Index “Abner, Uncle (Post) 7, 39, 51, 52, 135, 177, 179, 182, 185–186, 188 “The Absent-Minded Coterie” (Barr) 19, 100 “The Absolutely Safe Safe” (Young) 142 “The Acquisitive Chuckle” (Asimov) 144 “The Adventure of Mr. Montalba, Obsequist” (Heard) 159 “The Adventure of the Ascot Tie” (Fish) 30, 122–123 “The Adventure of the Danzig Men” (Fish) 123 “The Adventure of the Patient Resident” (Fish) 123 “The Adventure of the Three R’s” (Queen) 15, 79 The Adventures of Ellery Queen (Queen) 15, 21, 79 The Adventures of Romney Pringle (Freeman) 19, 47 The Adventures of Sam Spade (Hammett) 22, 32–33, 74 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Conan Doyle) 45 The Adventures of Solar Pons (Derleth) 180– 181 The Adventures of the Infallible Godahl (Anderson) 41 “Affair at Lahor Cantonment” (Davidson) 118 “After the Event” (Brand) 149 Aiken, Joan 112 The Albatross (Armstrong) 24 Alcazar, Dr. (P. MacDonald) 29, 76–77, 93, 189 Alexander, David 98–99 Alfred Hichcock’s Mystery Magazine 31, 59, 136, 143 All But Impossible—the Impossible Files of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (Hoch) 36, 163 “All in a Maze” (Carr) 63 “All in the Way You Look at It” (Crispin) 153 Allen, Grant 38 Allingham, Margaret 6, 21–22, 29, 33, 54–57, 78, 99, 188, 191

Allyn, Roderick (Marsh) 78, 189 alternate titles 9, 64, 68, 80, 92, 145, 149 Amateur in Violence (M. Gilbert) 36 The Amazing Adventures of Lester Leith (Gardner) 29, 37, 71 Ambler, Eric 6, 54, 57, 188 Anderson, Frederick Irving 6, 21, 29, 39, 40– 42, 188 Anderson, Poul 112 Annual EQMM Short-Story Contest 54, 93– 96, 114 “The Appearance of Fact” (Schweik) 137 Appleby, John 75–76, 189 The Appleby File (Innes) 76 Appleby Talking 24, 76 Appleby Talks About Crime (Innes) 76 Appleby Talks Again (Innes) 76 “The Apron of Genius” (Biggers) 60 Archer, Lew (R. MacDonald) 29, 130, 167– 168 Ark, Simon (Hoch) 164 Armiston, Oliver (Anderson) 40, 188 Armstrong, Charlotte 24, 94, 99–100 “The Arrow of God” (Charteris) 65 “Arsene Lupin vs. Colonel Linnaeus” (Boucher) 180 Arthur, Robert 179–180, 182 Asimov, Isaac 144–145 “The Assassins’ Club” (Blake) 29, 61 “At the Crossroads” (Christie) 69 “The Attacker” (Wolson) 138 Austin, Margaret 115 “Author in Search of a Character” (P. Bentley) 146 The Avenging Chance (Berkeley) 29, 59 “A Bad Time of Day” (Miller) 169 Bailey, H.C. 6, 54, 56, 57–58, 100, 188 Banquets of the Black Widowers (Asimov) 144 Barker, Shirley 93, 145 Barnett, Jim (Leblanc) 48–49, 71 Barr, Robert 19, 100

207

208

Index

Barrie, James 112 Bastia (Segre) 137 The Battles of Jericho (Pentecost) 172 Baum, L. Frank 30, 110 “Bay of the Dead” (Pevehouse) 132 “Beginner’s Luck” (Wilde) 90 Bendovid, Fayga (Shore) 176 Benet, Stephen Vincent 112 Bentley, E.C. 6, 22, 54, 58–59, 100, 180, 188– 189 Bentley, Phyllis 146 Beresford, Tommy (Christie) 69 Beresford, Tuppence (Christie) 69 Berkeley, Anthony 6, 29, 55, 59–60, 100, 168, 180, 189, 191 Beware of the Trains (Crispin) 23, 153, 154 “Beware of the Trains” (Crispin) 154 “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt” (Anderson) 42 Bierce, Ambrose 152 Biggers, Earl 26, 54, 60, 179, 191 “The Black Cat” (Poe) 18, 50 “The Black Kitten” (A.H.Z. Carr) 150 Black Mask 32–35, 64, 73, 74, 169, 189 Black Widowers (Asimov) 144–145 Blackwell, Laird 43, 57 Blackwood, Algernon 112 Blake, Nicholas 6, 29, 54, 61, 189 “The Blast of the Book” (Chesterton) 44 “Blessed Are the Meek” (Simenon) 84 “The Blessington Method” (Ellin) 121 Bloch, Robert 146–147 Blochman, Lawrence 147–148 Block, Lawrence 147–148 “Blood Will Tell” (Stout) 85 Bloody Murder (Symons) 108 Blue, Sebastian (Hoch) 162 Blue Ribbon Panel 8, 10, 30, 39–40, 44, 46, 50, 51, 57–59, 69, 82, 100–101, 105 The Book of Murder (Anderson) 21, 41 The Book of Tish (Rinehart) 80 Boore, Clement (Breen) 116 Borges, Jorge Luis 44, 116 Boucher, Anthony 31, 40, 83, 115, 122, 148– 149, 180, 192 Bowley, Mr. (Bailey) 58 Bradbury, Ray 112 Bramah, Ernest 6, 20, 39, 42–43 Brand, Christianna 101, 145, 149–150 Brand X (Brand) 149 Braun, Lilian 112 Braxton, Colonel (Post) 50–52, 188 “The Brazen Serpent” (Freeman) 47 Breen, Jon 30, 115–117, 179, 180, 190, 192 The Brighter Buccaneer (Charteris) 21, 64 Bromfield, Louis 101 Brown, Father 7, 19, 39, 43–44, 51, 69, 185 Buck, Pearl 101 Buffet for Unwelcome Guests (Brand) 149 “Bullets” (Stribling) 86 Bullock, Maynard (Powell) 134

“The Bunch of Violets” (Bramah) 42 Burke, Thomas 84, 101–102 “Bye Bye Bluebeard” (Shore) 176 “The Cablegram” (Stribling) 86 Cain, James 175 Calamity Town (Queen) 2, 14, 15 Caldwell, Erskine 112 The Calendar of Crime (Queen) 15, 79–80 Call Mr. Fortune (Bailey) 58 Callahan, Barbara 102, 117–118 Campion, Albert 21–22, 33, 56, 78, 188 “The Candy Kid” (Gardner) 6, 35, 71 Capek, Karl 112 Carmady (Chandler) 64 Carr, A.H.Z. 94, 150–151 Carr, John Dickson 5, 6, 22, 29, 34, 40, 54, 61–63, 102, 118, 138–139, 149, 158, 173, 179, 182, 184, 189 Carrados, Max (Bramah) 20, 42–43, 69 Carroll, Lewis 142 Carter, Nick 6, 18–19, 71 Cary, Joyce 111 The Case Book of Mr. Campion (Allingham) 33 “The Case of Arnold Schuttringer” (Simenon) 29, 83 “A Case of Facsimile” (Shore) 176 “A Case of Identities” (Norris) 183 The Case of Miss Elliot (Orczy) 49 The Case of the Murderer’s Bride and Other Stories (Gardner) 35–36 “The Case of the Mysterious Weapon” (Futrelle) 29, 48 “The Case of the Scattered Rubies” (Gardner) 72 “The Case of the Stuttering Sextant” (Kendrick) 182 The Casebook of Solar Pons (Derleth) 181 The Casebook of Sydney Zoom (Gardner) 72 Casebook of the Black Widowers (Asimov) 144 “The Cask of Amontillado” (Poe) 50 Castle, Peggy (Gardner) 72 Cat of Many Tails (Queen) 2, 14, 15 Cervantes, Miguel de 112 Chafik Chafik (Child) 151 “Chain of Witnesses” (P. Bentley) 146 Chains (Dreiser) 111 “Challenge to the Reader” (Pentecost) 172 “Challenge to the Reader” (Queen) 2, 14, 61, 173 Challenge to the Reader (Queen) 37, 39, 43, 86 Challenger, Professor (Conan Doyle) 152, 178 Chambrun, Pierre (Pentecost) 117, 171–172, 179 “Champoux vs. Joshua” (Breen) 117 Chan, Charlie (Biggers) 54, 60, 179, 191 Chan, Charlotte (Shore) 176 Chandler, Raymond 26, 54, 63–64, 102, 167, 175

Index Charme, Laura (Hoch) 162 Charteris, Leslie 6, 21, 54, 64–65, 189 Chekhov, Anton 112 Chester, George Randolph 38 Chesterton, G.K. 6, 19, 39, 43–46, 51, 102, 111, 188 Child, Charles 151 “Chinoiserie” (McCloy) 168–169 Christie, Agatha 6, 20, 29, 54, 55, 65–70, 80, 102, 109, 149, 172, 179, 180, 189 The Chronicles of Solar Pons (Derleth) 181 Clancy, Lt. (Fish) 123 “The Cloud Beneath the Eaves” (Owens) 130 The Club of Queer Trades (Chesterton) 44 “The Clue of the Screaming Woman” (Gardner) 72 clue-puzzle 6, 8, 13, 14, 15, 31, 53, 61, 65, 69, 73, 75, 79, 81, 108, 138, 140, 145, 187 Clues of the Caribbees (Stribling) 21, 85 Clunk, Joshua (Bailey) 58 Cockrill, Inspector (Brand) 149, 150 “Coffin Corner” (Boucher) 148 “The Cold Winds of Adeste” (Flanagan) 124 Coles, Manning 3, 151–152 Coll, Lt. Ben (R. King) 166 Collins, Wilkie 112 Colonel Clay (Allen) 38 “The Comic Opera Murders” (Yaffe) 140 commentary 3, 16–17, 30 The Complete Curious Mr. Tarrant (C.D. King) 165 Conan Doyle, Arthur 6, 18, 29, 39, 44, 45–46, 51, 102, 123, 152, 178 Connelly, Marc 102 “Conscience Money” (Blake) 61 The Continental Op (Hammett) 29, 33–35, 73–75, 189 “The Contradictory Case” (Pentecost) 172 “Conversations at an Inn” (P. Bentley) 146 Cooper, James Fenimore 135 “Cop on the Prowl” (Walsh) 110 Cops and Robbers (O. Henry) 34–35 Cork, Jeremy (Rafferty) 135–136 “Corkscrew” (Hammett) 74 Cornier, Vincent 152–153, 192 “Coroner’s Inquest” (Connelly) 102 The Corrector of Destinies (Post) 52 “The Corsican Ordeal of Miss X” (Russell) 107 “The Couple Next Door” (Millar) 169 Craggs, Mrs. (Keating) 165 Creasey, John 153 The Creeping Siamese (Hammett) 35 “The Crime in Nobody’s Room” (Carr) 6 “Criminals at Large” (Boucher) 148 Crispin, Edmund 23, 153–154 Crofts, Freeman Wills 6, 54, 55, 70, 189 Croker, Danby (Freeman) 47 Crook, Arthur (A. Gilbert) 156 “The Crowded Hours” (Breen) 30, 116–117 Crumlish, Father (Reach) 136

209

“Cul-de-Sac” (Yaffe) 139–140 “Cummings Monk” (Shiel) 53, 188 The Curious Mr. Tarrant (C.D. King) 21, 165– 166 “The Curse of the Fires and of the Shadows” (Yeats) 110 “The Curtain” (Chandler) 64 “Curtain Line” (Stout) 85 Curwen, Inspector (Vickers) 88 “The Customs of the Country” (Flanagan) 124 Czissar, Dr. Jan (Ambler) 57, 188 “A Dagger of the Mind” (Godfrey) 157 Dalgliesh, Adam (James) 105 Dalmas (Chandler) 64 Dark, Charlie (Garfield) 103 Dark, Jason (Pentecost) 172 “Dark Journey” (Berkeley) 60 “The Dark Night” (Post) 51 “The Darkened Stair” (Barker) 145 Davidson, Avram 30, 93, 102, 118 Davis, Dorothy 94, 102, 119 Davis, R. Harding 19, 84 Dawn, Paul (Yaffe) 139–141 Dead Yellow Women (Hammett) 34 “Death and Company” (Hammett) 33 “Death by Invisible Hands” (Carr) 62 “Death on Pine Street” (Hammett) 33 de la Torre, Lilian 22, 115, 119–120, 127, 162, 190, 192 The Department of Dead Ends (Vickers) 23, 34, 87 The Department of Dead Ends (Vickers) 87– 88, 93, 190 Department of First Stories 114, 131 “Department of Impossible Crimes” (Yaffe) 30, 139 The Department of Queer Complaints (Carr) 22, 62, 189 Department of Second Stories 114 de Puyster, Reginald (R. King) 166 Derleth, August 40, 180–181 The Detections of Dr. Sam: Johnson (de la Torre) 120 The Detective Short Story: a Bibliography (Queen) 16 “The Devil’s Track” (Post) 51 de Vry, Guy 176 Diagnosis Impossible: The Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (Hoch) 36, 163 “Diamond Dick” (Breen) 116 Dickens, Charles 112 “Dig That Crazy Grave” (Bloch) 147 Dr. Fell and Foul Play (Carr) 62 Dr. Fell, Detective, and Other Stories (Carr) 34, 62 Dr. Poggioli: Criminologist 86 Dr. Sam: Johnson, Detector (de la Torre) 22, 119, 127 The Dollar Chasers (Biggers) 60

210

Index

“The Donnington Affair” (Chesterton) 43 “The Doomdorf Mystery” (Post) 51 “The Door Key” (Anderson) 41 “Door to a Different World” (A. Gilbert) 156 Dorcas, Leonidas (Hammett) 75 “Double Image” (Vickers) 89 Dove, Fidelity (Vickers) 88–89 Doyle, Arthur Conan see Conan Doyle, Arthur Drayton, George (McConnor) 128–129 “The Dream” (Christie) 68 Dreiser, Theodore 30, 111 Driscoll, Stuff (R. King) 166–167 The Duel of Shadows (Cornier) 152 “The Duel of Shadows” (Cornier) 152 Duff, MacDougall (Armstrong) 99 Duggan, Bill (R. King) 166 Dumas, Alexander 112 Dunsany, Lord 23, 154–155 Dupay, M. (A. Gilbert) 156 Dupin, Auguste (Poe) 14, 39, 44, 47, 50–51, 179, 181, 182, 185 “Dust to Dust” (Steele) 176 “The Earring” (Woolrich) 92 “The Eastern Mystery” (Bramah) 43 Ebbie, Old (Webster) 38 “The Ebony Stick” (Biggers) 60 Edgar (Allan Poe) Awards 8, 10, 31, 96–98 Edgar Allan Poe School (Shore) 176 “Eeny Meeny Murder Mo” (Stout) 85 Egerton, Scott (A. Gilbert) 156 Egg, Montague (Sayers) 82 Ehrengraf, Martin (Block) 147–148 “The Ehrengraf Method” (Block) 147 The Eight Strokes of the Clock (Leblanc) 20, 48 87th Precinct (McBain) 116–117 Eldon, Bill (Gardner) 72 Elfe, Commander (M. Gilbert) 157 Eliot, T.S. 112 Ellery I (Queen) 8, 13, 15, 187 Ellery II (Queen) 8, 13, 15, 190 Ellery Queen: The Art of Detection (Nevins) 3, 13, 130 Ellin, Stanley 24, 30, 36, 94, 98, 102, 120–121, 190, 192 “The Empty Flat” (Carr) 62 “The Enchanted Garden” (Heard) 159 “The Enemy” (Armstrong) 99–100 Engel, Professor (Schweik) 137 “The English Village Mystery” (Porges) 184– 185 “An Episode at the Honeypot” (van Doren) 177 “The Episode of the Absent Fish” (C.D. King) 165 The Episode of the Damoiselle D’Ys (C.D. King) 165 “The Episode of the Nail and the Requiem” (C.D. King) 166

“The Episode of the Perilous Talisman” (C.D. King) 165 “An Error in Chemistry” (Faulkner) 155 Eustace, Robert 38 “The Evening Hour” (Armstrong) 99–100 “Everybody’s Name Is Jones” (Shore) The Exploits of Arsene Lupin (Leblanc) 19, 48 The Exploits of Dr. Sam: Johnson (de la Torre) 120 The Exploits of the Chavalier Dupin (Harrison) 181 “Extradition” (Halliday) 158 The Eyes of Max Carrados (Bramah) 42 The Faces of Danger (R. King) 166 “The Faces of Danger” (R. King) 166 Fairr, Melville (Rice) 175 “The Fallen Curtain” (Rendell) 174 “Farewell Banquet” (Pierce) 133 “The Farewell Murder” (Hammett) 33 Fatal Flourishes (Rafferty) 135 Faulkner, William 23, 93, 103, 135, 155, 191 “The Feeble Folk” (Bentley) 59 Feldman, Lew 40 Fell, Dr. Gideon (Carr) 7, 34, 62, 179, 182, 185 Female of the Species (Queen) 2, 37 Fen, Gervase (Crispin) 153–154 Fen Country (Crispin) 153 Ferber, Edna 112 “The Fifth Element” (Pevehouse) 132 “The 51st Sealed Room” (Arthur) 180, 182 “Fifty Years After” (A. Gilbert) 156 “Find the Woman” (R. MacDonald) 29, 167 “The Fine Italian Hand” (Flanagan) 124 Finger, Charles (Lang) 38 “Finger Man” (Chandler) 64 “The Finger Man” (Prince) 135 Finney, Jack 121 “The First Stone” (Gardner) 72 Fish, Robert 25, 30, 103, 121–123, 179, 181, 190 Fisher, Horne (Chesterton) 44–45 Fitzgerald, F. Scott 112 “The Five of Swords” (Chesterton) 45 Flanagan, Thomas 124, 190 “Fly Paper” (Hammett) 33, 73–74 “The Fog on Pemble Green” (Barker) 145 Footner, Hulbert 38 Forester, C.S. 112 “The Forgotten Witness” (Post) 51 Fortune, Reggie (Bailey) 57–58, 69, 185, 188 Fortune, Regina (Shore) 176 “The Fortune Teller” (Post) 52 “The Fourth Degree” (Pentecost) 172 Frankau, Gilbert 38 Frazee, Steve 155–156 Freeman, R. Austin 6, 19, 39, 46–47, 87, 152 French, Inspector (Crofts) 70, 185, 189 Froget, Inspector (Simenon) 83, 190 “From Another World” (Rawson) 173 “The Fur-Lined Goodbye” (Pierce) 133

Index The Further Adventures of Romney Pringle (Freeman) 47 Futrelle, Jacques 6, 19, 29, 39, 47–48, 103, 137, 158, 188 G7 (Simenon) 83, 189 Galsworthy, John 112 Game Without Rules (M. Gilbert) 26 Ganelon, Ambrose (Powell) 133–134 “The Garden of Smoke” (Chesterton) 45 Gardner, Earl Stanley 6, 29, 35, 37, 54, 70–72, 103 Garfield, Brian 103 Garron (Futrelle) 48 Gault, Captain (Hodgson) 38 Gawsworth, John 53 “A Gentleman” (Leblanc) 49 “The Gentleman from Paris” (Carr) 63, 118 “The Gentlest of Brothers” (Alexander) 99 “The Genuine Tabard” (Bentley) 58 Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford (Chester) 6, 38, 71 Gethryn, Anthony (P. MacDonald) 76–77, 189 “The Ghost Patrol” (Lewis) Ghote, Inspector (Keating) 165 “The G.I. Story” (Queen) 131 Gideon, George (Creasey) 153 Gilbert, Anthony 93, 103, 156 Gilbert, Michael 26, 36, 157, 187 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins 112, 130 “The Gioconda Smile” (Huxley) 104–105 “The Girl Who Married a Monster” (Boucher) 148 Glasgow, Susan 112 Glaspell, Ellen 112 “The Glass-Domed Clock” (Queen) 31 “The Glass Room” (Wolson) 138 “The God of the Hills” (Post) 51 Godahl, the Infallible (Anderson) 40, 42 Godfrey, Peter 157–158 The Golden Age 5, 57, 70, 106, 137 “The Golden Horseshoe” (Hammett) 74 “Goldfish” (Chandler) 64 “Goodbye Pops” (Gores) 125 Goodwin, Archie (Stout) 85 Gores, Joe 103, 124–125 Gorgon, Ed (Breen) 116 Goulart, Ron 117 Grant, Basil (Chesterton) 44 Grant, Rupert (Chesterton) 44 “The Great Kabul Diamond” (Vickers) 89 The Great Merlini (Rawson) 173 The Great Portrait Mystery (Freeman) 47 “The Greedy Night” (Bentley) 59 “The Greek Coffin Mystery” (Queen) 2, 13, 15 “The Greek Coughin’ Mystery” (Breen) 117 Green, Celery (Porges) 184–185 “The Green-and-Gold String” (P. MacDonald) 29, 77

211

“The Green Elephant” (Hammett) 75 “The Green Goods Man” (Charteris) 64 Greene, Douglas 141 “The Greuze Girl” (Crofts) 70 Grey, Cyriack (Porges) 184 Griffin, Augustus van Dusen (Pachter) 131 Griffin, Ellery Queen (Pachter) 131 Griffin, Gideon Fell (Pachter) 131 Griffin, Nero Wolfe (Pachter) 131 Gubb, Philo 6, 20, 71 “Guns of Gannett” (Walsh) 31, 110 “The Gutting of Couffignal” (Hammett) 29, 33, 73–74 Had-I-But-Known School 81 Hagar, Stanley (Hume) 38 Haig, Leo (Block) 147 Hailey, Dr. (Wynne) 38 Hair of the Sleuthhound (Breen) 116, 179 “Hair Shirt” (Vickers) 88 “The Hairy One” (Hammett) 75 Halliday, Brett 158 Hambledon, Tommy (Coles) 152 Hammett, Dashiell 5, 6, 22, 29, 30, 32–35, 55, 72–75, 103, 167, 175, 189 Hammett Homicides (Hammett) 33 Hanaud, Inspector (Mason) 69, 182 Hand, Pat 192 “Handcuffs Don’t Hold Ghosts” (Coles) 3, 152 “The Hands of Mr. Ottermole” (Burke) 84, 101–102 “The Hangman Won’t Wait” (Carr) 34 Hangman’s Holiday (Sayers) 81 Harrington, Joyce 93, 97–98, 103, 125–126, 191 Harrison, Michael 181 Harry the Hat (P. MacDonald) 76–77 Harte, Bret 112 Hastings, Cpt. (Christie) 182 “The Haunted Policeman” (Sayers) 82 Hawthorne, Sam (Hoch) 162–163 Haycraft, Howard 1, 40 Hazelrigg, Inspector (M. Gilbert) 36 H.C. Bailey’s Reggie Fortune and the Golden Age of Detective Fiction (Blackwell) 57 Heard, H.F. 93, 158–159, 192 Hecht, Ben 112 Heidenfeld, W. 181–182 Hemingway, Ernest 112 Henry. O. 34–35, 112 “Her Last Bow” (Porges) 184 Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories (Christie) 67 Hicks, Alphabet (Stout) 85 Highsmith, Patricia 30, 104 Hildreth, Barnabas (Cornier) 152–153 Hilton, James 40, 112 Hinkle, Ambrose (McMorrow) 38 “His Heart Could Break” (Rice) 174–175 “His Last Bow” (Conan Doyle) 180

212

Index

Hoch, Edward 36, 104, 159–164, 179, 183 Hodgson, W.H. 38 Hoffman, Banesh 182 Holmes, Sherlock (Conan Doyle) 14, 39, 42, 44, 45–46, 51, 60, 69, 85, 109, 122–123, 145, 155, 159, 163, 178–180, 182–183, 185 Holmes, Shirley (Shore) 176 “Holmes and the Dasher” (Berkeley) 60 Homes, Schlock (Fish) 25, 122–123, 179 Homes, Stately (Porges) 184 Honce, Charles 40 “Horn Man” (Howard) 104 “The Hornet’s Nest” (Brand) 150 “House Dick” (Hammett) 74 “The House in Goblin Woods” (Carr) 29, 63 “The House-in-Your-Hand Murder” (Vickers) 88 “The House of Shrill Whispers” (Breen) 116 “The House Party” (Ellin) 121 “How Now Ophelia” (Rice) 175 How to Trap a Crook (Symons) 37 Howard, Clark 104 Hoyt, W.R. 126 humdrum 70 Hume, Fergus 38 “The Hunt Ball” (Crofts) 70 Hutchens, John 84 Hutchings, Janet 3, 32 Huxley, Aldous 104–105 Hyde, Adrian (Chesterton) 188 “I Can Find My Way Out” (Marsh) 78 “The Idol House of Astarte” (Christie) 68 “The Ikon of Elijah” (Davidson) 30 Iles, Francis 60 “In a Country Churchyard” (Fish) 123 “In the Fog” (Davis) 19, 84 In the Teeth of the Evidence (Sayers) 81 “The Incautious Burglar” (Carr) 62 The Incredible Schlock Homes (Fish) 25, 122 The Incredulity of Father Brown (Chesterton) 44 “The Infallible Godahl” (Anderson) 42 Innes, Michael 6, 24, 29, 54, 75–76, 189 The Innocence of Father Brown (Chesterton) 19, 43–44 “The Inspector Had a Wife” (Child) 151 “Inspector Squid’s Most Famous Case” (Hoyt) 126 “Inspector Squid’s Second Most Famous Case” (Hoyt) 126 Interpol (Hoch) 162 “Introducing Ellery’s Mom” (Austin) 115 Intruder in the Dust (Faulkner) 155 inverted tales 46, 70 “The Invisible Lover” (Queen) 15 “Invitation to a Murder” (Pachter) 131 “Invitation to an Accident” (Miller) 169 Irish, William 92 “The Ironclad Alibi” (Nevins) 130

Jackson, Shirley 113 James, Breni 126–127 James, P.D. 105 Jepson, Edgar 38 Jericho, John (Pentecost) 117, 172 “The Jeweled Butterfly” (Gardner) 72 Jim Barnett Intervenes (Leblanc) 48–49 “Jode’s Last Hunt” (Garfield) 103 John Creasey Mystery Magazine 143 John Thorndyke’s Cases (Freeman) 46 Johnson, Dr. Sam (de la Torre) 22, 115, 119– 120, 162 “The Jorgenson Plates” (Anderson) 41 Jorkens (Dunsany) 155 “Judge Lynch” (Stribling) 86 Jugged Journalism (Berkeley) 60 “The Jury Box” 190 “Justice Has a High Price” (McGerr) 129 “Justice Has No Number” (Segre) 137 “The Kachina Dolls” (Pevehouse) 132 Kachoudas (Simenon) 84, 190 Kafka, Franz 113 Kantor, MacKinlay 113 Kearny Associates (Gores) 125 Keating, H.R.F. 164–165 Kelley, Chick (Rafferty) 136 Kelstern, Ruth (Eustace and Jepson) 38 Kemelman, Harry 26, 30, 53, 127–128, 137, 190 Kendrick, Baynard 182, 192 Kennedy, Craig (Reeve) 6, 38, 71 “The Kidnaped Pekinese” (Christie) 29 “Kill and Tell” (Godfrey) 157 “Killer in the Rain” (Chandler) 64 Kindly Dig Your Grave (Ellin) 36 King, C. Daly 21, 165–166, 192 King, Rufus 24, 166–167 “King Arthur’s Chair” (Carr) 62 “King of the Air” (Brand) 150 Kipling, Rudyard 113 “A Knife Between Brothers” (Wellman) 178 Knight’s Gambit (Faulkner) 23, 155 Kyle, Inspector (Vickers) 88 The Labors of Hercules (Christie) 67, 68 “Lacrimae Rerum” (Crispin) 153 “The Lady and the Dragon” (Godfrey) 158 “Lady Killer” (Steele) 176 Lady Molly (Orczy) 49 “Lady’s First” (Austin) 115 “The Lamp of God” (Queen) 15 Lang, Andrew 38 Lang, Sophie (Anderson) 40–42 “The Last Detective Story in the World” (Richardson) “Lavender Lady” (Callahan) 118 “The League of Forgotten Men” (Queen) 42 Leblanc, Maurice 6, 19–20, 39, 48–49, 71, 179, 180 Leborgne, Joseph (Simenon) 83, 189

Index Leiber, Fritz 113 Leith, Gwynn (Shore) 176 Leith, Lester (Gardner) 35, 37, 71 Leopold, Cpt. (Hoch) 162 “Leopold’s Locked Room” (Hoch) 162 Leopold’s Way (Hoch) 36, 162 Le Roux, Rolf (Godfrey) 157–158 “Lesson in Anatomy” (Innes) 29, 75 Lewis, C. Day 61 Lewis, Sinclair 105 “Like a Terrible Scream” (Revesz) 136 Lincoln, Abraham 111 Linley (Dunsany) 154–155 The List of Adrian Messenger (P. MacDonald) 76 The Literature of Crime (Queen) 2, 37 “The Lithuanian Eraser Case” (Breen) 117 The Little Doctor (Simenon) 83–84, 189 “The Little House at Croix Rousse” (Simenon) 83 The Little Tales of Smethers (Dunsany) 23, 155 locked-room 44, 62, 63, 83, 110, 157–158, 162– 163, 166, 173, 179–180, 182, 184 “The Locked Room” (Carr) 62, 106 Lonely Vigils (Wellman) 178 “The Long Dinner” (Bailey) 57 “Long Shot” (Blake) 61` Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 30 Lord, Michael (C.D. King) 165 Lord Peter Views the Body (Sayers) 21, 81, 189 lost and forgotten 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 27, 29, 39, 52, 55, 59, 74, 81 “Lost Star” (C.D. King) 165 “The Love Detectives” (Christie) 69 “Love Lies Bleeding” (P. MacDonald) 77 Luke, Inspector (Allingham) 56 “The Luminous Face” (van Doren) 177 Lupin, Arsene (Leblanc) 19, 48–49, 71, 130, 179, 180, 183 MacDonald, John Ross 167, 169 MacDonald, Philip 6, 23, 29, 54, 76–77, 93, 105, 189, 192 MacDonald, Ross 29, 167–168 Machen, Arthur 113 “The Mackenzie Case” (Shore) 31 “The Mad Tea Party” (Queen) 15 The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 165 Magruder, Inspector (Prince) 115, 134–135 Maigret, Inspector Jules (Simenon) 24, 83– 84, 128, 179, 183, 189 “Maigret’s Next-to-Last Case” (Narcejac) 182–183 “Malice Domestic” (P. MacDonald) 77 Malice in Wonderland (R. King) 24, 166 “Malice in Wonderland” (R. King) 167 Mallory (Chandler) 64 Malone, John (Rice) 24, 25, 170, 174–175 The Maltese Falcon (Hammett) 32, 73–75

213

“The Man from the Death House” (Anderson) 29, 41 “The Man in the Velvet Hat” (Prince) 134– 135 A Man Lay Dead (Marsh) 78 A Man Named Thin (Hammett) 35, 74, 189 “A Man Named Thin” (Hammett) 29, 35, 74 “The Man of God” (Tolstoy) 30 The Man of Last Resort (Post) 52 “A Man of the Crowd” (Poe) 18, 50 “The Man on the Ladder” (Kemelman) 128 “The Man on the Roof ” (Brand) 149 “The Man Who Explained Miracles” (Carr) 63 The Man Who Knew Too Much (Chesterton) 44–45 “The Man Who Shot the Fox” (Chesterton) 45 “The Man Who Wasn’t There” (Child) 151 “The Man Who Went to Taltaud’s” (Alexander) 99 Mansfield, Katherine 113 Many a Slip (Crofts) 70 March, Colonel (Carr) 62, 189 Marlowe, Philip (Chandler) 54, 63–64 “Marlowe Takes on the Syndicate” 64 “Marlowe’s Last Case” (Chandler) 64 Marple, Miss Jane (Christie) 68 Marquis, Colonel (Carr) 63 Marric, J.J. 153 Marsh, Ngaio 6, 54, 78, 105, 189 Mason, Perry (Gardner) 35, 37, 71, 72, 185 Mason, Randolph (Post) 52, 71, 147 Masterpieces of Mystery series 37 “Match Point in Berlin” (McGerr) 129 “A Matter of Life and Death” (Simenon) 84 Maugham, Somerset 113 Maupassant, Guy de 112 Max Carrados (Bramah) 20, 42 Max Carrados Mysteries (Bramah) 42 “The Mayor Calls His Family” (Wellman) 178 McBain, Ed 117 McCloy, Helen 25, 168–169 McConnor, Vincent 128–129 McGerr, Pat 129 McMorrow, Thomas 38 Mead, Selena (McGerr) 129 “Mean Man’s Murder” (Vickers) 34, 88 “The Memoirs of Schlock Homes” (Fish) 122 The Memoirs of Solar Pons (Derleth) 181 “The Men of the Jimmy” (Post) 18, 52 The Men Who Explained Miracles (Carr) 63 Mensing, Loren (Nevins) 130 Merlini (Rawson) 173 Merrimac (Breen) 116 Merrivale, Henri (Carr) 63, 116, 184, 189 Merrivale, March, and Murder (Carr) 63 The Metaphysical Mysteries of G.K. Chesterton (Blackwell) 43 “Miami Papers Please Copy” (R. King) 167 Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine 143, 147

214

Index

Millar, Margaret 169 Millay, Edna St. Vincent 30, 111 Miller, Arthur 113 Miller, Wade 169 Milne, A.A. 113 “The Ministering Angel” (Bentley) 59 “The Ministry of Miracles” (Carr) 63 The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes (Queen) 2, 37 Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories (Christie) 68 “Miss Paisley’s Cat” (Vickers) 89 “Miss Paisley’s Diet” (Pierce) 133 “The Missing Mortgagee” (Freeman) 46 “Mr. Bearstowe Says” (Berkeley) 59, 191 Mr. Campion and Others (Allingham) 21, 56 Mr. Fortune Objects (Bailey) 57 “Mr. Kirashubi’s Ashes” (Yaffe) 139 Mr. Mycroft (Heard) 93, 158–159 “Mr. Simpson Goes to the Dogs” (Berkeley) 60 Mr. X (Hoch) 164 Mom (Yaffe) 140–141 “Mom in the Spring” (Yaffe) 141 “Mom Knows Best” (Yaffe) 141 “Mom Lights a Candle” (Yaffe) 141 “Mom Makes a Wish” (Yaffe) 141 “The Moment of Decision” (Ellin) 120–121 “Moment of Power” (James) 105 Monk, Cummings (Shiel) 53 The Monkey Murder and Other Stories (Palmer) 35 “The Monster” (Cornier) 152 Moran, P. (Wilde) 89, 115, 190 More Tales of the Black Widowers (Asimov) 144 More Things Impossible: The Second Casebook of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (Hoch) 36, 163 Moriarty (Conan Doyle) 183, 185 “The Most Dangerous Man Alive” (Hoch) 162 “The Most Dangerous Man in the World” (Dunsany) 155 Mrs. Craggs: Crimes Cleared Up (Keating) 165 “The Murder” (Steinbeck) 108 “Murder by Scalping” (Rafferty) 135 “Murder de Luxe” (Pentecost) 171 “The Murder in the Fishing Cat” (Millay) 30, 111 “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (Poe) 18, 50 “Murder in Triplicate” (Anderson) 41 Murderers Make Mistakes (Crofts) 70 “My Brother Down There” (Frazee) 155–156 My Mother the Detective (Yaffe) 140–141 Mycroft, Mr. (Heard) 93, 158–159 “The Mysterious Death in Percy Street” (Orczy) 49 The Mysterious Mr. Quin (Christie) 69, 189 “The Mystery in Room 913” (Woolrich) 92 Mystery League (Queen) 7, 16, 27, 29, 31–32, 60, 82, 110

“The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge” (Christie) 68 “The Mystery of the Chief of Police” (Stribling) 86 The Mystery of the Sleeping Car Express (Crofts) 70 “The Mystery of the Spanish Shawl” (Christie) 69 The Mystery of X (Queen) 15 Mystery Stories (Ellin) 24 “Naboth’s Vineyard” (Post) 51 The Name Is Malone (Rice) 24, 175 Narcejac, Thomas 179, 182–183 Nebel, Frederick 169–170 “The Necessity of His Condition” (Davidson) 118 Nesbit, Edith 113 Nevins, Francis 3, 13, 129–130, 187 “The New Administration” (Post) 52 The New Adventures of Ellery Queen (Queen) 79 New Masters 2, 3, 5–7, 8, 10, 26–27, 54–92, 143, 188 “The Newtonian Egg” (Godfrey) 158 The Newtonian Egg and Other Cases of Rolf le Roux (Godfrey) 158 Night of the Kill (James) 127 Nightmare Town (Hammett) 34 “Nightshade” (Hammett) 30, 32 The Nine Mile Walk (Kemelman) 26, 127 “The Nine Mile Walk” (Kemelman) 26, 30, 53, 127–128, 137 “Nine Minus Nine Equals One” (Crispin) 153 Noble, Nick (Boucher) 115, 148 Nobel Prize 8, 10, 98, 101, 103, 105, 107, 110 Norris, Margaret 183 “The Notary of Perigeux” (Longfellow) 30 Nothing Is impossible: Further Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (Hoch) 36, 163 The Notorious Sophie Lang (Anderson) 41–42 Obelists at Sea (C.D. King) 165 Obelists en Route (C.D. King) 165 Obelists Fly High (C.D. King) 165 O’Breen, Fergus (Boucher) 148 “Of More Value than Sparrows” (Post) 51–52 “Off the Face of the Earth” (Rawson) 173 O’Flaherty, Lian 113 Old Land, Dark Land, Strange Land (Suter) 185 Old Man in the Corner (Orczy) 14, 19, 49, 69, 85, 137, 185 Old Masters 2, 3, 5–7, 8, 10, 26–27, 39–53, 143, 188 The Old Spies Club (Hoch) 36 “The Oliveira Affair” (Narcejac) 183 “On the Brink” (Yaffe) 141 “Once Is Once Too Many” (A. Gilbert) 156 “One Drop of Blood” (Woolrich) 91 101 Years’ Entertainment (Queen) 2, 30, 37

Index “One Morning They’ll Hang Him” (Allingham) 56 “One Tenth Man” (M. Gilbert) 157 “The Oracle of the Dog” (Chesterton) 44 Orczy, Baroness 6, 19, 39, 49, 137 “The Ordeal of Father Crumlish” (Reach) 136 The Origin of Evil (Queen) 2, 14 “The Oversight” (Crofts) 70 Owens, Barbara 93, 105, 130 P as in Police (Treat) 36, 109 P. Moran, Operative (Wilde) 89 “P. Moran, Personal Observer” (Wilde) 89 “P. Moran’s Shadow” (Wilde) 89 Pachter, Josh 130–131, 183 The Pale Ape (Shiel) 53, 188 Palliser (Christie) 69 Palmer, Stuart 23, 25, 29, 34, 35, 170, 192 The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond (Chesterton) 44 Parmalee, Bill (Wilde) 90 parody/pastiche 8, 10, 59, 69, 116–117, 121– 123, 131, 138, 176, 179–186 Parr, Deputy (Anderson) 40–41, 188 Partners in Crime (Christie) 69 Pascal, Lt. (Pentecost) 172 “Passage to Benares” (Stribling) 21, 86 pastiche see parody/pastiche “The Patchwork Murder” (Vickers) 88 “The Patron Saint of the Impossible” (R. King) 166 Peirce, J.F. 183–184 Pentecost, Hugh 4, 117, 170–172, 179 People vs. Withers and Malone (Palmer and Rice) 25, 170 “Perchance to Dream” (Robineau) 176 “Percival Brand’s Proxy” (Freeman) 46 “The Perfect Alibi” (Highsmith) 30 Petrella, Patrick (M. Gilbert) 36, 157 Pevehouse, Alan 132 Pevehouse, Breni 126–127 “The Phantom Alibi” (Anderson) 41 “The Phantom Guest” (Anderson) 41 “Philip Marlowe’s Last Case” (Chandler) 64 “Philomel Cottage” (Christie) 69 Phipps, Miss (P. Bentley) 146 “Phyllis Annesley’s Peril” (Freeman) 47 Pierce, John 132–133 “Pierre Chambrun and the Black Days” (Pentecost) 172 “Pierre Chambrun and the Sad Song” (Pentecost) 172 Piper, David (Hoch) 164 The Player on the Other Side (Queen) 2, 14 A Pocketful of Noses (Powell) 133 Poe, Edgar Allan 6, 7, 18, 29, 39, 44, 47, 50– 51, 92, 106, 111, 142, 152, 179, 181 Poggioli, Professor Henry (Stribling) 85–86, 190 Poirot, Hercule (Christie) 20, 67–68, 69, 138, 145, 179, 182, 185, 189 Poirot Investigates (Christie) 20, 67

215

“Poison in the Cup” (Brand) 150 The Poisoned Chocolates Case (Berkeley) 168 “The Poisoned Dow” (Sayers) 82 Pond, Mr. (Chesterton) 44 Pons, Dr. L. Rees (C.D. King) 165 Pons, Solar (Derleth) 180–181 Ponsonby, Professor (Young) 142 Porges, Arthur 184–185 Porter, Nikki (Queen) 182 Post, Melville Davisson 6, 29, 39, 50–52, 71, 106, 135, 147, 177, 179, 186, 188 “The Post Mortem Murder” (Lewis) 105 Powell, James 133–134, 190 “The President of the United States, Detective” (Heard) 159 Prince, Harold and Jerome 115, 134–135 “The Prince Who Was a Thief ” (Dreiser) 30 Prince Zaleski (Shiel) 18, 52 Pringle, Romney (Freeman) 47 “The Private Eye Who Collected Pulps” (Pronzini) 106 The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Starrett) 185 “The Problem of Cell 13” (Futrelle) 19, 48, 158 “The Problem of the Emperor’s Mushroom’s” (Yaffe) 140 Pronzini, Bill 72, 106 “The Proverbial Murder” (Carr) 34, 62 Pulitzer Prize 8, 10, 86, 98, 101, 102, 108 pulps 28, 71, 143 Pumphrey, Victoria (Bailey) 58 “The Purloined Letter” (Poe) 18, 29, 50, 101 The Purple Flame (Anderson) 41 “The Purple Flame” (Anderson) 42 “The Purple Shroud” (Harrington) 125 Pursuivant, Judge (Wellman) 178 “The Puzzle Lock” (Freeman) 47 Puzzles of the Black Widows (Asimov) 144 Pyne, Parker (Agatha Christie) 68–69 Quarles, Francis (Symons) 37, 108 “The Quarterdeck Club” (Charteris) 65 Queen, Ellery I (Queen) 8, 13, 15 Queen, Ellery II (Queen) 8, 13, 15 Queen, Elsie (Shore) 176 Queen’s Bureau of Investigation (Queen) 79 Queen’s Experiments in Detection (Queen) 79 Queen’s Full (Queen) 79 Queen’s Quorum (Queen) 2, 8, 11, 13, 17–26, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 48, 50, 51, 52, 56, 58, 62, 64, 67, 74, 76, 79, 81, 82, 83, 85, 87, 90, 127, 136, 153, 155, 165, 170, 173, 175, 187 The Quests of Simon Ark (Hoch) 36 Quiller-Couch, Arthur 113 Quin, Harley (Christie) 69, 189 Quinn, Inspector (Wolson) 138 “Rabbit Out of the Hat” (Brand) 149 Rafferty, S.S. 135–136, 191 Rand, Jeffrey (Hoch) 36, 164

216

Index

Randolph, Squire (Post) 182 The Rasp (P. MacDonald) 76, 77 Rawson, Clayton 158, 172–173, 182, 192 Reach, Alice 136, 190 “Rear Window” (Woolrich) 92 “The Red-Headed League” (Conan Doyle) 18, 29, 45–46 “The Red Orchid” (Narcejac) 183 “The Red Signal” (Christie) 69 “Red Wind” (Chandler) 64 Reeve, Arthur 38 “The Regatta Mystery” (Christie) 68 Rendell, Ruth 106, 173–174 Reply Paid (Heard) 158 Return, David (Wellman) 135, 177–178 The Return of Dr. Sam: Johnson (de la Torre) 120 “The Return of Prince Zaleski” (Shiel) 29, 53 The Return of Solar Pons (Derleth) 181 The Return of the Continental Op (Hammett) 33 Revesz, Etta 107, 136–137 Rhodenbarr, Bernie (Block) 147 Ricardo (Mason) 182 Rice, Craig 24, 25, 170, 174–175 “The Richard Cory Murder Case” (Wellman) 178 Richardson, Maurice 185 The Riddle of Volume Four (Taylor) 31 The Riddles of Hildegard Withers (Palmer) 23, 29, 34 Rinehart, Mary Roberts 26, 54, 80–81 “Rink” (Goulart) 117 Ripley, Tom (Highsmith) 104 The Ripper of Storyville and other Ben Snow Stories (Hoch) 36 The Robert L. Fish Memorial Award 123 Robineau, Lisa 176 Robinson, Edgar Arlington 113 Rogan, Cpt. (McGerr) 129 Rogues’ Gallery (Queen) 2, 33, 37 Rogues in Clover (Wilde) 90 The Roman Hat Mystery (Queen) 2, 13 “Rope’s End” (Shore) 176 “Rose for Emily” (Faulkner) 101 Ross, Barnaby 2 Roth, Holly 107 “Ruffian’s Wife” (Hammett) 33, 74 Runyan, Damon 113 Russell, Bertrand 107 Russell, Mike (Armstrong) 99–100 The Saint (Charteris) 64–65, 189 The Saint Detective Magazine 64–65, 136, 143 “Saint-Germaine the Deathless” (de la Torre) 120 Saki 113 “Salt on his Tail” (Charteris) 65 Sandoe, James 40, 58 Sands, Inspector (Millar) 169 satire 60

Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry (Kemelman) 127 “Sauce for the Goose” (Highsmith) 104 Sayers, Dorothy 6, 21, 30, 54, 56, 81–82, 107, 189 The Scandal of Father Brown (Chesterton) 44 “The Scapegoat” (Brand) 150 Schlock Homes: The Complete Bagel Street Saga (Fish) 122 Schweik, Robert 137 Scudder, Matt (Block) 147 Seal, Inspector (Pierce) 132–133 The Secret of Father Brown (Chesterton) 44 Seeley, Mabel 113 Segre, Alfredo 137 “A Sense of Dynasty” (Roth) 107 Shakespeare, William 75, 113, 142, 182, 183 Shaw, George Bernard 113 Shayne, Mike (Halliday) 158 “The Sheep” (Cary) 111 Sheringham, Roger (Berkeley) 59, 69, 189, 191 Sherlock Holmes and the War of the Worlds (Wellman) 178 “Sherlock, Shakespeare, and the Bomb” (Hoffman) 182 Shiel, M.P. 6, 18, 29, 39, 52–53, 107, 152, 188, 192 Shore, Viola Brothers 31, 40, 175–176, 185 The Short Cases of Inspector Maigret (Simenon) 24, 83 “The Signed Masterpiece” (Anderson) 41 The Silent Witness (Post) 52, 188 Simenon, George 6, 21, 24, 29, 54, 82–84, 107, 128, 179, 183, 189 The Simple Art of Murder (Chandler) 64 “A Simple Matter of Deduction” (Dunsany) 155 “Sing a Song of Sixpence” (Christie) 69 The Singing Bone (Freeman) 46, 87 “The Singing Diamonds” (McCloy) 168 “The Skipping Game” (Brand) 150 Slesar, Henry 137, 138, 190 The Sleuth of St. James Square (Post) 52 Smith, Dr. John (Pentecost) 172 “Smoke” (Faulkner) 155, 191 “Smothered in Corpses” (Bramah) 43 “So Refreshing” (James) 127 Socrates (James) 126–127 Sokratesco, Kyra (Frankau) 38 The Solar Pons Omnibus (Derleth) 181 Something to Hide (P. MacDonald) 23, 76 “Something to Hide” (P. MacDonald) 77 “Souffle Surprise” (McConnor) 129 “The Sound of the Basketballs” (Fish) 123 Spade, Sam (Hammett) 7, 22, 32–33, 74, 85 Spade, Samantha (Shore) 176 The Spanish Cape Mystery (Queen) 13 “The Specialty of the House” (Ellin) 30, 120 The Specimen Case (Bramah) 42 “Specimen’s Day” (Whitman) 112 “The Spinning Wheel” (Alexander) 99

Index “The Splinter” (Rinehart) 81 spoof 43, 58, 69, 123 Sporting Blood (Queen) 2, 35, 37 The Spotted Cat (Brand) 149 The Spy and the Thief (Hoch) 36, 164 “The Spy Who Came to the Brink” (Hoch) 164 “The Spy Who Had Faith in Double C” (Hoch) 164 The Spy Who Read Latin (Hoch) 36 “The Spy Who Was So Obvious” (Roth) 107 Squid, Inspector (Hoyt) 126 “The S.S.” (Shiel) 18, 52–53 “Stakeout on Page Street” (Gores) 125 Stanley, Hagar (Hume) 38 “A Star for a Warrior” (Wellman) 30, 177–178 Starr, Dr. Colin (R. King) 166 Starrett, Vincent 1, 40, 159, 181, 185 “The Statement of the Accused” (Futrelle) 48 Steele, Wilbur Daniel 176 Steinbeck, John 108 The Steps to Murder (R. King) 166 Stevens, Gavin (Faulkner) 93, 135, 155, 191 Stevenson, Robert Louis 107, 113 Stix, Thomas 46 “The Stolen White Elephant” (Twain) 112 “The Stollmeyer Sonnet” (Powell) 134 The Store (Stribling) 86 Storey, Madame (Footner) 38 Stout, Rex 6, 54, 84–85, 108, 179 Strand Magazine 28, 34, 56, 59, 62, 67, 82, 187, 188, 189 The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason (Post) 18, 52 Strangeways, Nigel (Blake) 61, 189 Stribling, T.S. 6, 21, 54, 85–86, 108, 190, 192 “Strictly Diplomatic” (Carr) 63 “Striding Folly” (Sayers) 82 “The Stripper” (Boucher) 149 “The Stroke of Thirteen” (de la Torre) 120 Strong Poison (Sayers) 59 “A Study in White” (Blake) 61 “The Stymphalean Birds” (Christie) 68 “The Suicide of Kiaros” (Baum) 30, 110 Sullivan, Eleanor 3, 37 Surprise! Surprise! (McCloy) 25 “Suspicion” (Sayers) 30, 82 Suter, John 185–186 Swayne, Philip (Chesterton) 45, 188 The Sword of Welleran (Dunsany) 154 Symons, Julian 37, 108 Tales (Poe) 50 Tales of the Black Widowers (Asimov) 144 Tanner, Evan (Block) 147 Tarrant, Trevis (C.D. King) 165–166 A Taste for Honey (Heard) 158–159 Taylor, Mitch (Treat) 36, 109 Taylor, Phoebe 31 ‘tec tyros 6, 8, 114–142, 190 Templar, Simon (Charteris) 64–65, 189

217

Ten Days Wonder (Queen) 2 Tennente, Major (Flanagan) 124 Terror Town (Queen) 80 “The Theft of the Sherlockian Slipper” (Hoch) 163 “The Theft That Wasn’t a Theft” (Peirce) 183–184 The Thefts of Nick Velvet (Hoch) 36 “They Can Only Hang You Once” (Hammett) 32 “They Didn’t Deserve her Death” (Roth) 107 Thin, Robin (Hammett) 74, 189 thinking machine 13, 49, 126, 128 The Thinking Machine (Futrelle) 19, 47–48, 188 “The Thinking Machine Investigates” (Futrelle) 47 The Thinking Machine on the Case (Futrelle) 48 The Third Bullet (Carr) 62 “The Third Bullet” (Carr) 63 The Thirteen Culprits (Simenon) 21, 83 The Thirteen Detectives (Chesterton) 44 “This King Business” (Hammett) 73 “This One’s a Beauty” (McGerr) 129 “This Terrible Thing” (van Doren) 177 “Thistle Down” (Bailey) 58 Thomas, Dylan 113 Thompson, Leonard 114, 131 Thorndyke, Dr. (Freeman) 46–47, 69, 152, 185 The Three Coffins (Carr) 158, 182 “The Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse” (Chesterton) 44 “Three Men in a Garden” (Dunsany) 155 “Through a Glass Darkly” (McCloy) 168 Thunstone, John (Wellman) 178 Thurber, James 113 “Thy Brother Death” (McCloy) 168 “Time Out of Mind” (Godfrey) 158 Tish (Rinehart) 80 To the Queen’s Taste (Queen) 37, 83, 175 Tolstoy, Leo 30, 113 “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” (Pentecost) 172 “Too Many Have Lived” (Hammett) 32 “The Tower of Treason” (Chesterton) 45 “Tragedy of a Handkerchief ” (Innes) 75 The Tragedy of X (Queen) 2 Traill, Mr. (Chesterton) 45, 188 “The Treasure Hunt” (Rinehart) 80 “The Treasure of Jack the Ripper” (Hoch) 164 Treat, Lawrence 36, 108–109 “The Tremendous Adventures of Mr. Brown” (Chesterton) 44 Trent, Philip (Bentley) 22, 58–59, 188–189 Trent Intervenes (Bentley) 22, 58, 189 Trent’s Last Case (Bentley) 58 “The Trial of John Nobody” (A.H.Z. Carr) 150 “Triangle at Rhodes” (Christie) 68

218

Index

“The Triple-Lock’d Room” (de la Torre) 120 The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont (Barr) 19, 100 Truax, Phil (Hammett) 75 “Try It My Way” (Nebel) 169 Turner, Miles (Nevins) 130 Twain, Mark 112 “The Twelve Little Pickaninnies” (Leblanc) 48, 49 “The Twelve-Minute Grave” (Vickers) 88 Twentieth Century Detective Stories (Queen) 17, 35 “Two Birds with One Spanner” (Crofts) 70 “Two Bottles of Relish” (Dunsany) 154 Two Clues (Gardner) 72 “Two Sharp Knives” (Hammett) 33 “The Unbreakable Alibi” (Crofts) 70 Uncle Abner: Master of Mysteries (Post) 20, 51–52, 188 “The Underdog” (Christie) 68 The Unique Hamlet (Starrett) 185 “The Unknown Man” (Anderson) 42 “The Unpleasantness at the Stooges Club” (Heidenfeld) 181–182 Unravelled Knots (Orczy) 49 Ursula, Sister (Boucher) 148–149 “The Valet of Fir” (Fish) 123 Valmont, Eugene (Barr) 100 Valour, Lt. (R. King) 166 “The Vampire of the Village” (Chesterton) 43 Vance, Philo (van Dine) 14, 117, 179, 185 Van Dine, S.S. 52 van Doren, Mark 176, 177 “The Vanished Treasure” (Harrison) 181 Velvet, Nick (Hoch) 36, 131, 163, 179, 183 The Velvet Touch (Hoch) 36, 163 Venning, Michael 175 “Venus’s Fly-Trap” (Rendell) 174 “Vertigo” (de Vry) 176 Vickers, Roy 6, 23, 34, 54, 86–89, 93, 190, 192 “Village of the Dead” (Hoch) 164 “The Vindictive Story of the Footsteps that Ran” (Sayers) 81 “The Viotti Stradivarius” (de la Torre) 120 Voltaire 113 Wall of Eyes (Millar) 169 Walpole, Hugh 113 Walsh, John 31, 109–110 Warrant for X (P. MacDonald) 77 “Watson” 47, 127–128, 137, 145, 182 Watson (Conan Doyle) 45, 85, 122, 181, 182, 183 Waugh, Evelyn 113 “The Way to Freedom” (Wilde) 90

Weathergay, Dean (Pevehouse) 132 Webster, Daniel 113 Webster, F.A.M. 38 “The Wedding Dress” (Bromfield) 101 Wellman, Manly 30, 135, 177–178 Wells, H.G. 112, 152 Welt, Nicky (Kemelman) 53, 127–128, 137 Wexford, Inspector (Rendell) 174 Wharton, Edith $113 What Dread Hand (Brand) 149 “When Luck’s Running Good” (Hammett) 75 White, Mr. (Anderson) 42 “The White Pillars Mystery” (Chesterton) 45 Whitman, Walt 112 “Who Killed Bob Teal” (Hammett) 73 “Who Walks Behind” (Roth) 107 “Widow’s Walk” (Finney) 121 “Wild Goose Chase” (R. MacDonald) 167 Wilde, Percival 6, 54, 89–90, 115, 190, 192 “William Wilson’s Racket” (Carr) 62 Willing, Basil (McCloy) 168–169 “The Willow Walk” (Lewis) 105 Wimsey, Lord Peter (Sayers) 21, 56, 59, 81, 185, 189 “Wireless” (Christie) 69 The Wisdom of Father Brown (Chesterton) 44 Withers, Hildegard (Palmer) 23, 25, 34, 35, 170, 175 “Witness for the Prosecution” (Christie) 70 Wolfe, Nerissa (Shore) 176 Wolfe, Nero (Stout) 85, 130, 138, 179, 183, 185 Wolson, Morton 138 Woman in the Dark (Hammett) 35 “The Wood-for-the-Trees” (P. MacDonald) 29, 76, 77 Woolrich, Cornel 6, 22, 54, 80, 90–92 “The World’s Smallest Locked Room” (Rawson) 158, 173 Wright, Lee 40 Wright, W.H. 52 “The Wrong Problem” (Carr) 62 Wynn, Anthony 38 X vs. Rex (P. MacDonald) 76 Yaffe, James 30, 114, 115, 131, 139–141, 190, 190, 191, 192 Yeats, William Butler 110 “The Yellow Slugs” (Bailey) 57 “Yellow Wallpaper” (Gilman) 130 “You Can’t Hang Twice” (A. Gilbert) 156 Young, Alan 141–142, 191 Zaleski, Prince (Shiel) 52–53, 188 Zoom, Sydney (Gardner) 71–72