LOST IN READING

by Steven Steinbock

Over the past month I’ve used this column to share with you some of the favorite mystery short story collections from my shelves. This week I’ll be providing one more for the list. The eight I’ve presented so far are:

° Omnibus of Crime (Dorothy L. Sayers, 1929)
° Detection Medley (John Rhode, 1939)
° 101 Years’ Entertainment (Ellery Queen, 1941)
° Four-&-Twenty Bloodhounds (Anthony Boucher, 1950)
° The Queen’s Awards – Fifth Series (Ellery Queen, 1950)
° Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbinders of Suspense (Robert Arthur, 1967)
° The Locked Room Reader (Hans Santesson, 1968)
° The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Hugh Greene, 1970)

Notice that two of the above selections were edited by Ellery Queen (Fred Dannay). The collection I’m adding this week will make one more Queen collection, although this one was edited by Dannay’s successor, Eleanor Sullivan.

Around 1960, Davis Publications began publishing Ellery Queen’s Anthology, a semiannual collection of stories from the publishers of EQMM. I don’t know the specifics, the exact year they began, how they were distributed, etc.

[I’m hoping that Jon, Ed, or anyone else in the know can shed light on this in the comment area, below].

These anthologies look like fat versions of the regular EQMM magazine, each anthology being about the thickness of three issues. For the first decade, they typically contained a short novel or two, several novelettes, and 14 or 15 short stories. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were several major changes: the anthologies became quarterly, and they became thematic. Themes included “Eyewitnesses,” “Memorable Characters,” “Prime Crimes,” and “Lost Ladies.” Also around this time the anthologies were available in hardcover editions, published by Dial Press, as well as in their standard digest forms.

My favorite of these is Ellery Queen’s Lost Men (Anthology #47, Fall, 1983). The twenty stories and one short novel each involve a missing man. The entire collection was dedicated to Jacques Futrelle, a Lost Man himself, having been taken in the Titanic disaster of 1912.

Aaron Marc Stein’s “This Was Willi’s Day” is a story of treachery and greed in the Swiss Alps as a drifter meets and marries a wealthy heiress.

In Jacques Futrelle’s “The Vanishing Man,” an investment banker has been disappearing from a locked and sealed office, along with US Government Bonds.

Jon Breen’s “The Number 12 Jinx” has umpire Ed Gorgon solving the case of a ballplayer who entered the tunnel from the dugout to the clubhouse and disappeared, only to turn up dead.

Stanley Ellin’s “The Blessington Method” is a chilling classic about a method of disposing our unwanted elderly.

Ed Hoch’s “Thirteen” is much darker than what we usually get from him. It’s a very short tale, just under six pages. In style and content, it reminds me of Westlake’s “Parker” novels, but if it’s possible, even more stark (pun intended) and violent. Yet in Hoch’s hand, this caper takes a surprising and unexpected twist in this end.

Turning the tables on the theme is “The Man Who Came Back” by Edna Ferber, an author one doesn’t usually associate with mysteries. In it an ex-con returns to his home town, hoping no one will remember him until he is framed for a crime similar to the one that originally sent him away.

The short novel in the collection is a real classic: The Third Man, by Graham Greene, about the most memorable of all lost men, Harry Lime. (I can’t even type the name “Harry Lime” without hearing the zither strings of that infectious theme music).

See you again next Friday with another anthology for review. Until then, I’ll be lost in my reading.