GREENE FOR DANGER

by Steve Steinbock

Left to right: Ed and Pat Hoch, Doug Greene, Steve Steinbock; Bouchercon 2002

Last week I said I’d use my weekly platform to tell how I met and came to be friends with the greatest advocate of the mystery short story since Ellery Queen. That man is Douglas Greene, who underwent triple-bypass surgery a week and a half ago.

I called Doug the other day, and I’m happy to report that he’s doing well. “A little short of breath,” his wife, Sandi told me. “But he’s getting feisty, which is a good sign.” At the time I called, he had recently taken a walk around his Norfolk neighborhood, and now had a student visiting him.

Around 1989-90, I was living in Norfolk, Virginia, running the education programs for a large (700 family) synagogue there. My job description was pretty vague and pretty broad. I was responsible for everything involving kids and anything the rabbi didn’t want to deal with. I led school tours, trained kids for Bar and Bat Mitzvah, ran the Hebrew school, I even counseled couples — something I was completely unqualified to do. One day a student from Old Dominion University called up, and asked if I would talk with him about Kabbalah. He was a graduate student in the School of Humanities, and was studying the imagery in the works of William Blake. I met with him, and answered his questions. And I learned a few things about William Blake in the process.

Then a few months later I received a letter (then again, it might have been a phone call) asking if I would serve on the guy’s Thesis committee. (Apparently there was no one else in southern Virginia who was both versed in Jewish mysticism and willing to talk about it. I agreed.

A few weeks later I found my way to the office of the director of the School of Humanities. Along with the director (a professor of British history) was a philosophy professor, the student, and myself. The office was comfortably cramped, with bookshelves lining every wall and books piled in every corner. I think I had to move some books in order to sit.

Doug at Bouchercon 2003 in the company of some brazen hussies.

We got down to business, helping the student to clarify and focus his subject matter. But being a book person, I was unable to keep my eyes from the shelves. That’s when I noticed that the wall to my right was filled with mysteries — titles by Golden Age mystery writers like Ellery Queen, John Dickson Carr, and Ngaio Marsh as well as books by current authors like Lawrence Block and Robert Campbell. My eyes went wide when I spotted a shelf of pulp magazines. Then, when the meeting finished and I got up to leave, I saw a whole shelf of Oz books. I’d recently finished re-reading all the L. Frank Baum books, but this history professor had more, books about the land of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson and Jack Snow, as well as reference books about Oz. I was staggered!

The professor was, of course, Douglas G. Greene. We arranged to meet, and quickly became friends. We’d meet every couple weeks, usually at a Chinese restaurant, and then visit a second-hand book store. The friendship soon extended to our wives. Sue instantly liked Sandi, and the two women could commiserate being married to book addicts. I can already hear Sandi objecting to my next statement, but they just don’t make people as nice as Doug and Sandi.

I can say with some certainty that had it not been for Doug, I would never have found my way so deeply into the mystery world. It was Doug who introduced me to magazines like The Armchair Detective, CADS, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. It was from Doug that I learned about Bouchercon and other mystery conventions. Through Doug I met Margaret Maron, Michael Z. Lewin, Bill Prinzini, Marcia Muller, and of course, Edward Hoch and his wife Patricia. I’m not sure I would have ever gotten started as a book reviewer had it not been for Doug.

Doug is still teaching at Old Dominion, he’s active in his church, and he and Sandi are now grandparents. More significant for lovers of short mystery fiction, in 1994 Doug began a publishing house, literally in his kitchen. Named for a pair of early 20th Century murderers (for details, see JLW’s excellent column) from December 3, Crippen & Landru ) has now published more than eighty short story collections. They are the only publisher to specialize in single-author (i.e. one author, not unmarried authors) anthologies, including such notables as Peter Lovesey, Mickey Spillane, Ed Gorman, Erle Stanley Gardner, Anthony Berkeley, Joe Gores, Max Allan Collins, Ross Macdonald, Jon Breen, H.R.F. Keating, and Edward Hoch. Future volumes include anthologies of stories by Walter Satterthwait, Hugh Pentacost, Robert Silverberg, and S.J. Rozan.

Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine editor Janet Hutchings with Doug at the Anthony Banquet in 2005.

Apart from Crippen & Landru ), Doug is the author of John Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles, and the editor of Detection by Gaslight and Classic Mystery Stories (both from Dover), several collections of short stories by John Dickson Carr (International Polygonics), Death Locked In (with Bob Adey) and The Collected Short Fiction of Ngaio Marsh (also from International Polygonics), and a translation of a bizarre Russian Oz book, The Wooden Soldiers of Oz (by A. Volkov, published by Opium Press). Whew!

Thanks, Doug. A speedy recovery, and keep the books coming!