HUGH PENTECOST “Jericho and the Nuisance Clue.” Short story. John Jericho #6. First appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystey Magazine, August 1966. Collected in The Battles of Jericho (Crippen & Landru, 2008).

   Some clarification is needed. This is the sixth of 25 John Jericho stories that Hugh Pentecost wrote for EQMM between 1964 and 1987. It does not include six novels he appeared in between 1965 and 1970, nor several dozen stories he appeared in as a member of the Park Avenue Hunt Club for the pulp magazines, mostly Detective Fiction Weekly, between 1934 and 1944, all under the author’s real name, Judson Philips.

   The two earlier incarnations are not really the same person as the one in this story, but if television can re-invent or re-imagine old series characters every so often, why can’t mystery writers? Nor, for example, do I think that Ellery Queen was the same Ellery Queen in every novel over the years as time went on.

   The more recent John Jericho was a painter/social activist whose eye for detail stood him in good stead when it came time to solve mysteries. He’s described in “Nuisance Clue” as being a giant of a man, about 40, six-feet-six inches tall, weighing 240 pounds, a giant with red hair and red beard.

   Not only does he have an eye for detail, but he also has the knack of being in the right place at the right time. In :this story he’s sitting at a local bar, minding his own business, when a local mobster picks a fight with him, not knowing who he is.

   Why, Jericho can’t help but think, is he trying to establish an alibi? Sure enough. The story’s only ten pages long, and it flies by quickly and smoothy, showing that telling a well-reasoned out detective story doesn’t need 400 pages to do so.