Tue 19 Jan 2021
Diary Review: ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, December 1966.
Posted by Steve under Diary Reviews , Magazines[8] Comments
ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, December 1966. Overall rating: 3 stars.
JACOB HAY “The Opposite Number.†The “inside†story of the spy business. (3)
AGATHA CHRISTIE “Hercule Poirot and the Sixth Chair.†Original title: “Yellow Iris.†Poirot stops a murder from occurring at a dinner party. (3)
WILLIAM BRITTAIN “The Boy Who Read Agatha Christie.†Schoolboy foils plan of college students. Enjoyable but trivial. (3)
ARTHUR PORGES “Private Beachhead.†Gimmick with radios too uncertain for story basis. (2)
YOUNGMAN CARTER “Seeds of Time.†SF story about visitor through time. Nothing unusual. (3)
CORNELL WOOLRICH “All It Takes Is Brains.†Novelette. Original title “Crime of St. Catherine Street.†Man on a bet enters Montreal with 75¢ and leaves with $1500, being wanted for murder in the meantime. Exciting in pulp style. (4)
CHRISTOPHER ANVIL “The Problem Solver and the Defector.†Verner finds secret plans. (3)
GEORGE EMMETT “Pushkin Pays.†Attempt to dispose of body in ocean fails, thanks to appearance of Russian submarine. (1)
HELEN NIELSEN “The Chicken Feed Mine.†Three ex-servicemen kill a desert rat for his “savings.†(3)
JOHN T. SLADEK “Capital C on Planet Amp.†SF, but in far-out camp style. Garbage. (0)
L. E. BEHNEY “The Long Hot Day.†Tale from home. Husband kills stranger his wife falsely accuses. (3)
JOHN DICKSON CARR “To Wake the Dead.†Original title “Blind Man’s Hood.†An adequate locked room mystery, but supernatural tone of story is forced. (2)
RUFUS KING “Anatomy of a Crime.†hort novel. Stuff Drscoll solves a murder made to appear a textbook suicide. Actually an inverted detective story as the reader follows the battle of wits between murderer and investigator with fascination. (4)
January 19th, 2021 at 8:40 pm
The Stuff Driscoll story by King, the Woolrich, and the Hay story are the prizes here.
January 19th, 2021 at 10:06 pm
King and Woolrich, yes, but Jacob Hay is barely a name I recognize. But then check the cover. His is the third name down, above both Woolrich and Carr.
He had maybe two dozen stories in EQMM, and apparently one borderline SF/thriller novel.
Do you — or anyone — know anything more about Jacob Hay?
January 19th, 2021 at 10:50 pm
I just remembered that a longer review I wrote of the Woolrich story is posted here on this blog. Here’s the link:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=66134
January 19th, 2021 at 10:58 pm
For more information on the Christie story, here’s the Wikipedia link to the radio play based on it (plus more):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Iris_(radio_drama)
And for a much longer review of the Carr/Dickson story:
http://moonlight-detective.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-dead-sleep-lightly-blind-mans-hood.html
January 20th, 2021 at 1:04 am
Agree with David on the highlights, especially the story by Hay, whose droll and cynical take on the spy business is surely close to reality today.
I was able to dig up his obit, published in the York Daily Record on 05 May 1976.
Jacob Hay V. Dies; Newsman, Author
Jacob Hay V. who started a distinguished writing career on the York Gazette and Daily, died Monday of cancer after a long illness at his home in Linwood, Carroll County Md at the age of 55.
Husband of the former Joy Ryan and son of the late Mr and Mrs Jacob Hay IV, who lived at 1772 W Market St, Hay worked for the Gazette in the mid 40’s following his return from military service in World War and studies at New College, Oxford University.
He then went on to the Baltimore Evening Sun and to write for the Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, Holiday Magazine and the National Geographic where he was a staff member from 1958 to 1961. He was the author of three novels and edited the memoirs of the late Astronaut Virgil I Grissom. Yorkers were able to recognize local settings for many of his humorous pieces and stories.
Hay was at one time on the public relations staff of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. His Evening Sun stint included the humorous column Mr Peep’s Diary and personality profiles. In the 1960’s he was a critic for the Baltimore News American. He had been a free lance writer since 1961 and during this period contributed to the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and did work for various government agencies and the World Book Encyclopedia Science Service.
He was a graduate of William Penn Senior High School, class of 1937, and of the Pennsylvania State University. He served in the European Theater in World War II rising to the rank of captain in the Fourth Infantry Division. In 1950 he was recalled by the Army for service in the Korean Conflict after which he worked two years for the Greensboro, N.C. Daily News.
The funeral service will be held Thursday at 11 am in Ascension Episcopal Church, Westminster, Md.
January 20th, 2021 at 1:22 am
All I can do is say thank you, Sai. I guess I didn’t look online long enough; certainly not well enough!
And if you’ve read the Hay story, too, and speak so well of it, it makes me wish I remembered something more about it than I said in this review, written over 50 years ago.
January 20th, 2021 at 8:02 pm
As Sai points out Hay had quite a career in the high paying slicks. Unfortunately many of the writers who like him mostly published major magazine short fiction are forgotten, ironically while much less well paid writers from the pulps and relatively low paying paperback original market are highly collectable.
January 23rd, 2021 at 6:00 pm
[…] about it now? Not I, that’s for sure. But I reviewed it then in a diary format which I’ve been reposting here on this blog, mostly for my amusement but hopefully for others as […]