TIM AKERS “A Murder of Knights.” Published in Sword and Planet, edited by Christopher Ruocchio (Baen Books, trade paperback, 2021).

   As the story begins, two men are on a quest, one they apparently have been ordered to be upon. We gradually learn what they must do. We never do quite learn who ordered them, but since the thrust of the tale does not depend on that, it does not matter. At some short length, they arrive at an isolated village where the mayor’s daughter has been abducted by a broodmother (think of something comparable to a monstrous spider-like creature, but worse).

   The question of the quest, and the tasks they are bound to do are now apparent.

   It is never quite clear on what world they are in. It may be Earth, it may not. It most probably isn’t. Technology seems to have previously existed on the planet. It does not now. Life is primitive in the world they are. The weapons they have are little better than swords, but magic also plays a part in their attack on the monster they must kill — or be killed by.

   There is, of course, little that is new in this tale. Many of us have read this short adventure many times, and for some of us, for a long time. Tim Akers, the author, tells it well. Here’s a short example:

   
   You might think Mr. Akers is a young fellow, as I did when starting this tale, but he is 53 and has written several novels and short stories, perhaps all in a similar vein, but none of which have I noticed before. From the ending, I thought a sequel could easily have followed, but so far, such an event has not occurred.

   I would happily read it if it had.

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN “All You Zombies –.” First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1959, after reportedly being rejected by Playboy after that magazine had requested a short work of adult fiction from the author. Collected in The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (Gnome Press, hardcover, 1959). Reprinted many time since, including The Arbor House Treasury of Modern Science Fiction, edited by Martin H. Greenberg & Robert Silverberg (Arbor House, 1980) and Time Troopers, edited by Hank Davis & Christopher Ruocchio (Baen Books, 2022).

   A guy walks into a bar and eventually begins telling on the other side of the counter his life story. It’s a strange one. It turns out that he, so far, has had a very strange existence. He was born a girl but was stolen from his mother when he was born. He did have a child while still female…

   And from there it gets complicated. I think I have explained everything as best I can without telling you everything, but between you and me and a handy time travel machine, there is only one major character in the story. Only one.

   I loved this story when I first read it, I don’t remember where or when, was totally puzzled the second time. Third time, a couple of days ago, and I loved it again, the pieces all falling into place as smoothly as anyone could make it. If there were any flaws, but given the number of times it’s collected and reprinted, someone else would have found them by now.

   The title? That’s one the first things that comes to our protagonist’s mind once he comes to grips with his life in the world. Where (or how) do the rest of us come in?

   For the record, reading this yesterday and trying to keep the threads of the story straight, I was struck by how smooth a writer Robert Heinlein was when he was at his prime. He was one of the best.

JOHN LUTZ “What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You.” Alo Nudger. First appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November 1982. PWA Winner for Best Short Story. Collected in The Nudger Dilemmas (Five Star, 2001). Reprinted in The Shamus Winners, Volume I: 1982-1995, edited by Robert J. Randisi (Perfect Crime Books, 2010).

   Alo Nudger is the St. Louis-based PI with the nervous stomach who appeared in ten novels and nine or more short stories, of which this is the fourth. One theme in all of his appearances is his constant use of antacids whenever the going gets tough, but you should also know that whenever that happens — and it always does — he never falters or turns aside. He always carries through, no matter how tough the going gets.

   In this short tale he awakens on the floor of his office after having been visited by a couple of goons who had worked him over, followed by a female nurse, linebacker-sized, who, when his answers prove unsatisfactory, doses him with truth serum.

   No matter. He didn’t reveal anything about his clients, because none of the cases he’s working on are worth that kind of questioning.

   It is a mystery, but after a visit to the doughnut shop downstairs beneath his office, he begins to have a glimmer of what’s going on. I could tell you more, but I’m reluctant to, because that’s really all the story’s about: his learning what it is that’s going on as well as helping out a friend who needs help.

   In many ways this in only a minor tale in Alo Nudger’s career, but in other ways, you can think of it as one that tells you what kind of man he is.

STEVEN POPKES “The Ice.” Novella. First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, 2003. Reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: 21st Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois (St. Martin’s, trade paperback, July 2004).

   Phil Berger was a high school hockey player in the Boston area, and a pretty good one, when a local reporter files a story about him that changes his life forever.  As the story goes, he is the cloned son of Gordie Howe. [Sidebar here: Gordie Howe was the greatest hockey player of all time, playing for the pros from 1946 to 1971, one Wayne Gretsky notwithstanding. We could argue about that. I saw him play twice, once in Detroit and once here in Hartford. Gordie Howe, that is.]

   The circumstances are vague, but one does not argue with DNA testing. It is a lot of pressure on a young boy. He makes it to playing in college, but it doesn’t last long. It also turns out that he was not the only result of whatever experiments somebody was running. The other boy, Phil’s age, was not as successful.

   This is a long story, full of small highlights and lots of valleys. He moves to the American southwest, gets a job barkeeping, then a better one. He gets married, has a son, and lives his life the best he can. This is barely science fiction, until the end, when the story finally makes it rounds and comes around to the point, which is a significant one. But while it is being told, it is one you cannot put down, even if you are not a hockey fan.

   I have not read anything else by Steven Popkes, who seems to have made a living doing real jobs, not depending on writing SF for a living. He wrote a couple of novels in the late 1980s/early 90s, then a dozen or so more from 2016 to now. These appear to be mostly self-published.

   He did continue writing shorter work all through this period. This not an uncommon career path for many SF writers. Based on this sample of size one, though, he seems to have done fine, but in my opinion, he could have been a real contender.

CORNELL WOOLRICH “Soda Fountain.” Appeared in The Saint Mystery Magazine,” March 1960. Reprinted from Liberty, October 11, 1930, as “Soda-Fountain Saga.”

   John Spanish is a soda jerk, a description of a job which may not exist anymore, and if it does, it’s a job not nearly as common as it used to be. (I am not as up on things like this as I used to be, either.) He is uncommonly good at this job, or at least he thinks he is, and it’s quite apparent that he really does have an effect on all of the high school girls who come swarming in when school lets out.

   All but one of them, and perhaps she is not really a schoolgirl. She never comes in with books, and she treats Spanish with undisguised non-interest. He tries his best, but, no, the lady is not interested. Then for a couple of days in a row, she meets a man at the counter. A man she knows well, Spanish catches on to that right away. In sort of futile gesture, but he cannot help himself, he fixes the girl’s companion a special drink. A doozy, you might say.

   The next day, the girl comes in, with a suitcase. “What did you do to my husband?” she demands. He gulps, figuratively if not physically.

   And just where is this story going, the reader wonders. I’ll stop here and say no more but only remind you that this is a crime story. A minor one, true, and while it was written early in Woolrich’s career, and somewhat amateurishly phrased now and again, with an ending that needed just a little more punch to it, it has a modicum of a cuteness while not being totally fluff either.

   And while I’m not absolutely positive, and there’s no information provided as a blurb in reprint version I read, but this appears to be Cornell Woolrich’s very first crime story. Not his first published story – there were about a dozen stories he had written before this one, appearing in magazines such as College Humor and the like – but I’m sure happy I came across it late last night, for all of the reasons mentioned above.

EDWARD D. HOCH “The Spy Who Knew Too Much.” Jeffrey Rand #19. First appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, August 1971, Reprinted in Adam (Australia; March 1973).

   According to the blurb introducing this story in EQMM, Rand is a “code and cipher specialist, detective by necessity, and now troubleshooter-at large,” assigned as he is to a case with roots beginning back in the days at the end of World War II. For reasons of crucial wartime significance, a plane containing a German general and the head of the French resistance was shot down while heading for Berlin, with both men reported killed.

   This involves a bit of hand-waving on the author’s part, or at least it was for me, as I didn’t quite understand. But no matter. The sentence above is all the reader really needs to know.

   Returning to the present day, a Major Gregory Subic, now living in Toronto, is planning to write a book of his memoirs, and it is rumored to reveal the truth about the affair above. If  secrets are revealed, it would be bombshell of a revelation in world affairs, even twenty-five years later.

   Rand is sent to learn more, and if possible make sure the details are not revealed. When Subic’s literary agent is found dead with the manuscript missing, the case becomes one of murder as well.

   As is usual in the Rand stories, codes and ciphers are involved, and I’m happy to report that I caught on to the one in this one almost immediately.

   Not that I got any farther than that with it – but I should have. Mr. Hoch is as clear and precise as he always was in any of the tales of mystery and deduction he wrote, and he outsmarted me once again, even though I thought I was reading as clearly and concisely as I could.

   I love it when that happens.

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN “The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag.” Novella. First published in Unknown Worlds, October 1942. Collected in The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (Gnome Press, hardcover, 1959). Reprinted in 6 x H (Pyramid G642, paperback original, 1961), among others.

   Jonathan Hoag hires the husband-and-wife team of Randall & Craig, Confidential Investigation to solve the mystery of the dirty fingernails. The nails are his. Under them is a dried brownish blood-like substance. The doctor who analyzes it throws him out of his office, and Hoag discovers that he does not know what he does all day.

   The solution, as he sees it, is to have himself shadowed.

   But this is no mere detective story, but a powerful fantasy that creates doubts as to the reality of the world around us. Unfortunately is might have been a better story as a mystery, except that the explanation dies have to transcend the limits of everyday detection.

   Still, it is too easy to throw away the beginning for the less restrictive.

Rating: ****

ROBERT BLOCH “Is Betsey Blake Still Alive?” First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, April 1958. First collected in Blood Runs Cold (Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1961). First reprinted in Ellery Queen’s Murder—in Spades!, edited by Ellery Queen (Pyramid, paperback, 1969). Reprinted and collected many other times since, often with changes in the title. (See Comment #5.) TV adaptation: Alfred Hitchcock Presents (March 27, 1960) as “Madame Mystery,” with Audrey Totter as the title character.

   This small chiller of a story takes place in Hollywood, where a writer turns down the chance offered him by a live-wire PR agent to help him publicize a movie star’s latest and possibly final film by building up a huge campaign on her life after her assumed death in a motorboat accident. When I say huge, I mean the works. Ads and magazine stories galore. Is she alive? And if so, where is she?

   All is going well, extremely well, when … you probably guessed it – [Plot Alert] the lady shows up. All that work? For next to nothing? Usually this is as far as I’d go in telling you about a story, but since you’ve been warned, I will let you know the lady disappears again. In all likelihood this time she is as dead as she can be. [End Plot Alert.] But of course that is not the end of the story.

   Author Robert Bloch tells the story as smoothly as he ever did, and maybe even more. Once started you are not likely to put this one down. And yes, the very last line is a small masterpiece.

RAY BRADBURY “Gotcha!” First published in Redbook, August 1978. Collected in The Stories of Ray Bradbury (Knopf, 1980). Reprinted in The Year’s Finest Fantasy Volume 2, edited by Terry Carr (Berkley, 1979) and A Century of Horror 1970-1979, edited by David Drake & Martin H. Greenberg (MJF Books, 1996). TV Adaptation: Ray Bradbury Theater, February 20, 1988 (Season 2, Number 4). [See comment #15.]

   There are authors whose work you can easily recognize – or even more easily, make a pretty good guess – by reading only the first paragraph or two, even if it’s a game you’re playing and it’s hidden from you. Case in point:

   
   Well, what do you think?

   On the particular night that this story takes place, the lady suggests they play a game. In bed. One called Gotcha, she says. He hesitates but then he agrees, That’s when things get scary. Very very scary.

   It gets scarier. You may want to leave the light on tonight when you go to bed, whether alone or with someone else. The ending is not quite as effective as what has come before, but it’s good enough:

ELLERY QUEEN “The Adventure of the Seven Black Cats.” Ellery Queen. First published in The Adventures of Ellery Queen (Stokes, hardcover, 1934). Reprinted in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, January 2016, the opening story in the first month of the magazine’s year-long 75th anniversary celebration.

   Ellery stops at a pet store thinking perhaps to buy a dog and ends up solving a very strange case involving cats, seven of them, all black, all purchased from the store at a rate of one a week by a bedridden older lady named Euphemia Tarkle, who is known to hate cats. Ellery’s curiosity is aroused. What is going on?

   The owner of the story is one Marie Curleigh, young and very pretty. Realizing he needs assistance in any sort of investigation to follow, Ellery asks: “Miss Curleigh, I’m an incurable meddler in the affairs of others. How would you like to help me meddle in the affairs of the mysterious Tarkle sisters?”

   And of course she does. The story that follows is meticulously planned out, and will be a lot of fun to read by any mystery fan who likes, no loves, following along with the clues. One negative note should be mentioned, however. The culprit at the end can easily be discerned by the judicious process of elimination. Too few suspects there are, that is. (Not that I did, but I could have, and should have.)

   And if asked, I could come up with a couple of other notes. The superintendent of the building where Miss Tarkle lives is named Harry Potter. And Miss Curleigh is such an agreeable assistant in this case that one wishes she might have appeared as well in other tales in Queen canon. I don’t believe she did. She should have.