JAMES M. CAIN “Pastorale.” Short story. First published in The American Mercury, March 1928. Reprinted in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September 1945. Collected in The Baby in the Icebox (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1981). Also reprinted in Best American Noir of the Century, edited by James Ellroy & Otto Penzler (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010), as well as perhaps other anthologies.

   The introduction to this story in the Ellroy/Penzler edition claims it was Cain’s first published work of fiction, but that’s not so. The tale with that particular distinction seems to have been “Trial by Jury,” which appeared in January 1928 issue of The American Mercury.

   But no matter. It’s still a story of some great interest to noir fans. I’m sure that everyone reading this knows that one of Cain’s primary themes in the stories he told was that of a man falling for a woman who then persuades him to commit a crime for him. And how does that work out? Not well. Not usually. Not well.

   And guess what? That’s exactly the kind of story this is, even at this early date (1928). I won’t go into details. This is only a short story, after all. I did think the story ends on a flatter note than I expected, but it’s still a good one.

MADELEINE SHARPS BUCHANAN – The Subway Murder. NYPD Homicide Lt. Ransom #1. Serialized in five parts in Detective Fiction Weekly, February 8 through March 8, 1930. Hardcover editions: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1930; Grosset & Dunlap, no date stated.

   If Lieutenant Ransom was given a first name in this better than average detective novel, first serialized in the pulp magazine Detective Fiction Weekly, I seem to have missed it. It’s also quite possible that this was not his first and only appearance in print, but I can’t find a reference to a later case he was involved in, or even an earlier one.

   I’ve not been able to research this, but The Subway Murder may actually be the first defective mystery in which the victim is killed in a subway, as Ransom briefly wonders to himself early on. Given that the Manhattan subway system opened in 1904, though, there’s a good chance that another author came up with the same idea before Mrs. Buchanan did.

   The dead girl is a young woman of no great beauty, and it takes Ransom and Jim Pensbury, his chief aide, some time to identify the body. What they discover astounds them. The woman had led two lives, married, in fact, to two different men. One is a lowly salesman for a hosiery firm; the other is a rich millionaire, who does not at first recognize the woman, she is so poorly dressed.

   It is quite a puzzle, then, that faces Ransom and Pensbury. It takes a lot of legwork on their part, and any number of interviews with people with whom they come in contact, all somehow connected with the case, which is a deliciously complicated one.

   There is also a matter of $70,000 worth of radium that has gone missing, so there’s plenty to plot to keep the reader interested all the way through, with only an ending that feels a little flat. No big twist at the end, in other words, just a matter of good police work that slowly but surely eliminates all of the possible solutions, one by one, until there is only one left.

   Madeleine Sharps Buchanan, the author, had only seven novels published in hardcover, but she wrote several dozen others that were serialized in pulp magazines such as DFW, Clues, and Detective Story Magazine. There’s probably little hope of putting together a set of consecutive issues of any of them to put a full novel together. On the other hand, you could hunt down the novels in book form, but for example, there are only two copies of the hardcover edition of this one now offered for sale online, the lowest asking price (on eBay) being just under $100. I’d like sample her work a little more, but it looks like it may be a bit of a challenge.

TOD ROBBINS “Spurs.” First published in Munsey’s Magazine, February 1923. Collected in Who Wears a Green Bottle? And Other Uneasy Tales (Philip Allan, UK, 1926). Reprinted in Best American Noir of the Century, edited by James Ellroy & Otto Penzler (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010), as well as several other anthologies. Film: Freaks (1932; produced and directed by Tod Browning).

   There is no doubt that the Tod Browning’s notorious cult film Freaks is far more known than the short story it’s based on. The film takes the basic story and expands on it by a magnitude of three or four, if not more, but the story itself still manages to hold its own as a small gem of comeuppance and pure edginess.

   To wit: When a dwarf in a traveling sideshow inherits a small fortune from an uncle, he decides it is full time he declared his love for the star of the circus’s high wire act, a veritable Amazon of a woman. To perhaps the reader’s surprise, if not Jacque Corbeé’s, who in spite of his size, is superbly confidant that she will say yes, she does indeed. Say yes, that is.

   Of course it is his money she is after, but fate being what it is, things do not progress anywhere near what she envisions. The other members of the circus — freaks, if you will – play only a secondary role in the story, mostly during the dinner after the wedding, in which a small melee breaks out – each of the participants convinced that the success of the show depends largely to their presence in it.

   I reviewed this story in my previous post on this blog, stating that I saw a couple of possible flaws in the solution. In the first comment to this followup post, I will attempt to explain why I wasn’t completely convinced. Please don’t read my comment until you’ve already read the story or if you don’t plan to anytime soon.

   Responsible and even opposing points of view are, as always, welcome.

CLAYTON RAWSON “From Another World.” Novelette. The Great Merlini. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 1948. Collected in The Great Merlini (Gregg Press, hardcover, 1979). Reprinted in The Quintessence of Queen, edited by Anthony Boucher (Random House, 19620; and Whodunit? Houdini?, edited by Otto Penzler (Harper & Row, 1976), among perhaps others.

   I’m really of two minds with this one. On one hand, it has one of the cleverest ideas of how to set up a near-classic locked room mysteries. On the other, if you start to think about, the more and more you begin to think, “Would this really work?”

   Here’s the set-up: A wealthy man would like to believe that psychokinesis really works, but before he invests any money in a foundation to study it, he wants a full, hands-on demonstration. To that end, a noted female psychic agrees to these terms. Together alone in an otherwise empty room, she in a bathing suit, he across a desk from her, are to hold the equivalent of a seance. The edges of the only doorway are sealed with gummed paper tape.

   How then, when they become suspicious and break into the room, tearing the tape, do two men, The Great Merlini’s friend Ross one of them, find the man murdered, stabbed to death with a knife, the woman unconscious – not faked – and no knife to be found. Not only was the door locked, but it was sealed.

   So far, so good, or even better. As an author, Rawson wasn’t quite as good as John Dickson Carr in setting up a certain atmosphere in a locked-room story which only adds to the mystery, but he comes close. Could something akin to the supernatural be responsible?

   The answer is “no,” at least in this case, and if it wasn’t, what’s the fun in that? At first glance the solution is extremely simple — and indeed brilliant — but – and this is a huge “but” – if at story’s end, you start to realize that the story simply just couldn’t have happened the way Merlini susses it out, how then do you rate a story like that?

MAX BRAND “The Flaming Finish.” Short story. First published in Blue Book, August 1938. Not known if ever reprinted.

   Even though I’d have to say that Max Brand is my favorite western writer, I haven’t read anything by him in quite a while. That’s why when I was going through some old pulp magazines last week, it really caught my eye when I saw that he had the lead story in the August 1938 issue of Blue Book.

   It turns out that “The Flaming Finish” is of note because while Max Brand under his many pen names had already written hundreds of thousands of words for the pulp magazines, this was the first story he wrote for Blue Book. And while he was most noted for his western stories (see above), this is the first I’ve come across that’s been an aviation story.

   It takes place during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), but it’s really a nostalgic tribute to those air pilots who fought during World War I, when aviators (true or false) had a certain camaraderie, if not outright chivalry or a code of honor used as the basis for their battles in the air against each other. When one such pilot in this story crashes to the ground and is captured, his opposite partner in the air returns him to his home base instead of killing him on sight, as he had every reason to.

   I don’t know enough about the aviation pulps to know how long in time that stories celebrating this code of honor lasted, but I’d like to think this one was one of the final ones, and Brand made its length of only seven pages fly by. Pun intended.

PostScript: A blurb on the cover of the magazine announces this as the first of a “new series of air adventures” under the overall title of “Knights of the Sky.” I don’t know if the following all fall into that category, but here’s a list of the next few followup stories Max Brand did for the magazine:

      Last Flight, The Blue Book Magazine September 1938.
      The Return of the Man Who Was Killed,  The Blue Book Magazine October 1938.
      True Steel,  The Blue Book Magazine February 1939.
      Half a Partner, The Blue Book Magazine March 1939.

RICHARD A. LOVETT “A Pound of Flesh.” Alex Copley #1. Novella. Analog SF, September 2006. Never reprinted.

   A tale of the not-too-distant future, but if the author is to be believed, PI’s are always destined to be down on their luck and work in dingy offices in the bad part of town. Alex Copley, who tells his own story is one such, and speaking on down on his luck, here’s the way his life is going. He is behind on his rent, no surprise there, but here’s the thing, and it’s the thing that makes his a science fiction story.

   Nanotechnology has made it possible to avoid having to call in bill collectors when tenants cannot come up with the rent. When a contract is signed, the signee agrees to be injected with nano bots that, if/when the time comes and a loan is not paid, the defaulter is automatically infected with a pre-specified ailment or disease, which lasts until a antidote nano is taken. No more bail bondsmen, in fact no more lawyers. A brand new way of conducting many a business or financial attraction.

   Or in other words, Copley has a lot to worry about. Until, that is, a beautiful lady client comes knocking on his door. She needs his help, and what’s more, she has money, and she’s willing to spend it. What she needs Copley for is to find a former partner in formulating a another type of nano that can tell if a person, once infected, is telling the truth or not.

   It’s a great beginning, but the rest of story is wasted on finding the former partner, who has gone off hiding in deep backwoods country, and far too many pages are spent with Copley’s adventures in tracking him down, including traveling down a river in a kayak over several whitewater rapids.

   The initial concept is good, but the follow through failed to grab me. It’s still nice to know that you can find PI stories almost everywhere. (This is apparently Alex Copley’s only recorded case.)

MANNING COLES “Handcuffs Don’t Hold Ghosts.” Novelette. Tommy Hambledon. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, May 1946. Collected in Nothing to Declare (Doubleday, 1960). Reprinted in The Saint Mystery Magazine, January 1964. Also reprinted in Great Spy Novels and Stories, edited by Roger Elwood & Sam Moscowitz (Pyramid, paperback, August 1965).

   I don’t remember the title, but one of intrepid British agent Tommy Hambledon’s adventures was one of the first “grown up” mysteries I remember reading. (It was in one of the Detective Book Club’s 3-in-1 volumes I checked out of the local library, circa 1956.) It was a strange exciting affair, and all I remember of it was its very remarkable ending, one that came as a complete surprise to me, having (I think) something to do with an identity kept secret all through the book.

   I’ve been a fan ever since.

   As time went on, I began to appreciate the serio-comic approach the Coles’ took to spy fiction all the more. Hambledon’s adventures are deadly serious, but sometimes he does get into the darnedest situations!

   â€œHandcuffs Don’t Hold Ghosts” starts out in truly superb fashion, which means it can only go down from there, but there’s a last couple of paragraphs that completely makes up for any sag that comes in the middle section. Hambledon and his good friend Chief Inspector Bagshot are listening to the radio, logs on the fire, and in particular a presentation by the BBC being a live production of two psychic investigators looking for ghosts in an old *haunted* mansion. First, under very spooky situations, one of the investigators disappears, then the other, following by the announcer, then the two radio technicians who come in to see what’s going on. All on live radio.

   Brrr.

   Turns out that Tommy knows the owner of the house, and the next day he and Bagshot go in person to investigate. Tommy also knows more about the old fellow than he lets on, so there’s no attempt to make this a fair play mystery. It’s more of a thriller than a detective story, but as I said there up above, the last couple of paragraphs more than make up for any letdown after that totally fabulous opening.

   What’s really going on, I can’t tell you, but I may as well give you a hint, along with the obligatory [WARNING!]. The story first appeared in 1946, soon after the war ended, and people in Britain especially were still wondering what was happening to all of the Nazis, especially those at the top echelon, some of whom were captured and others were not.

   If that’s too much of a hint, I apologize.

FRANCIS K. ALLAN “The Lost Hours of Murder.” Published in Dime Mystery Magazine, August 1948. Probably never reprinted.

   The final story in this issue, “The Lost Hours of Murder,” by Francis K. Allan, is the second of two full “novels” contained therein, and as such runs to all of nineteen and a half (pulp-size) pages.

   Allan, by the way, was an extremely prolific writer for the detective pulps. During the years right after the war you could hardly pick one up and not read one of bis stories. In 1945 and 1947 he had a couple of hardcover novels published, but then none from then on until 1976, when he wrote Death in Gentle Grove, which I’m sure nobody else but me remembers. I do because it was one of the first books I did when I started writing reviews for the Hartford Courant.

   (I might be wrong, but it’s my impression that Allan went on to law school and better things, thus explaining the 30 year gap in his writing career.)

   “The Lost Hours of Murder” concerns a guy who wakes up on what he thinks is Thursday but discovers when he gets to  work that it is really Friday, and his partner, with whom he apparently quarreled in the interim, has mysteriously disappeared. It’s a classic situation, but even in full “novel” length, Alla’s tale is crowded, without all the space he needs to do anything with it.

   Cornell Woolrich, say, might have done better with the premise, which is a good one, but as it is, only the first half of this one holds any interest at all. There’s no hint of any supernatural influences at work, which was common in stories published in Dime Mystery Magazine, just a straight-forward mystery story, interesting for the moment but also instantly forgettable.

         ___

Final Thought: Unfortunately, maybe that last phrase would apply just as well to pulp magazines in general. It would make a great epitaph, wouldn’t it? “Throwaway literature at its finest!”

GIGI PANDIAN “The Locked Room Library.” Published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, July/August 2021.

   I can’t be the only one who’s noticed that the stories EQMM has been publishing over the past few years have become more and more straight crime-oriented than it was in its early days, when detective fiction was the rule. This current issue suggests that the editors are well aware of the fact as well. As stated in the introduction to this, the lead story, this issue is dedicated to the classical mystery, and to my mind, it’s about time, too.

   Even though this is an “impossible” crime, if not an out-and-out locked room mystery, it does take place in an about-to-open privately owned Locked Room Library, where fans of the traditional mysteries of the 30s and 40s can come and check out books difficult to find anywhere else.

   Someone is trying to sabotage the effort, however, and stolen from a well-secured glass case is a letter from John Dickson Carr to Frederic Dannay (co-author of the Ellery Queen books) stating he had written an alternate ending to The Burning Court, perhaps without the quasi-supernatural conclusion it was published with.

   This sounds better than it reads, I’m sorry to say. The writing is lackluster, the characters not at all memorable, and worse, there’s a ghost involved, or so the thief tries to make everyone believe. Nor does the thief’s motive seem strong enough to for him/her to go to all this amount of trouble.

   While it’s good to see someone writing stories like this, I don’t this is the one to convert anyone to the traditional type of puzzle story, if they’re not already so inclined.