HARLAN ELLISON “Find One Cuckaboo.” PI Sheckley Scodell #1. First published in The Saint Mystery Library #11, edited by Leslie Charteris; paperback original, 1st printing, February 1960. Collected in Again, Honorable Whoredom at a Penny a Word (Edgeworks Abbey, trade paperback, September 2014).

   I’m not 100 percent positive, but in all likelihood this was the first and only appearance in print of New York City based PI Sheck Scodell. In the early days of his writing career Harlan Ellison scraped out a living writing all kinds of stories, not only science fiction, but crime stories, too, mostly in the lowest level magazines, such as Guilty, Trapped, Pursuit, and so on, and I wouldn’t be surprised to be told he wrote westerns as well.

   Of these, several others were private eye tales, three with Jerry Killian and one with Big John Novak (who in reality was three foot two). You can read more of them by following the links to the Thrilling Detective website. Scodell describes himself as being a dead ringer for the man in all of these shirt advertisements: “the fellow with the slight moustache, wearing a black eye patch, smiles at a wench..”

   He also admits that he’s not always the brightest bulb on the block, and that’s probably why he was hired on this case, which if the word wacky hadn’t be invented, they’d have to in order describe this one properly.

   It seems as though one of three eccentric sisters, all in their fifties and each a  millionairess several times over, has been raped and murdered. All three of them hated each other, even though they lived together in the same house, but nonetheless the two remaining ones have taken up with guns and have vowed to kill the culprit on sight.

   Their financial advisors call on Sheck for help. His job: stop them.

   This one comes straight from the old pulp magazines, but with a somewhat distasteful twist to it that the pulps most certainly wouldn’t have allowed their writers to get anywhere near. It’s one of those tales in which all kinds of crazy things happen but they all get straightened out in the end. Ellison always had  imaginative ideas and a very readable way with words, even when he was first starting — and probably getting a fraction of a cent a word — and “Find One Cuckaboo” is no exception.

NANCY SPRINGER “Milk of Human Blindness.” Mr. Jefferson #1. First published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, September 1996. Probably never reprinted.

   There can’t be a lot of business in Lancaster PA – the heart of Amish country – to keep a private eye in business, so it could very well be that this particular story was not only the first but also the last recorded case for Mr. Jefferson, as his client in this tale calls him. If so, that’s a shame, because as an introduction, it works fine, but it also leaves the reader (me) wanting more.

   Jefferson, by the way, is black, and he has kind of a sour outlook on life, with most of it taken up by doing repo and process serving. His client in this case is a young girl named Sarah, maybe eleven, twelve years old, and having found $200 on the street, she wants Jefferson to find out who her real parents are. Unfortunately when she discovers who lost the money (not drug money, as she thought), she needs the money back.

   And she agrees to go to work for Jefferson, to pay off her bill. And Jefferson, on his part, finds that yes, indeed, he needs the help, being as he is, not nearly as up to date in the new world of computers as he should be. By the story’s end and between the two of them, they have solved her case, and they’re ready for another. I hope there was one, but alas perhaps not.

PostScript: Nancy Springer is far better known as a fantasy writer, with several novels to her credit, but she also has written a long series of young adult mysteries about Enola Holmes, the fourteen-year-old sister of the far better known Sherlock Holmes, some twenty years older. A movie adaption of one the books is said to be currently in production.

RACHEL SWIRSKY “Scene from a Dystopia.” Short story. First published in Subterranean, Issue #4, 2006. Collected in How the World Became Quiet: Myths of the Past, Present, and Future (Subterranean Press, hardcover, 2013).

   Guest-edited by science fiction author John Scalzi, the theme of this particular issue of Subterranean is that of SF Cliches. Quoting from his introduction, “You know, those ideas like sentient computers and Amazon women on he moon that are so been there done that in the field that even the souvenir t-shirt doesn’t fit anymore.”

   Rachel Swirsky’s story, which is given the first slot in the magazine, is her first story as well, but there’s no one in the world who would otherwise believe it, without being told, it’s so well written. She takes the idea of a future world in which an all-knowing computer takes students about to graduate and places them in their future jobs for the rest of their lives.

   But of course there is always a rebellious one, an individual who is going to fight back against the machine and give everyone the opportunity to make their own choices in life. That’s the cliche.

   But what would really happen? Swirsky takes the question and answers it in another extreme, or at least she suggests the possibility. Natalie aches to become an opera singer. In the Technocracy, should she settle for being a piano teacher? And at the expense of what?

   The story is quietly but powerfully told, with a lyrical sensibility that seems an impossibility for a first time writer. Nor is the story a fluke of any kind. Look at her resume, taken from her page on Wikipedia: “Her novella “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window” won the 2010 Nebula Award, and was also a nominee for a 2011 Hugo Award and for the 2011 World Fantasy Award. Swirsky’s short story “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” won the 2013 Nebula Award for Best Short Story, and was nominated for the Hugo award for best short story of 2013.”

   This is the only story I’ve read in the magazine so far. Hopefully the rest are as good as this one.

ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS “Home for the Holidays.” Short story. PI Andy Hayes. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, January-February 2020.

   Andy Hayes’ base of operations as a PI is Columbus OH, which may be a first. He’s best known, however, as a former quarterback for the Ohio State football team, and in particular for messing up on a crucial play in a game for the national championship. He’s already appeared in six novels, but this seems to be his first case that’s been told in the form of a short story.

   The story takes place just before Christmas, hence the title, but besides an office party he goes to at the end with a comely companion he meets along the way, that’s the extent of the holiday trappings. He’s hired by the wife of a man who’s gone missing to find out why. The man turns out to be an auditor for a huge firm that manages the state’s retirement fund. Somebody’s been messing with the books? You the reader wonder.

   And you the reader would be correct. There’s little more to the story than that. It’s capably told, but it’s as plain (but not bland) as vanilla pudding. So’s Columbus for that matter, unless you live there, in which case it’s a fine town in which nothing worse ever happens than someone making off with the state employee’s retirement fund. (Notice, though, that I didn’t say who.)

   There’s potential here, but maybe the short form doesn’t show Andy Hayes off to best advantage. Here below is a list of his longer adventures. I may check out the first one sometime soon.

      The Andy Hayes series –

Fourth Down and Out. Swallow Press, 2014.
Slow Burn. Swallow Press, 2015.
Capitol Punishment. Swallow Press, 2016.
The Hunt. Swallow Press, 2017.
The Third Brother. Swallow Press, 2018.
Fatal Judgment. Swallow Press, 2019.
An Empty Grave. Forthcoming, Spring 2021.

RAOUL WHITFIELD “Mistral.” Short story. Anonymous (“Benn”). First published in Adventure, 15 December 1931. Reprinted in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, 22 April 1981, and in Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories, edited by Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian (Oxford University Press, 1995).

   The unnamed narrator of this short but very tough, hard-boiled tale is an European operative for an international detective agency based in Paris. After finishing one job in Genoa, he heads west along the Riviera coastline to Monte Carlo, Nice and Cannes. Along the way his path keeps crossing that of another man, one with a red and very visible scar on his neck. The man is almost certainly an American. He is unfamiliar with European customs, but he seems to have money, spending one night in a casino playing with thousand-franc chips.

   The narrator is intrigued, but is nonetheless surprised when a bulletin from his home office informs him that a client is on the lookout for him. Reporting in, he is told to back off, and that the client will handle things from that point on. Telling the man, whom he has taken something of a liking to, that his name is Benn, most probably not his real one, and what the score is, he then lets events take their own course from there.

   Telling the story tersely against a backdrop of a continually rising wing (a mistral), Whitfield keeps the tension rising right along with it, to an absolute knockout of an ending. Other than the Pronzini-Adrian anthology, this story may be hard to find, but it’s well worth the effort.

MARGARET LAWRENCE “Winston and the Millennium Man.” Winston Marlowe Sherman. Short story. Published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, January 2006. Probably never collected or reprinted.

   This is a strange one. Winston Marlowe Sherman, English teacher and secretly the author of a long list of mystery novels, was the leading character in five mystery novels himself. Appearing in rapid succession between 1990 and 1993. (Since three of them appeared in 1990, the exact order of the three as given below is quite possibly not accurate.) The author of record of those novels was M. K. Lorens, but this sixth and final tale is under the byline of Margaret Lawrence, another of true author Margaret Keilstrup’s pen names.

   As Margaret Lawrence, she also wrote three well-regarded mysteries about Hannah Trevor, an 18th century midwife in Maine, the first of these being nominated for several awards. What I found strange, besides the change in bylines for this story, is that the introduction to it does not mention the five previous mysteries that the leading character was in.

   And this is important, or it should have been, for in this story Sherman has come to the end of both his careers: his book publisher has declines to extend his writing contract, and the story begins as he leaves campus for the last time, having been forced out at age 70 for having grading standards too high for modern student bodies. What’s more, it is Christmas time, 1999, just before the disaster that wasn’t, but no one was sure at the time.

   And whatever the equivalent to cyberbullying was before computers came along, Sherman being harassed by someone unknown, both by verbal heckling and crank telephone calls. All of the other characters in the books are in this story, too, including Sarah, his longtime living companion of some forty years. In this tale, two things are accomplished: the “Millennium Man” is caught, and Sarah finally says yes to Sherman’s proposal of marriage. It’s a comfortable and oddly satisfying story, a final coda of sorts, except for the fact that Sherman’s life is not ending, only marking a milestone and a change of direction.

   For fans of the five previous Sherman adventures, wouldn’t it have been nice to have let them know about this?  And wouldn’t the readers of this story have liked to have known about the previous five books, and not have read it in a vacuum?
   

   The Winston Marlowe Sherman series —

Deception Island. Bantam 1990.
Ropedancer’s Fall. Bantam 1990.
Sweet Narcissus. Bantam 1990.
Dreamland. Doubleday 1992.
Sorrowheart. Doubleday 1993.

DASHIELL HAMMETT “The Scorched Face.” The Continental Op #17. Novelette. First published in The Black Mask, March 1925. Collected in Nightmare Town (Mercury, paperback, 1948) and The Big Knockover (Random House, 1966). Reprinted in Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories, edited by Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian (Oxford University Press, 1995) among others.

   You may certainly correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think this is one of Hammett’s better known stories, and do you know, I don’t remember reading it before last night (from the Pronzini/Ardian anthology). I know I read The Big Knockover from cover to cover when it came out in paperback, but last night? Nothing came back.

   Here’s something else you can correct me on if I’m wrong, and that’s that I think the story is based on one of Hammett’s own cases when he was a Pinkerton detective. He’s hired here by a distraught father whose two daughters have gone missing. There was a small disagreement about money, but nothing out of the ordinary. What convinces the Op that the girls may be in considerable danger is that one of their female friends commits suicide the same evening after he questions her about them.

   The first part of the tale is filled with plodding legwork — no, plodding is not quite right word. It’s the kind of work a private investigator always has to do before he gets any traction on a case, and yet Hammett’s flair for detail as well as the personalities involved keeps the story in at least second gear until things begin to fall into place. This is about halfway through, and this is when the story really starts to take off, punctuated by short one line paragraphs that the reader (me) simply can’t read fast enough.

   The crime involved is not a new one by today’s standards, but I’ll bet it raised a few eyebrows back in 1925. It didn’t do too badly last night, either.

O’NEIL DE NOUX “The Heart Has Reasons.” PI Lucien Caye. Novelette. First published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, September 2006. Collected in New Orleans Confidential (Create Space, 2010).

   Besides the list below of short stories that New Orleans-based PI Lucien Caye has been featured in, there are five novels, with a sixth promised as coming soon. I doubt that the list of short stories is complete,. The author is nothing but prolific, with perhaps over 40 books and 400 short stories to his credit. Nor is Lucien Caye De Noux’s only recurring series character; others are Dino Francis LaStanza, John Raven Beau, Jacques Dugas, and Joseph Savary (also probably not a complete list). Some (or none) of these gentlemen may also be PI’s.

   There is not too much to learn about Lucien Caye in “The Heart Has Reasons.” The year is 1948, the city is New Orleans, and Caye has an office on the ground floor of the house he lives in, not far from (or in) the French Quarter; his living quarters are on the second. He was wounded in the war; and at the time this story takes place, he is independently wealthy, thanks to a grateful client who has recently died and remembered him in his will.

   Which is why he is able to show his softer side in this tale. He takes in a young girl and her baby from a torrential rainstorm and learns that the father is in trouble with a local loan shark. He is in fact in the hospital with a broken arm, incurred when he couldn’t pay what he owes. Choosing to play the role of The Equalizer, long before The Equalizer came along, Caye decides that the young couple, as yet not married, need someone on their side for a change.

   Which he does, most efficiently. The time and the locale also add greatly to the tale. Nicely done.

      Magazine appearances –

The Heart Has Reasons (nv) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Sep 2006
Too Wise (nv) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Nov 2008
They Called Her the Gungirl (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jul/Aug 2010
The Marriage Swindler (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Mar 2013
The Magnolia Murders (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jul/Aug 2017
The Peeschwet (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Mar/Apr 2019

   Taken from the Thrilling Detective website:

      Non-magazine appearances:

“Erotophopia” (1997, Kiss and Kill: Hot Blood 8)
“Hard Rain” (1999, Pontalba Press Presents Short Stories: Volume 1)
“Friscoville” (April 1999, Hemispheres; 2001, The Thrilling Detective Web Site; aka “The Problem on Friscoville Avenue”)
“Lair of the Red Witch” (2000, The Mammoth Book of Erotic Short Stories)
“St. Expedite” (September 2001, Hemispheres)
“Bluegums” (February 2003, City Slab)
“The Iberville Mistress” (2003, Flesh & Blood: Guilty As Sin)
“Expect Consequences” (2003, Fedora II)
“Guilty of Dust and Sin” (2009, New Orleans Mysteries)
“Tenderless Night” (October 2010)
“She Gleeked Me” (August, 2011)
“Christmas Weather”
“Kissable Cleavage”

   COLLECTIONS

New Orleans Confidential (2006; revised 2010).

   NOVELS

Enamored (2012)
Rapacious (2014)
Hold Me, Babe (2016)
Dame Money (2018)
Walkin’ the Blues (2020)

JOSH PACHTER “Sam Buried Caesar.” Nero Wolfe Griffen & Artie Goodman #1. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, August 1971. Reprinted in The Misadventures of Nero Wolfe, edited by Josh Pachter (Mysterious Press, trade paperback, April 2020).

   Nero Wolfe Griffen and Artie Goodman may be the youngest private eyes on record. The former is ten when this story takes place; the latter is a year younger. And some background, I think, before I talk about the story itself. Artie has recently moved next door to the Griffen family. The father, a widower and an inspector for the Tyson County Police Force, has eleven children. Their first and middle names are Peter Wimsey, Albert Campion, John Jericho, Parker Pyne, Gideon Fell, Augustus Van Dusen, Sherlock Holmes, Perry Mason, Ellery Queen, Nero Wolfe, and one girl, Jane Marple Griffen.

   Two earlier stories by Josh Pachter in EQMM featured cases solved by E. Q. Griffen. “Sam Buried Caesar” appears to to be the third and final case solved by members of the Griffen family, which is a shame, as I’m sure you will agree, the tales could have gone on indefinitely. In this one the two friends are hired to solve a case of the missing body of a dog (named Caesar) who a neighboring boy (named Sam) buried after his pet was hit by a car. When dug up, the makeshift grave is discovered to be empty.

   Artie, of course, is the one who does all of the legwork, while Nero sits home and does all of the detective work without moving an inch. As I’ll also sure you’ll agree, this is an amusing tale that’s a lot of fun to read, and as I understand it, was the impetus behind the recent collection of pastiches recently published in honor of one the most famous detectives of all time.
   

ROBERT CARSON “Aloha Means Goodbye.” Serialized in five parts in the Saturday Evening Post (*), June 28 to July 26, 1941. No book publication known. Filmed as: Across the Pacific (1942), with Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet. Screenplay and Directed by John Huston.

   Richard (Ricky) Leland is sailing from Vancouver on the Japanese freighter the Genoa Maru, with fellow passengers Alberta Marlow (a very calm dame), whose eccentric Uncle Dan owns a plantation on his own island in Hawaii, and the mysterious Dr. Barca, a mysterious Filipino (…he looked genial and unimposing, except for his eyes which were cold and black). No one is quite what they seem including Ricky who appears to be a disgraced American Artillery Officer, but we soon learn is in reality an American agent.

   Even the Genoa Maru isn’t quite what it seems.

   If you have seen the John Huston film Across the Pacific, his first after The Maltese Falcon, and his last before going off to the war, you know the basic story. Barca and the Japanese are part of a dastardly plot to invade and lead a sneak attack on the States involving Alberta Marlow’s Uncle Dan and his plantation, and Ricky Leland is not who or what he seems to be.

   In the film Barca becomes the German, Sidney Greenstreet, and the plot, thanks to Pearl Harbor, turns to Panama instead of Hawaii (coming once the title had been released and making no sense in the film since they never cross the Pacific), but just how close the movie is to the serial (I’m not sure the serial ever appeared in book form) is surprising (right down to the shootout in the Japanese movie theater — that makes more sense in Hawaii than Panama), because the real joy of the film is the by play and double entendre between Bogart and Mary Astor and the war of wits with Greenstreet, and much of that is lifted directly from the dialogue in the serial.

   Carson was a successful author who frequently contributed stories to the Post, and this serial that ran there between late June and early August of 1941 is a lively tale, accompanied by handsome full color illustrations by Ben Stahl.

   Just as Huston virtually transcribed Hammett’s novel the same seems to be true of this serial, though obviously Carson is no Hammett, as Pacific is no Falcon.

   There are minor differences, of course, but Huston was always the most literary of directors and famously honed close to his source material.

   â€œAloha” is a product of the slicks as magazines like the Post, American, Liberty, and Collier’s were then known, and much has been written belittling the slick style in comparison to the pulps, but some of the best writers of the time, from Fitzgerald and Faulkner to Philip Wylie and John P. Marquand worked there, and pulp favorites like Erle Stanley Gardner, Fred Nebel, Robert Carse, Edison Marshall, Sax Rohmer, and Rex Stout crossed over into the slicks, and were often paid more. They might get up to $5,000 for a serial at a time a novel might bring as little as $500.

   The Post was always well associated with the mystery genre as the home of Charlie Chan, Mr. Moto, Perry Mason, Albert Campion, Roderick Alleyn, and Hercule Poirot.

   â€œAloha Means Good-bye” is a fast moving tale in the best sense, with something of the same pace and style of the tongue in cheek movie. I’m not sure if you can really call a book prescient for predicting a Japanese attack on the US in the summer of 1941 (Van Wyck Mason predicted one in 1932 in The Branded Spy Murders; it was something that had been inevitable for much of the century), but it was great timing, however you look at it, and even now an entertaining tale thanks to its lighthearted style.

       —

(*) For anyone interested you can go to Internet Archive and find over 6,000 issues of the Saturday Evening Post from the twenties to the mid-sixties with full serials by Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner, Rex Stout, Earl Derr Biggers, P. G. Wodehouse, Dornford Yates, Hammond Innes, Alistair MacLean, Alan LeMay, Eugene Manlove Rhodes, John P, Marquand, Luke Short, Jack Finney, C. S. Forester, Paul Gallico, James Warner Bellah, and many more, as well as short fiction by Philip Wylie, Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Fred Nebel, Lester Dent, and others, illustrated by the likes of Matt Clark, Harold Von Schmidt, and Mitchell Hooks.