RAYMOND CHANDLER “Wrong Pigeon.” Short story. PI Philip Marlowe. First magazine publication in Manhunt, February 1960. Previouslypublished, possibly in abridged form, in a British newspaper as “Marlowe Takes on the Syndicate.” Later reprinted as “Philip Marlowe’s Last Case” in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (January 1962) and as “The Pencil” in Argosy (September 1965). Collected as “The Pencil” in The Smell of Fear (H. Hamilton, UK, 1965). Reprinted in Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe: A Centennial Celebration, edited by Byron Preiss (Knopf, 1988) and as “Wrong Pigeon” in The Mammoth Book of Private Eye Stories, edited by Bill Pronzini and Martin H. Greenberg (Carroll & Graf, 1988), among others. TV adaptation: As “The Pencil” on Philip Marlowe, Private Eye, 16 April 1983 (season 1, episode 1), starring Powers Boothe.

   And with all of that, I’ve still probably missing something obvious. It was, as the title of the story as it appeared in EQMM, PI Philip Marlowe’s last case, Raymond Chandler having died in 1959, and it’s a good one. Marlowe takes on a job for a guy who wants to get out of the mob, but there’s been a pencil drawn through his name, and he knows the syndicate does not take defections lightly.

   It’s a fool’s task, but the promise of $5000 upon completion of a successful escape has a loud way of talking, and that’s in 1959 money. And Marlowe is no fool. He knows that there’s a reason why the job is done so easily. He’s right, of course, and you should be. too, the reader.

   It’s been a long time for me to get around to reading this one, and I’m glad I did. I don’t know what the general opinion is of this story, but I think Chandler was still in fine form when he wrote it. The story is light and breezily told, but when it comes down to it, Marlowe is as hardboiled as private eyes really ought to be, especially when it comes to dealing with the syndicate. Very enjoyable.

POUL ANDERSON “Flight to Forever.” Novella. First published in Super Science Stories, November 1950 First reprinted in Year’s Best Science Fiction Novels: 1952, edited by Everett F. Bleiler & T. E. Dikty (Frederick Fell, hardcover, 1952), and The Mammoth Book of Vintage Science Fiction: Short Novels of the 1950s, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, & Charles G. Waugh (Carroll & Graf, softcover, 1990), among others. Collected in Past Times (Tor, paperback, 1984) and Alight in the Void (Tor, paperback, 1991), among others.

   This is one of Poul Anderson’s earliest stories, written when he was only 24, and a better story of Gosh Wow time travel, I can think of none better. And I do not mean that disparagingly! This tale was written back when time-traveling machines could be constructed in a garage, or if not, then in a single scientist’s laboratory, with only a modicum of assistance. Such a scientist is Martin Saunders, and his machine has been working perfectly. Inanimate objects have been sent farther and farther into the future, and in case they have also returned.

   Until now. An object sent 100 into the future has not come back, and Saunders an assistant decide to take a trip there themselves and see if they can’t figure out what went wrong. Now you and I know that this might not be the wisest thing to do, but this was also in the age (1950) when scientists did not think things out too clearly ahead of time before jumping into either homemade spaceships or time machines as they should.

   The problem does not consist of getting there. It seems, however, that there is a limit of only 70 years in going backward in time. The solution: keep going ahead into the future until they reach such a time when scientists have figured out a way to overcome the difficulty in going backward in time. Ahead they go, each stage of the in larger and larger increments of time. Fifty tears, a hundred years, a thousand years, five thousand years. Empires come and go, as they discover, oftentimes with barbarians at the gates. Some people they find are friendly; others not. A million years, a million million years, and on to the end of time?

   Well, I will leave it to you to read this to see if Saunders ever finds his way home again, but wow, what a trip he makes!
   

T. T. FLYNN “Bushwhackers Die Hard.” Novelette. First published in Dime Western, January 1933. Collected in Prodigal of Death: A Western Quintet (Five Star, hardcover, 2001).

   T. T. Flynn was one of the more prolific pulp writers, with hundreds of stories in both the detective and western pulp magazines. He tried but never really made the switch over to mass market paperbacks when the pulps began to die out, as some of his contemporary authors did.

   The two featured players in “Bushwhackers Die Hard” are a couple of rambling cowpokes named Lonesome Lang and Tarnation Tucker, who seem to delight in poking their noses into other people’s business, however, rather than poking cows. Even though team-ups such as this were quite commonplace in the western pulps, this appears to be their only recorded adventure together.

   Which begins by finding a dead man beside his buggy, which they had watched fly off the side of a mountaintop road, Investigating, they discover it wasn’t the fall hat killed him. He’d been shot and killed instead while maneuvering his way down the treacherous road. Their services the are offered to the man’s beautiful daughter, unwillingly on her part, as she believes they are on the rancher working against her father.

   Ah, misunderstandings. How could western stories such as this ever have been written without them? Flynn had a smooth and flowing writing style, which serves him in good stead in this average to middling pulp yarn, that and a good sense of what life was like in the west in a time when automobiles were just beginning to appear in such tales.

JOHNSTON McCULLEY “The Man Who Changed Rooms.” Novelette. Creighton Marpe #1. First published in Clues, February #2, 1929. Collected in The Johnston McCulley Megapack (Wildside Press, Kindle edition, March 2015).

   Johnston McCulley is known today, if at all, as the creator of the pulp western hero Zorro, and if it hadn’t been for Walt Disney, even such a dashing character as Zorro may be unknown to readers as some of the other series characters he came up with. Only the most dedicated collectors of old pulp magazines will remember these folks: Black Star, The Spider (the earlier version), The Mongoose, Thubway Tham, Green Ghost, The Thunderbolt, The Avenging Twins, and The Crimson Clown.

   He also wrote hundreds of standalone stories for the pulp magazines in all genres but primarily mysteries and westerns, along with several dozen hardcover novels. As for secret agent Creighton Marpe, I’ve listed this as his first story, but in fact, while there are possibilities in the character, it seems as though there never was another one.

   His task in “The Man Who Changed Rooms” is outwardly a simple one. He’s to take the train from New York City to Kansas City, pick up a top secret document, and bring it back to Manhattan. A job to be completed with code words and the utmost caution. The reason Creighton Marpe is called “the man who changed rooms” is that when he needs a room in a hotel, he books three, and when he buys tickets for a train, he buys at least two.

   Along the way he runs across various operatives for the other side, whom he invariably taunts in jaunty carefree fashion. Also along the way his path crosses that of a fellow agent on his side, Alla Stimney, a young woman he is rather fond of, a fact that causes them problems when both are being held captive by the aforementioned other side.

   There is no depth to the story, nor is the prose anything but rudimentary. but it’s told in such breakneck fashion, the non-sophisticated reader may not even notice. Of course you must realize that I’m paid to notice such things, but somehow or another, I enjoyed the story anyway. Stories taking place largely on trains often have that effect on me.

CATHERINE DAIN “Too Many Cooks.” Short story. PI Freddie O’Neal. First published in Murder Most Delicious, edited by Martin H. Greenberg (Signet , paperback original; 1st printing, March 1995). Collected in Dreams of Jeannie and Other Stories (Five Star, hardcover, 2003).

   Although she may not be actively writing, Catherine Dain is the pen name of Judith Garwood, (1941- ), who among other works has written seven novels chronicling the adventures of Reno-based PI Freddie O’Neal, along with two or three stories she was in.

   From this story we learn that she is unconventional in nature, lives alone, but while she is in close contact with her mother, who lives in town, she does not get along particularly well with her stepfather. You might say that Sue Grafton and Kinsey Milhone were responsible for quite a few other PI’s who followed along in the latter’s wake, and you would be correct.

   In “Too Many Cooks,” she is hired to find out who has been playing nasty tricks on a local live action TV show. It is suggested that she pose as the lady chef’s assistant, but since the best she can do is left the corner of cellophane cover before putting a frozen meal into the microwave, it is decided that it would work better if she pretended to be the author of the lady chef’s would-be memoirs instead.

   The story is too short to go anywhere, and since her job is really that of prevention instead of actually solving a case, it really has only a very little way to go. A brief but enjoyable glimpse into Freddie’s life is all we get here.

Note: I reviewed Sing a Song of Death, number two in the series here:

      The Freddie O’Neal novels —

1. Lay It on the Line (1992)
2. Sing a Song of Death (1993)
3. Walk a Crooked Mile (1994)
4. Lament For a Dead Cowboy (1994)
5. Bet Against the House (1995)
6. The Luck of the Draw (1996)
7. Dead Man’s Hand (1997)

LAWRENCE G. BLOCHMAN “Dr. Coffee and the Pardell Case.” First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 1972. Probably never collected or reprinted.

   Lawrence Blochman had a long illustrious career as a mystery writer, starting as an author of thrillers in the 1930s and 40s before converting to more traditional detective fiction after the war. His best known series character in the latter end of his career was Dr. Webster Coffee, chief pathologist at Pasteur Hospital in Northbank, Ohio. He was also the personal medical examiner for Lt. Max Ritter, of the local police department. They appeared together in one novel and two hardcover story collections, plus a few later stories such as this one that have never appeared in book form.

   I called this a locked room story, for indeed it is, for about a day in the story or less. When the victim calls Ritter in a panic, the latter rushes to the scene and finds the dead man shot to death in a locked room with no possible access to it. This particular aspect of the mystery is soon cleared up by Coffee’s colleague Dr. Mookerji, who determines that the dead man could have survived the shot long enough for him to enter the room and lock the door behind him before dying. Not a lot of mystery there!

   Neither Ritter nor Coffee are given much personality in this one. Two full pages are spent on showing what a miserable person the victim was, however, a man who pulled himself up from his bootstraps as a child to become a rich and powerful man – whom everyone hated. From a mystery reader’s point of view, this provides for a whole list of suspects, each one with a motive. It is the opportunity that each of them may have had that Ritter has to look into. Dr. Coffee, when it comes down to it, does not have a whole lot to do in this one.

   Good old-fashioned police work, that’s all that’s needed in this one.

JON L. BREEN “The Babe Ruth Murder Case.” Ed Gorgon #4. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 1972. Collected in Kill the Umpire: The Calls of Ed Gorgon (Crippen & Landru, hardcover/paperback, 2003).

   Ed Gorgan is a baseball umpire who somehow seems to keep stumbling across unusual cases of murders. My my count there have been fourteen of such instances (see below), but there may have one or two that I’ve missed, hopefully not more. In “The Babe Ruth Murder Case,” what requires his attention is the shooting of the owner of a sports bar where he and police lieutenant Steve Appleman just happen to be hanging out.

   The fact the victim was well known for his criminal activity, including blackmail, means that there any number of suspects, and many of them who had the opportunity are strong possibilities are connected to his death by the clue on the dead man’s desk: the name “Babe Ruth” in his appointment book for that evening.

   This case is a textbook example, only six pages long, of taking each of the suspects in turn and eliminating them one by one by the application of sheer reason, reminiscent in many ways of many an Ellery Queen story, both long and short. More praise than that I cannot give.

      The Ed Gorgon series —

Diamond Dick (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Oct 1971
Horsehide Sleuth (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Nov 1971
The Body in the Bullpen (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine May 1972 *
The Babe Ruth Murder Case (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jun 1972 *
Fall of a Hero (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Nov 1972 *
Old-Timers’ Game (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Apr 1973
Malice at the Mike (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Oct 1973
Designated Murderer (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jul 1974 *
The Number 12 Jinx (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine May 1978 *
Instant Replay (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine May 1984
Streak to Death (ss) The Second Black Lizard Anthology of Crime Fiction, 1987 *
Throw Out the First Ax (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Apr 1992 *
Kill the Umpire (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Nov 2002
Insider Trading (ss) ??, 2003 *

* = Included in the Crippen & Landru collection.

EDWARD D. HOCH “The Theft of the Double Elephant.” Nick Velvet. First published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, February 2004. Not yet collected.

   The particular task that Nick Velvet agrees to take on in this tale is the robbery he knows his friendly adversary Sandra Paris has committed, but what he does not know is how she managed to steal the ordinary Audubon print he is hired to retrieve. It was taken from an apartment on the top of a five story brownstone in New York City. Three different keys are needed to enter the apartment, and at night alarms are always set at the doors and windows.

   Unlike the Porges story (recently reviewed here) in the same issue of EQMM, Hoch takes his time (fourteen pages rather than only four), to describe the layout fully as well as the personal interest Velvet takes in his duel task: I think he took greater pleasure in outwitting Ms. Paris than he did in actually returning the print to its owner.

   As it so happens, this is the Nick Velvet story I asked Mr Hoch about when I interviewed him for the print version of Mystery*File back in August of 2004. You can find it online here. It is not, however, included in the recently published Locked Room Murders Supplement by Brian Skupin. I hope it’s not because there is no murder in it. It’s well constructed and well worthy of inclusion, and I hope to see it in Supplement Two.

ARTHUR PORGES “Stately Homes and the Impossible Shot.” Stately Homes #5. First published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, February 2004. Collected in The Adventures of Stately Homes and Sherman Horn: Being the Compleat Sherlockian Writings of Arthur Porges (The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, trade papeback, 2008).

   Based on this story as my only sample to date, Stately Homes must have been Schlock Homes’ indolent brother. All he seems to do for a full quarter of this four page story is stay in his flat he shares with his assistant Sun Wat (from India) and play his violin, all the while depending on the members of the Baker Street Irregulars to do the leg work for him.

   Dead is a man found shot and killed while  sitting at his office desk with his back to the window, which was open ten inches from the bottom. The door to the fourth floor room was under close observation at the time. Obviously the shot came through the open window, but the only angle possible does not match the point of entry of the bullet.

   It sounds good, but the story fails as a story, unless you consider “humorous,” which I allow was the likely attempt, to include stories as poorly thought out as this one. One essential clue to the solution is withheld from the reader until very nearly the end, and that is that the killer was an expert at billiards. Match this up with the fact that the walls of the room were covered with rare coins and medallions. You can take it from there.

      The Stately Homes series –

Her Last Bow (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 1957
Another Adventure of Stately Homes (ss) The Saint Mystery Magazine (UK) Nov 1961
Stately Homes and the Invisible Slasher (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 2001
Stately Homes and the Invisible Giant (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 2003
Stately Homes and the Impossible Shot (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 2004

WILLIAM J. REYNOLDS “The Lost Boys.” PI Nebraska (*). First published in The Mysterious West, edited by Tony Hillerman (HarperCollins, 1994). Reprinted in The Fifth Grave (Great American Murder Mysteries), edited by Martin Greenberg and Billie Sue Mosiman (Rutledge Hill, paperback, 1998).

   The asterisk in the first line above is there because the name of the PI in this case of two missing boys is never revealed. But he’s based in Omaha, and so is the PI in Reynolds’ six novels and two or three other short stories. It’s been a while since I read any of the novels (over 30 years), so I don’t remember if withholding the leading character’s name was a feature of those or not.

   The mother of the missing boys is our man’s client. She is divorced from their father, a big man back in Monument, South Dakota, and she is sure that he is the one who has taken them. The only industry in Monument is that of extracting granite from a local quarry, and our hero is forced to make his inquiries of the local townspeople under a huge handicap: he does not want to make the reason why he’s asking questions known.

   If I were to make any kind of criticism as to how Nebraska (I’ve gone ahead and said it) handles his investigation, I’d be guilty of Monday morning quaterbacking, as the story’s a good one, strongly told. What I enjoyed even more than the case itself, though, was the descriptive way Reynolds brings to life a one horse town in the middle of nowhere, and a very isolated nowhere to boot.

        The Nebraska novels —

The Nebraska Quotient (1984)
Moving Targets (1986)
Money Trouble (1988)
Things Invisible (1989)
The Naked Eye (1991)
Drive-By (1995)