THEODORE STURGEON “The Ultimate Egoist.” Short story. First published in Unknown, February 1941. Collected in Without Sorcery (Prime Press, hardcover, 1949) and The Golden Helix (Dell, paperback, 1980; Carroll & Graf, paperback, 1989), among others. Reprinted in Human?, edited by Judith Merrill (Lion #205, paperback, 1954).

   I suppose everyone, at one time or another, has had the following fantasy: that the world you see, and the objects in it, could disappear if you simply decided that they no longer existed. That the facade of life revolves around you and you only. You don’t even have to admit it. I know you have.

   And such is the basis of this early story by master SF author Theodore Sturgeon. I think his work in the short story form was almost uniformly superb; in fact I think most of his readers would agree that his short fiction was a step above the relatively few novels he wrote in his lifetime (1918-1985). The only question is, from this basic premise, where does he go from here? The answer, the only way it could.

   I think this story is a small gem, not a perfect one — later in his writing career, Sturgeon would have polished it up to even better effect — but even as is, it’s clever, alive, and a lot of fun to read. What more could you ask from a short tale that’s not far from everyone’s dreams?

ROBIN HATHAWAY “Does Thee Murder?” Short story. Dr. Andrew Fenimore. Short story. Published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March/April 2013.

   Of the four Dr. Fenimore detective stories that are so indicated in the online Crime Fiction Index, this is number four. Between 1998 and 2006 author Robin Hathaway also wrote five full-length novels with Dr. Fenimore, none of which I’ve read.

   This may have been a serious error on my part. I thought they were cozies, but on the basis of this particular story, at least, Dr. Fenimore is actually a very good amateur detective, and the mystery he tackles in “Does Thee Kill?” is a serious one.

   In this tale an elderly woman, a devout Quaker, is attacked and killed while taking a walk near her isolated old mansion of a home, which has become isolated in a small neighborhood of Philadelphia that has been going downhill for several years. The police think it’s nothing more than a random mugging, but Dr. Fenimore wonders about it and decides to make some inquiries. If the police are wrong, he’d like to do something about it.

   Besides following his investigation closely, the story includes a intimate description of what a Quaker funeral is like. Set in austere surroundings, the people congregated together there sit in silence until someone feels the urge to stand up and say something heartfelt about the deceased.

   All of the characters are real people, and Fenimore’s detective work is solidly done. Of special note, the ending is most satisfactory. Other authors may have taken another page or so to include a complete explanation. It pleases me to say that Robin Hathaway did not believe she needed to, and she was right.

JOHN C. BOLAND “Marley’s Ghost.” Short story. Charles Marley #1. Published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January/February 2005. Not yet reprinted or collected.

   For someone who qualifies, I believe, as a Little Known Writer, John C. Boland certainly has been a very prolific one. He has, first of all, several dozen short stories in AHMM as well as EQMM, not only under his own name but also as by Max Gersh and James L. Ross. This plus more than a dozen full-length novels, beginning in 1991, some of them once again as by James L. Ross. (I do not know if he is related the thriller writer John Boland, who wote several dozen novels back between 1955 and 1970.)

   As for Charles Marley, who adventure “Marley’s Ghost” is his first recorded adventure, he is a retired CIA agent who seemingly can’t stay away from people he knows from his past. This includes Oleg Ossovsky, his counterpart in espionage back in the days of the old Soviet Union. The latter is now in New York and working on his memoirs, although Marley assumes he very well may have other irons in his fire.

   What’s really on Oleg’s mind now, however, is a fellow named Vlad Davidovich, whom he keeps bumping into, and whom Marley also remembers as a Russian pianist he was trying at one time to help defect. That the task did not work out was due to Oleg’s intervention, let us say.

   The tale that follows is a tough, complicated one, filled with the moody atmosphere of the Cold War, even at this late date. Besides the fact that he comes out on top in this debut story, sort of, we don’t learn a lot about Marley himself — he’s still somewhat of an enigma — but perhaps that changes over the course of the next eight stories, so far. Summing things up, though, a complete collection is in order, that’s what I say.

       The Charles Marley series —

Marley’s Ghost (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jan/Feb 2005
Marley’s Package (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Mar 2007
Marley’s Woman (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Sep 2007
Marley’s Havana (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Mar 2011
Marley’s Revolution (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jun 2011 [2012 Edgar Nominee]
Marley’s Rescue (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jul/Aug 2012
Marley’s Winter (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Nov 2012
Marley’s Lover (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Apr 2015
Marley’s Mistress (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jul/Aug 2019

DAVE ZELTSERMAN “Archie on Loan.” Short story. Julius Katz & Archie Smith #9 (?). Published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Sept-Oct 2016.

   Julius Katz, as you may already know, is a PI based in Cambridge MA who bears a more than passing remembrance to one Nero Wolfe in many ways but who is quite the opposite in others. He is athletic for one thing, but yet also rather lazy when taking on cases and often has to be prodded into taking on new ones by an assistant named Archie.

   Archie, however, is like no other detective you perhaps have ever encountered in a mystery story before. He’s an Artificially Intelligent microcomputer that Katz wears as a tiepin and with whom he is in constant contact. On request Archie can hack himself into almost any computer system anywhere in the world in a fraction of a second, the time often annotated. No worn out pair of gumshoes for this particular Archie.

   As it turns out — and this was probably not known before this story came along — Julius Katz has a sister named Julia who is an international spy. Her problem at the moment is that three attempts have been made on her life, and she does not know why. She needs Archie (whom she did not know about before), to not only learn why, but who, and stop him, or them.

   A key to this absolutely delightful case is an extremely rare copy of Our Mutual Friend, one inscribed by Charles Dickens himself. I don’t know if Julia Katz appears in any of the later Julius Katz and Archie tales, but she’s certainly an engaging character that I’d like to read about again. Overall, though, if you’re a fan of Rex Stout’s work, then I’m sure these tales (see below) will appeal to you as much as they have to me. Besides the sheer chutzpah of coming up with the characters themselves, the mysteries themselves are very well done as well.

       The Julius Katz & Archie Smith series [may not be complete] —

Julius Katz (nv) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Sep/Oct 2009 (*)
Archie’s Been Framed (nv) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Sep/Oct 2010 (*)
One Angry Julius Katz and Eleven Befuddled Jurors (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jun 2012 (*)
Archie Solves the Case (nv) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine May 2013 (*)
Julius Katz and a Tangled Webb (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Mar/Apr 2014 (*)
Julius Accused (nv) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jun 2014 (*)
Julius Katz and the Case of Exploding Wine (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Mar/Apr 2015
Julius Katz and the Giftwrapped Murder (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Dec 2015
Archie on Loan (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Sep/Oct 2016
Cramer in Trouble (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Mar/Apr 2017
Julius Katz and the Terminated Agent (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jul/Aug 2017
Archie for Hire (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Nov/Dec 2018

       The Julius Katz Collection [paperback, 2014; contains the stories marked (*) above) plus “Julius Katz and the Case of a Sliced Ham,” which may be new]
       Julius Katz and Archie [novel; Kindle, 2014, paperback, 2018]

JOHN COLLIER “Evening Primrose.” Short story. First published in 1940. Collected in Presenting Moonshine (Viking Press, 1941) and more famously in Fancies and Goodnights (Doubleday, 1951; Bantam 1953). Reprnted many times. Adapted as both radio (three times on Escape, CBS) and television plays , the latter a musical by Stephen Sondheim (ABC Stage 67, November 1966).

   I read this again last night for the first time since High School and delighted in it on several levels.

   First, Collier’s prose, rich in lines like, “I felt like a wandering thought in the dreaming brain of a chorus girl down on her luck.” and “Their laughter was like the stridulation of the ghosts of grasshoppers.”

   All in service of Collier’s dark whimsy as starving poet Charles Snell takes up residence in a stately old Department Store of Byzantine aspect (“Silks and velvets glimmered like ghosts, a hundred pantie-clad models offered simpers and embraces to the desert air.”) only to find it already haunted by the Living. Or the nearly-living, once-humans like he, who permeated themselves into the store years and ages ago, and gradually lost touch with their own humanity.

   The one exception is Ella, a foundling adopted by the reigning Grande Dame of this society and used as a servant. Still human and in her teens, she has fallen in love with the Night Watchman, much to the chagrin of our poet-narrator. And when discovered, her love raises the venomous ire of the nearly-living, who summon The Dark Men, setting up a conflict that pits our narrator and the Night Watchman against…

   It’s a short tale, perhaps a dozen pages, but Collier packs a whole sub-world into it, reawakens the spirit of those grandiose old emporiums (for those who remember them) and makes it real, even as he sketches out characters who – well, “come alive” doesn’t really fit here, so I’ll just say they become convincingly inhuman under his skillful pen.

   Even better, Collier touches on the alienation common to fantasy readers, evokes it, embraces it and rejects it without wasting a single comma. I remember being profoundly moved as a teenager by Evening Primrose’s Truth. As an adult I was just as moved by its Beauty.

JOHN LAWRENCE “Broadway Malady.” Short story. Lt. Martin Marquis #1. First publisheded in Dime Detective Magazine, February 1937. Collected in The Complete Cases of the Marquis of Broadway, Volume 1. (Altus Press, 2014); introduction by Ed Hulse.

   This is the first in a series of 26 tales written by veteran pulp writer John Lawrence about the redoubtable Lt. Martin Marquis, the so-called “Marquis of Broadway,” and the gang of men he used to keep law and order in Manhattan’s famed strip of brightly lit theatres and night clubs in the 1930s and (mostly) pre-war 40s. All of them appeared in Dime Detective. The last would have been appeared in 1942, butr one last one was finally published in 1948.

   Always flashily dressed, the dapper Marquis was actually little more than a criminal himself, if not an out-and-out gangster, nor were the policemen in his squad any better, and maybe even worse. . Their methods were crude but effective. In “Broadway Malady,” however, one particular overly ambitious night club owner makes the mistake of crossing him, to his lasting regret only a few pages later.

   It seems as though the latter has taken a liking to a beautiful young singer who is in love instead with a bandleader whom the Marquis has taken under his wing. When the former is found beaten up rather considerably, the Marquis takes it personally.

   What’s most striking about this story, even more than its setting — what major thoroughfare of its era was more famous than Broadway? — the rather standard plot, is the terse, understated way in which it’s told. I think “Broadway Malad” comes as close to matching the subtext of Dasheill Hammett’s tales than almost any of the latter’s would-be imitators. Other writers may steal Hammett’s plots, but very few of them seem ever to master the essence of how he told his terse, hard-bitten tales.

   Or in other words, there is almost as much to be read between the lines in “Broadway Malady” as there is story itself. Lawrence makes no concession to the reader. I can’t imagine many getting to the end of this tale without having to go back to see what they missed. When the pieces finally fit together, and they will, the light goes on.

   Chandler is easy to imitate. Hammett less so. It’s a pleasure to read a story that’s so solidly told in the latter’s manner. There are now only 25 more stories of the Marquis left for me to read. Luckily two thick volumes of his “Complete Cases” have recently been published by Altus Press, making up just over half the run. More, I hope, are on the way.

FRED M. WHITE “The Scrip of Death.” Short story. Dr. Victor Colonna #1. First published in Pearson’s Magazine, London, July 1898. Collected in The Last of the Borgias: Being the Strange History of Victor Colonna, Professor of Science,and his Experiments in the Lost Art of Poisoning., hardcover, 1898? Reprinted by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, softcover, date? [Announced; may have never been published.] Available online here.

   The lady making the request is the beautiful Ellen Longwater, who claims her wealthy and famous family is in danger of ruin, and the man she has made the request of is none other than Dr. Victor Colonna, who has just given a lecture on his discovery of the rarest of all tomes, the poison book of none other than Lucretia Borgia (before history revealed she was more victim than monster), meaning, according to his own lecture, that he is master of poisons unknown to mankind, capable of bringing nations to their knees if he chose, and a veritable judge, jury, and executioner no court could hope to prove anything on thanks to his undetectable poisons.

   Of course Dr. Colonna was only speculating. Ellen Longwater is serious.

   Fred M. White was one of the most popular and prolific writers of the period, his name as well known on magazine covers as Conan Doyle, and his stories encompassed multiple series including adventure, mystery, secret service, and early science fiction. He particularly did well in the then popular disaster genre of which Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger story “The Poison Cloud” is one of the better known examples today.

   But Victor Colonna is surely the oddest detective hero anyone ever came up with, sleuth and avenger but far from the clean cut way of most British heroes, and the six long stories comprising the “Last of the Borgias” series are among the oddest of their kind, with Colonna one of those late Victorian supermen who are above mere law, a long haired aesthete with a no compunction about making God like interventions in the lives of mere mortals.

   To be fair to White and the genre, it wasn’t until Ellery Queen in The Door Between that anyone seemed to bring up the question of what all this God like behavior might lead to in classic detective fiction. Before then other than an occasional insight the brilliant sleuth’s mere existence seemed to justify his actions, even if Peter Wimsey wept over the execution of the man he sent to the gallows, he didn’t question his right or duty to do so.

   And to ruffle feathers further these stories violate the heck out of Detection Club Rules about “poisons unknown to science.” Dr. Fu Manchu could take a hint or two from Dr. Colonna.

   This being the Victorian age Dr. Colonna doesn’t hesitate to come to the aid of a lady in distress:

   So in his first case, Colonna is already up against a veritable Moriarity, though I have to say Felspar is a particularly thud ear name for a super villain. I suppose he could have named him Yardarm instead..

   Colonna assures us Felspar is a “bad un,” a brilliant chemist, but a blackmailer and worse, and his plot to marry the Princess Esme of Valdamir (names of people and places in this one aren’t White’s strong suit) not only threatens the happiness of Ellen Longwater’s son who also hopes to marry her, but also the fortune and fate of a great family because Felspar can prove Ellen’s son is not the heir to a great family he claims and destroy his hopes with Esme.

   You can almost imagine Victorian era audiences booing Felspar as they read. How dare a dirty foreigner interfere with a handsome young Englishman defrauding a foreign Princess.

   How Colonna confronts Felspar, and ultimately removes the Count as a threat frankly isn’t worth the build up. White writes well enough, but basically once Colonna accepts the commission to rid the family of Count Felspar the story grinds to a halt.

   There is some artificial suspense at a public gathering while the Count reads his prepared revelation and Colonna softly counts down to the moment Felspar falls victim to the poison, then a frankly anti-climactic reveal of how he administered the poison (not only unknown to science, but so mysterious we don’t even get a hint of what was in it — at least Fu Manchu used spider and snake venom) and used simple misdirection to steal the revealing papers in the dead man’s pocket.

   To be frank, by that point I was imagining Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Thorndyke, or Father Brown feeling quite content to have sent our hero to the gallows. Somehow this sort of thing was much more satisfying when the Saint disposed of a total rotter with a bit of cleaning fluid on his tie, or Bulldog Drummond snapped his neck. Nor does the not so subtle jingoism and xenophobia of Colonna using nasty Italian poisons, appearing quite foreign, and having an Italian name escape the modern reader.

   It’s no wonder there was only one series of adventures for Dr. Colonna, just reading the first one leaves the reader in need of a shower.

      Complete contents of The Last of the Borgias. All are Victor Colonna stories:

The Scrip Of Death
The Crimson Streak
The Holy Rose
The Saving of Serena
The Varteg Necklace
The Three Carnations

MARGARET MARON “Lieutenant Harald and the Treasure Island Treasure.” Short story. Lt. Sigrid Harald. Published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September 1989. Collected in Lieutenant Harald and the Treasure Island Treasure & My Mother, My Daughter, Me (Mystery Scene/Pulphouse Short Story Paperback #3, 1991).

   In this short but well-told tale Lt. Sigrid Harald of the NYPD finds herself far from her usual comport zone, the crowded concrete streets of Manhattan. Oscar Naumann, an old friend living in upstate Connecticut whom she apparently had met in one or more of her earlier novel-length cases, now needs her help. At stake is a young girl’s inheritance from her now deceased uncle.

   Living on an island configuration of land, the map, a lifelong lover of maps — and buried treasures — the key to finding what he left his favorite niece in his will is a map he was still working on when he died. This is the puzzle that Sigrid must decipher. Any lover of maps and Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic tale, “Treasure Island,” will enjoy this one as much as I did.

       __

Bibliographic Notes:   There have been nine novel length cases for Lt. Harald, the most recent being Take Out, which appeared in 2017 after a hiatus of 22 years. Her only other short story appearance has been “Murder at Montegoni” (EQMM, Sept/Oct 2008).

JIM DAVIS “Gone Fishing.” Short story. Brad Carter #2. Published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, November 2012.

   This one’s eleven pages long, but it reads so quickly, once you’re done, you’ll think you’ve read only a longish vignette. That’s a fact also probably true because the story itself is so quick and dirty, and well deserving of its placement in the Black Mask section of that particular issue of EQMM in which it appeared.

   As a PI Brad Carter ekes out a living in Fayetteville, Arkansas, but when he’s hired by a prim and proper maiden aunt to find her nephew, wanted and on the run for rape and aggravated assault, the trail takes him deep into the Ozarks, from a biker bar to a meth lab way up in the hills. Any resemblance to the hillbillies of old, such as in the Li’l Abner comic strip, is purely illusional.

   The introduction to the story says that Jim Davis, the author, was planning on further adventures of Bradley Carter, who proves himself as a survivor a couple of times over in this one, but there was only one other, that being “Golf Etiquette” in the February 2011 issue of EQMM. That’s too bad. I enjoyed this one.

CATHERINE L. STANTON “Multiple Submissions.” Short story. Sam Bellamy #2. First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September 1989.

   I’ve found that catching up on my short story reading has been a good way to fill some otherwise vacant time while recovering from my recent surgery. And of the ones I’ve enjoyed the most, many of them are of the relatively rare category, the traditional detective story, especially those having a recurring character in the leading role.

   Some of these series characters are extremely well known, such as those created by Edward D. Hoch. Some are rather obscure, such as Sam Bellamy in this one: his existence is not even known to the online Crime Fiction Index. Sam’s only earlier appearance was “The Teddy Bears’ Wake” (AHMM, August 1988), and there was not a third, which is a shame, because this second one is a couple of notches well above average.

   Sam is a skilled cabinetmaker by trade, an occupation I don’t remember a fictional sleuth ever having had before, but what such a job does is allow him to meet all kinds of people, including wealthier ones, and wealthy people are prone to having problems an amateur might be able to solve even more than the police.

   It also a plus to have an inquisitive nature about people, and that’s what helps Sam in this case of the murder of the current temporary director of this summer’s series of plays put on by a small Massachusetts drama company. Without going into details, and it would take another couple of paragraphs to do it well, I’ll just say that determining the killer requires some insight into what prods anyone to write a play — and hunger to see it performed — in the first place.

   The two Sam Bellamy stories were Catherine Stanton’s only contributions to the world of crime fiction. Based on this one, I have to say that I wish there had been more.