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.

DICK STODGHILL “A Deceitful Way of Dying.” Novelette. Jack Eddy #4. First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September 1989, Collected in The Jack Eddy Stories, Volume 1 (JLT-Charatan Publications, paperback, 2006).

   Between 1979 and his death in 2009, long time newspaper columnist Dick Stodghill was also a prolific writer of short stories, producing several dozen of them over those years. His only series character was a fellow named Jack Eddy, a PI working for the Wellington National Detective Agency back around 1937 or so.

   Eddy was based in Akron OH and lived in the same boarding house as the narrator of his stories, Abraham “Bram” Geary. The latter is the crime reporter for one of the local newspapers, and even though he resents Eddy for going out with their landlady’s daughter, whom he has worshiped from afar, he also does not want to miss the scoops that working with Eddy always produce.

   In this, their fourth case together of maybe 18 or 19 in all, most appearing in AHMM, a man who has been presumed dead for several months, having run his car straight into an oncoming train, turns up dead in another town some 40 miles over. Eddy is hired by the man’s insurance company, who has already paid off once. They don’t want to pay off twice.

   It takes quite a bit of detective work to unravel the complicated plot the killer has set up — and I’m not sure I followed the explanation completely — but the solidly constructed atmosphere of several working class towns in Depression-era Ohio is pitch perfect, in a style strongly reminiscent of Black Mask of that very same era: only semi-hardboiled, with a dash of humor.

CHARLAINE HARRIS “Small Chances.” Short story. Anne DeWitt #3. First published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2016. Collected in Small Kingdoms and Other Stories (Subterranean, hardcover, May 2019); and JABberwocky Literary Agency, paperback, 2019).

   Chatelaine Harris is best known now as the author of the Sookie Stackhouse series upon which the HBO television series True Blood is based. Sookie is a telepathic waitress who works in a Northern Louisiana bar and solves mysteries involving werewolves, vampires and the like.

   I’ve never read the book or watched the TV series, but my sense is tht the stories are a lot darker in tone than the two series Harris began her career with: (1) the Aurora Teagarden series, featuring a librarian who likes solves crimes as well, and (2) the Lily Bard books, about a cleaning lady detective based in rural Arkansas. (Correction: See comment #1.)

   The success of the Sookie Stackhouse books has made it possible for Harris to write anything she wants and have her many fans clamoring for more, so she has and they do. Included among these other efforts are four stories about a high school principal now named Anne DeWitt. Due to a fatal incident at a training course she was taking, the people in charge have forced her out of the program, changed her name, and started her off in a new career.

   In which to get ahead, one or two convenient deaths have already occurred. Always in the interest in the children in her school, mind you, but neither does anyone want to get in her way as she moves her way up in her new profession.

   “Small Chances” begins with a man stopping at her office and announcing himself as her first husband. Anne knows something is wrong immediately She’s never been married. So who is Tom Wilson and what does he want? Or perhaps the question is, who sent him?

   This is dark comedy at its finest. This is the only one of the four stories I’ve read, and I don’t know if there’s much potential for a fifth one, or even a novel, but in this one small dose so far, I found this short tale divertingly wicked and a lot of fun to read.

        The Anne DeWitt series —

“Small Kingdoms.” EQMM, Nov 2013
“Sarah Smiles.” EQMM, Sep/Oct 2014
“Small Chances.” EQMM, Sept/Oct 2016
“Small Signs.” EQMM, Nov/Dec 2017

   L. M. MONTGOMERY “The House Party at Smoky Island.” Short story. First published in Weird Tales, August 1935. Reprinted in Startling Mystery Stories, Fall 1968, and Visions from the Edge: An Anthology of Atlantic Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy (Pottersfield Press, trade paperback, 1981). First collected in Among the Shadows (Bantam Starfire, paperback, 1991).

   Whenever I read a ghost story — which isn’t often, but on occasion I do — I want a story that gives me shivers and goosebumps. No gross out gruesome stuff for me. There’s an obvious difference between chills and shock and disgust. You know where the line is as well as I do, and “The House Party at Smoky Island” stays completely on the right side of it.

   It helps, though, when a tale takes place on an island somewhere in the isolated wilderness– of central Ontario, for example, and Lake Muskoka in particular. The manor house in full of people, but it has rained all week, and by Saturday night the guests have been on each other’s nerves for far too long.

   One of the married couples is especially on edge. She has become more and more obsessed with the thought that he killed his first wife. She does not know this for a fact. She only suspects it. As Saturday night arrives, with the wind howling and the rain pouring down, there is a call for each of the members of the house party to tell the rest of the company a ghost story, which only builds up to what happens next.

   And that’s all I can tell you without telling you the whole story, but if ever a ghost story can give you a brief shiver or shill at exactly the right moment, this one will.

   You may have recognized the author’s name, or you think you may have, and if so, you are correct. This is the same L. M. Montgomery who wrote Anne of Green Gables and all of its sequels, plus many other stories meant for children. She is one of Canada’s most well-known and beloved authors, and this is a rarity: the only story she wrote for the pulp magazines.

  AUGUST DERLETH “The China Cottage.” Solar Pons. Short story. First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, March 1965. First collected in The The Casebook of Solar Pons (Mycroft & Moran, hardcover, 1965), as “The Adventure of the China Cottage.” Reprinted in Alfred Hitchcock’s Games Killers Play (Dell, paperback, 1968.

   I wonder if this story marked the first appearance of Solar Pons’ brother Bancroft, a man of some size and weight and who worked, not surprisingly, for the British Foreign Office. Dead in a locked room is an eccentric breaker of codes and ciphers, found slumped over the latest set of papers he was working on.

   But as it turns out, Pons quickly deduces that the papers and the secrets that may have been in them were not the reason for his murder, and the problem of the locked room is disposed of almost as quickly. If it was indeed murder, the killer simply walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. Or her.

   No, the puzzle, as Pons finally works it out, and I hope I’m not giving too much away, has to do with the china cottage of the title, an ordinary incense burner in the shape of … a cottage. It is imagined, by me at least, that at one time these were quite popular in England.

   As a consulting detective whose cases you may decide to follow when you’ve read the entire Holmes canon several times over, Solar Pons certainly has his fans, even today, but I’ve always found his tales to be a mixed bag. This one’s better than many, but in my opinion, no way near the best of them. I found the shift in focus from a case in Bancroft’s purview to a much more domestic one disconcerting, but your opinion may vary.