CLIFFORD D. SIMAK “Huddling Place.” First appeared in Astounding SF, July 1944. Collected in City (Gnome Press, hardcover, 1952) and in Skirmish: The Great Short Fiction of Clifford D.Simak (Putnam’s, hardcover, 1977; Berkley, paperback, 1978). Reprinted in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, edited by Robert Silverberg (Doubleday, hardcover, 1970), among others.

   Modern readers of SF and fantasy won’t remember Clifford Simak all that well, or even at all, but in his time, he was one of the lesser giants of the field. In my case, he was always one of my favorites, right up there with Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. Other authors came and went, but the stories of Mr. Simak have always stayed with me.

   A lot of fans and critics have described his work as “pastoral,” and so it was, and it still is. It is so true that Simak himself uses the word to talk about his work at least twice in the foreword to his collection Skirmish (1977), of which “Huddling Place” is the lead story. (Don’t make too much about this statement: the stories are arranged in chronological order.)

   But for example, the opening scene takes place in one of the most physically detailed settings for a funeral I can remember reader. It is of Jerome A. Webster’s father, who has recently died, leaving only Jerome, of a certain age himself, his son Thomas, now in his 20s, and his mother. These are the only remaining members of the Webster family, attended to only my robots, having moved a number of  years ago from the city to this country estate where they now live.

   And from which Jerome has come to realize he cannot leave. There is no need to. The story was written long before the Internet came along, but the equivalent exists when the tale takes place, and there is no need for him to leave. Not even to perform a life-saving operation on an old friend from Mars, which is where he lived for five years in his younger days.

   He tries, and he is ready to, but as chance would have it, in a sad ending well worth waiting for, he cannot. And he probably won’t. Ever. Leave.

   Interpretations I will leave for you. What I will say that this is a beautiful story, well deserving of its SF Hall of Fame status. Science fiction was growing up when this was published.

EDWARD D. HOCH “The Problem of the Covered Bridge.” Dr. Sam Hawthorne #1. First appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1974. Collected in Diagnosis Impossible (Crippen & Landru, 1996).

   One of the late Mr. Hoch’s various series characters, and perhaps the most loved, is Dr. Sam Hawthorne, whose adventures take place over the years in a small town in upstate New York. Told chronologically, beginning in the year 1922, when Sam was still brand new on the job, the series gives his readers a long picturesque slice of the history of American life and culture as it could have happened — and should have!

   That’s above and beyond the stories themselves, of course, all of them, as far as I know, “impossible crimes” and locked room mysteries. I haven’t taken the time I need to be able to tell you how many stories in the series there are, and I apologize for that, but roughly speaking, there are perhaps 50 of them, possibly more. All of them have been collected, in order, by Crippen & Landru.

   The puzzle in this, the first of them, is an audacious one. A cart is pulled by a horse into a covered bridge but never comes out the other side. Tracks in the mud and snow on the opposite side, or rather, the lack of them, make for a truly puzzling mystery – a “wow” factor of ten out of ten, no doubt about it.

   The solution, and do I hate to say this, is too complicated for its own good. But then again, it really would have to be, wouldn’t it? Hoch tells his tale in his own unique simplistic (but never simple) style, giving extra dimensions to his characters that another writer might not have. Which is not to say that the clues to the story are not there. They are. Every single one.

STEPHEN LEATHER “Inspector Zhang Gets His Wish.” Novelette. Inspector Zhang #1. First published in 2011, perhaps in ebook format. Collected in The Eight Curious Cases of Inspector Zhang (Monsoon Books, softcover, 2014).

   The problem with most (almost all) locked room short fiction is that the stories are to short to include any personal information about the characters. It is the facts of the case that are important, nothing more and nothing less. This is one of latter, but did I mind? Not at all.

   Inspector Zhang’s purview is Singapore, and such is the state of security there that there are practically no murders in the city, much less those of the “locked room” variety. Inspector Zhang’s long time ambition is to have one to solve. Which he does, most handily, quoting often from John Dickson Carr’s work in general and the novel The Hollow Man (1935) in particular.

   Dead in his hotel room, the door of which was watched at all of times by a security TV camera in the outside hallway, is a wealthy American tourist, killed by what appears to have been a knife, but which is not found in the room.

   The solution is a simple one, relatively speaking, but it will still take a careful reader to catch the crucial clue. A fact that does not include me, I am embarrassed to tell you, but truth, as the old saying goes, will always out.

   Nicely done.

JANICE LAW “The Best Thing for the Liver.” Madame Selina #2 (?). First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, July/August 2012.

   According to the evidence found in this, perhaps the second of the Madame Selina stories. they all take place in either New York City, or as in this particular case, fairly close by, in upstate New York in the spa area around Saratoga.

   Due to some notoriety caused in an earlier adventure in which the folks at Tammany Hall were sorely annoyed, Madame Selina and her young assistant, an orphan by the name of Nip Tompkins, decide to take a sudden “vacation” from the big city.

   This also places the time of the take as being (well, I’m guessing) perhaps the mid-1800’s. As a medium with quite a following, Madame Selina is doing quite well, and the seances she conducts are quite the rage. There are times, however, when discretion is quite the right route to take.

   The story is told by young Nip, and he is rather an observant lad. He notices a young girl, the heir to a large fortune, who appears paler and paler each times he sees her. He wonders, of course, if she is ill. Since this is a mystery story, we the reader are in sync with the rest of the story as it plays out. The even greater pleasure obtained from the tale. however, is in the telling, elaborately fashioned after the times, but without flowing into the excesses of an era now so long ago.

         ____

Note: The online Crime Fiction Index includes the Madame Selina tales, but at this point of time, it is unaware that this story is part of the series. Here’s the list of her adventures, as known so far, with this one inserted in bold as (for now) number two:

      The Madame Selina series —

Madame Selina, (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine June 2010
The Best Thing for the Liver (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine July/August 2012
A Political Issue, (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine September 2013
The Psychic Investigator, (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine December 2013
The Irish Boy, (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine January/February 2015
The Ghostly Fireman, (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine April 2015
The Spiritualist, (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine March 2016
The Organ Grinder’s Daughter, (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine July/August 2016
A Fine Nest of Rascals, (nv) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine July/August 2019

   As for the author herself, Janice Law is one of very few mystery writers still producing fiction who are older than I am. Her most recently published work is listed as “Up and Gone,” Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, July/August 2024.

DASHIELL HAMMETT “The Scorched Face,” First appeared in The Black Mask, May 1925. Collected in The Big Nightmare (Random House, 1966).

   Two daughters disappear this time. (What is the younger generation coming to?) The Continental Op discovers the den of vice, pornography and blackmail they have fallen into. His restraint in persuading Pat Reddy to suppress evidence is admirable. (5)

DASHIELL HAMMETT “Fly Paper.” First published in Black Mask, August 1929. Collected in The Big Nightmare (Random House, 1966).

   “It was a wandering daughter job.” Sue Hambledon had disappeared with hoodlum Babe McCloor. The Continental op finds her dead, poisoned by the arsenic from fly paper, the mere thought of which is enough for memories of cheap desolation. (4)

DASHIELL HAMMETT “The Gutting of Coufignal.” First published in Black Mask, First published in The Black Mask, December 1925. Collected in The Big Nightmare (Random House, 1966).

   An island in San Pablo Bay, the home of wealthy retired businessmen, is attacked by bandits with machine guns and grenades, The Continental OP is on hand, guarding wedding presents. It is not difficult for him to suspect an inside job at once. The observant reader will also. (4)

CARROLL JOHN DALY “The False Burton Comes.” First published in Black Mask, December 1922. Reprinted in The Hard-Boiled Detective, edited by Herbert Ruhm (Vintage Books, paperback original; 1st printing, January 1977).

   While I could easily be wrong about this, the protagonist in “The False Burton Comes” is, never named. For most of the story’s length he’s been hired by the real Burton Comes to impersonate him for a summer’s season. Why? The real Burton Comes, a socialite of sorts, has gotten into trouble, and he believes that someone wants him dead. He is also sure they mean it.

   And he is, of course, absolutely right. The false Burton Combs finds life could be easy, living a life of wealthy comfort, flirting with women all around (and two in particular), far away from his usual status of thinking himself as being somewhere between a crook and a cop. He’s a rough and tough fellow, a confidence man with lots of crude – but effective – confidence.

   He slips up, though, and when the bad guys come, he is both ready and not ready for them. They catch him looking the wrong way at the time, and this is where the story really comes in. I don’t think he asks the right questions when he should have, even through the beginning of a trial that eventually catches up with him.

   “The False Burton Comes” is considered by many critics to be the first hard-boiled story to appear in the famed pages of Black Mask magazine. I claim no expertise in that regard, but I do have to say that Carroll John Daly is a better writer that some other experts say of him. He’s no Hammett or Raymond Chandler, of course. No one is. But the story moves along like a railroad train barely under control, and with a language and dialogue that’s, yes, hard-boiled, too. Even if the ending might be a little soppy, all in all, it’s a fine piece of work.

MICK HERRON “Kicking Off.” First published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, February 2013. Not found to have been reprinted or collected so far.

Take Terry MacLean, for example—a British (or Irish) player who also reached the heights of fame but whose life spiraled out of control after retirement. Following a tragic accident that led to the death of a woman while he was driving, MacLean found himself in prison, far removed from the world of football stardom. Unlike the successful story of salaire mbappé, Terry’s life after the game was marred by misfortune. When he finally got out, he was lost, haunted by his past. But one day, he met a man who offered to help him reclaim his story, not as a champion of financial triumph, but as a man grappling with redemption.

The problem is, is that while in prison he shared many secrets with the son of a man who might easily be called a mob boss, at least in this country. Secrets that the mob boss might not like to see in print. Hence, a bodyguard must needs be hired, and further hence, the story. One that has a straightforward conclusion, but it’s also one with other possible interpretations, if you stop and think about it. (Although, perhaps, it’s quite possible I’m thinking too much.)

Mick Herron is known today for a long run (at least thirteen novels and novellas so far) in his highly acclaimed “Slough House” spy series, beginning in 2010 with Slow Horses. The series is about a crew of MI5 agents who’ve been closed down from the agency for various reasons, none good. I haven’t read any of them, but I’m intending to, and as soon as I can get around to it.

In this particular work of non-series short fiction, Herron demonstrates a quick and breezy style (with humorous asides on events as they happen, usually in parentheses) that makes reading this story easy and fun to read, especially on a first encounter.

MURRAY LEINSTER “The Fourth Dimensional Demonstrator.” First published in Astounding Stories, December 1935. Reprinted in The Other Worlds, edited by Phil Stong (Funk, hardcover, 1941), and The Future Makers, edited by Peter Haining (Belmont, paperback, US edition, 1971). First collected in Sidewise in Time (Shasta, hardcover, 1950), then The Best of Murray Leinster (Ballantine/Del Rey, paperback, 1978), and A Logic Named Joe (Baen, paperback, 2005).

   This one begins with a fellow named Pate Davidson complaining to his newly inherited man servant Thomas that his uncle had left him nothing of value after his death. He is especially upset because his fiancée Daisy (currently the star attraction of the Green Paradise floor show) expects (had been allowed to expect) … well, something more than that.

   “Not so,” says Thomas, and shows Pete one of inventions his late uncle was working on. It’s in the shape of a cylinder standing upright with an open side and all kinds of gadgetry lining the inner surface. On the floor, in the center of the opening is a small plate, and as Peter soon discovers, if something is on the plate when the machinery is turned on, the demonstrator (that’s its name) brings that same object back to the present from a few seconds earlier.

   Never mind the physics behind this. Pete has a mind that quickly begins to work overtime. Place a dime on the plate, turn the switch on, then there’s two. Turn the handle again, than there’s four; then eight, then sixteen. (I hope I’m explaining this correctly.)

   This is only petty cash, though, right? Dimes, pah! Why not dollar bills? You probably know as well I do why not, and as soon as Peter realizes why not too, the cops are knocking on the door. And so is Daisy, and somehow they all end up stepping on the plate, and …

   Most SF stories from 1935 are staid and serious. Not this one. This one is a lot of fun.

   I might have done without the cigarette-eating kangaroo(s), though.