EDWARD D. HOCH “The Alexandria Solution.” Jeffrey Rand, formerly of British Intelligence. Published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, December 2008. Not yet reprinted or collected. (I may be wrong about this.)
What this story is most remarkable for, perhaps, is that (as we are informed in the introduction to it) it is that new story to appear by Mr. Hoch in EQMM. In this tale, Rand is now retried from his long time position as the head of the Department of Concealed Communications for British Intelligence, In this tale he and his wife Leila are on vacation in Egypt, where he agrees to help a store merchant decipher a message consisting of several columns of numbers.
Before he is finished with the task, he leans that the man who hired him for the job was an imposter, the real Rosco Mathers already known dead for some short while. And what is the significance of the coded message?
As usual for Hoch and the long list of stories written, the telling is clear and precise; perhaps a little too much so, but this is certainly too small a comment to make to be worth quibbling about. But it is worth mentioning that the story is a minor matter. Not uninteresting at all, mind you, and if I say “minor,” that’s a word worth using only in relative terms. Compared to the work of Hoch’s contemporaries, let’s say, it’s a tale well worth savoring in its own right.