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.