EDWARD D. HOCH “Day of the Wizard.” Simon Ark. First appeared in The Saint Mystery Magazine (UK), August 1963. Reprinted in Chase, September 1964; and Locked Room Puzzles, edited by Martin H. Greenberg & Bill Pronzini (Academy Chicago, 1986). Also included in the collections The Judges of Hades and Other Simon Ark Stories and Funeral in the Fog (2020).

   Simon Ark is the quirkiest of Ed Hoch’s many recurring series characters. A review of one of the aforementioned collections in another blog  described him this way: “Simon Ark is not your typical detective. He scours the Earth searching for the Devil, either the actual Devil him/herself or his agents, and has been doing so for nearly 2000 years since he was a Coptic Priest in Ancient Egypt. Allegedly.”

   I have read several of his adventures but far from all of them. I believe that most (all?) of them Mr. Hoch wrote toward the beginning of his writing career. That may be the reason I found the opening pages a bit more sprightly — if perhaps even quite sparkling — than the slower but still very solid tales he wrote as time went on.

   This one begins at the end of World War II, as a military plane containing a merry crew and a special cargo crashes near the shore of east Africa. Seventeen years later a hunt for the plane finally begins, starting with a hunt for Simon Ark. In the process of luring him away from whatever activity he may be doing, the wiles of a street magician in Cairo are used. An empty box, large enough for a person to stand in, is locked under the gaze of many reporters, who are asked to return the next day.

   At which time they find, of course, the body of a girl. Drugged but not dead, but she has no idea how she managed her way into the locked and sealed empty box. For me, this was the crux of the story, and it’s a good one. The solution is simple, buy only once you know. What I found interesting is that the contents of the plane are very cleverly not revealed. I has to read the end of the story a second time, and I am relatively sure I didn’t miss anything.

   I’m not not sure if what goes on in what takes lace in the desert once the plane is found hold up all that well, but the one with thr girl in the box does. It’s a zinger!