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Dr. Sam Hawthorne
Challenge the Impossible (5)
随着第二次世界大战的爆发,萨姆的人生也迎来了多事之秋,诺斯蒙特镇的每个人的生活似乎都因战争而发生了巨大的变化…… 哦,唯一不变的恐怕就是小镇依然在发生稀奇古怪的案件：传说中倒入水就能变出酒的水罐居然能置人于死地,再现廊桥谜案的活动中有人谋杀了镇长,稻草人中竟藏着被子弹穿心杀死的奶牛场主…… 面对不断升高的犯罪率和盘旋在人们心头的战争阴云,萨姆和伦斯这对闻名全美的探案搭档又将如何破局呢？ 50年来,在许多美国人心中,萨姆·霍桑就是他们自己的福尔摩斯！
- GenresMysteryShort Stories
247 pages, Paperback
First published August 11, 2018
26 people are currently reading
33 people want to read
About the author
Edward D. Hoch
423 books45 followersEdward D. Hoch is one of the most honored mystery writers of all time.
* 1968 Edgar Allan Poe Award (Mystery Writers of America): "The Oblong Room", The Saint Mystery Magazine, July 1967
* 1998 Anthony Award (Bouchercon World Mystery Convention): "One Bag of Coconuts", EQMM, November 1997
* 2001 Anthony Award (Bouchercon): "The Problem of the Potting Shed", EQMM, July 2000
* 2007 Ellery Queen Readers Choice Award (awarded 2008): "The Theft of the Ostracized Ostrich", EQMM, June 2007
* Lifetime Achievement Award (Private Eye Writers of America), 2000
* Grand Master (Mystery Writers of America), 2001
* Lifetime Achievement Award (Bouchercon), 2001
* 1968 Edgar Allan Poe Award (Mystery Writers of America): "The Oblong Room", The Saint Mystery Magazine, July 1967
* 1998 Anthony Award (Bouchercon World Mystery Convention): "One Bag of Coconuts", EQMM, November 1997
* 2001 Anthony Award (Bouchercon): "The Problem of the Potting Shed", EQMM, July 2000
* 2007 Ellery Queen Readers Choice Award (awarded 2008): "The Theft of the Ostracized Ostrich", EQMM, June 2007
* Lifetime Achievement Award (Private Eye Writers of America), 2000
* Grand Master (Mystery Writers of America), 2001
* Lifetime Achievement Award (Bouchercon), 2001
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
May 29, 2023
This last collection of Doc Hawthorne cases solving 'Impossible Crimes' was a beautiful culmiation of a long series. All the fifteen stories here were superbly narrated, characterised, with a clear vision regarding our protagonist, his associates and eventually his family, along-with the town of Norhtmont. In this volume everything happens against the backdrop of Second World War. Yet, Hoch manages to keep the crimes (or otherwise) firmly centred upon human drama— the small ups & downs that often conclude in red flashes of violence.
Solid collection. Extra gratitude is expressed for the good people at C & L, who had revived all these stories, beautifully framed with an Introduction and the chronology of the entire series.
Highly recommended.
Solid collection. Extra gratitude is expressed for the good people at C & L, who had revived all these stories, beautifully framed with an Introduction and the chronology of the entire series.
Highly recommended.
June 27, 2021
Pure joy. Hoch is a genius and his Dr. Sam Hawthorne series of stories is a work of genius. I just finished this fifth and final collection. It left me feeling bittersweet. Like I just watched the series finale of a favorite long-running tv show. (Unfortunately^*^ it was one of those series finales that don’t really feel final—like the producers weren’t sure if they were coming back next fall so it’s just another episode—possibly Hoch didn’t know it would be his last.) I’ll miss the characters, I’ll miss Northmont, I’ll miss the way Hoch describes ever-changing life in small town America. I honestly can’t think of a book better suited to television than these stories. They’re definitely ready for prime time: a doctor arrives in a rural town after the end of WW1 and each week solves baffling impossible murders, he sees friends come and go, gets married, starts a family, all the while sees the town’s fortunes ebb and flow as it grows, all the way up till nearly the close of the next world war, the stories touching on every contemporary historical moment from flappers and prohibition and the Great Depression to new technology like planes and cars and forensics. I’d watch the hell out of that show.
So five stars for the content of the book, zero stars for the actual book. Great stories, but horrendously published. Just like many C&L books. So sad to see such wonderful content get such shabby treatment. I’m feeling less forgiving today after reading the fifth infuriatingly-messy Dr. Hawthorne collection of stories.
As for the stories themselves: very good, only not as good as the earlier material. It’s easy to imagine while reading them that Hoch’s age is showing. The prose is weaker and sloppy in places. Repetitious. Even at least once confusing first and third person. Still, if puzzle is king these are very worthy puzzle pieces. Hoch was special. Which makes the bizarrely amateurish presentation of all of the Hawthorne stories so enraging. This volume even features paragraph alignment errors. Left, right, left, right. Add this to the sections of the book without any paragraph breaks, even during dialogue exchanges, and the sections with random paragraph orphans/widows/whatever... makes for hard reading, not good reading. Still recommended, of course. Especially for people who prefer to convert their ebooks to .docs and read/edit them in a word processor! I mean, who doesn’t, right?!
I’m just going to copy and paste my thoughts about this from another volume below because I like my free time, but here’s just one tiny exchange that is a great example of how careless this book was put together. A woman thinks she sees a ghost in her hospital room so she switches beds with another patient. That patient dies. Sam then breaks the news:
——
There was no point in keeping it from her. “The woman who was moved into your room died.”
“Died! What happened? Did she have a heart attack?” “We don’t know yet. It may have been natural causes.” But she was convinced. “She saw the ghost, same as I did.”
——
End quote. Cramming dialogue from two different characters into the same paragraph is annoying but I’ve had four collections to become used to it. The annoying bit here is the word “convinced.” It makes no sense. The patient who narrowly escaped death should be UNCONVINCED. I could go on and on, but who cares? Nobody. It’s obvious anyway why this is all wrong. There’s an error like this every other page. It should be something like this:
——
There was no point in keeping it from her. “The woman who was moved into your room died.”
“Died! What happened? Did she have a heart attack?”
“We don’t know yet. It may have been natural causes.”
But she was unconvinced. “She saw the ghost, same as I did.”
——
Below is my rant from the previous collection. The only thing I would change is my conclusion, that despite these problems I will still buy Crippen & Landru content. That is no longer true. I will still read it.
——-
I love this book’s publisher, Crippen & Landru. I think they have done the world of detective fiction a hell of a service in bringing to print some unparalleled classic stories. My book shelves and my Kindle both are filled with Crippen & Landru titles. Many of them, physical and digital, have errors. Typos, formatting kinks, spelling errors, etc. (My least favorite are the paragraph indents—sometimes dialogue is cut to a new paragraph making it appear like a character is talking to himself—very confusing especially in impossible crime stories where the devil’s in the details.) It seems the problem has gotten worse in the last few years. The first three volumes of Hoch’s Hawthorne weren’t bad. This, the fourth, is riddled with errata. It’s sad. It’s sad that these problems go unaddressed by Crippen & Landru. It’s sad that nobody else complains about them. If I want to enhance my reading experience of a significant portion of Hoch’s oeuvre, I will have to do it myself. That means reading not like a reader but an editor whilst fixing all the mistakes. What an undertaking.
These errors aren’t hard to find. They’re blatant. I just don’t understand how a company seemingly so dedicated to such a worthy cause can at the same time be so haphazard about it.
Judging by particular errors (for example, ‘lie’ instead of ‘he’) I think it’s safe to assume these old stories are simply scanned with an OCR text extractor and bundled together between front and back matter, and not exactly lovingly so. A lot of so-called vulture e-publishers do the same, often with public domain content, to much criticism, well-deserved in my opinion^^^. I’m happy to be proven wrong.
Regardless, I will still buy Crippen & Landru content*. I will still recommend them. I will certainly still read them. But, as a born and bred Yankee, I reserve my right to bitch about things that need bitching about.
*Not. Never again. Nope.
^^^ Also, with e-vultures: however predatory they are, they are still providing a worthy service. So much very good and great material is inaccessible to audiences. I know the authors would rather their stories be read in any fashion than not read at all. Not everyone can afford to track down rare pulp magazines that are almost a hundred years old to read a story.
^*^ Although, spoiler warning, this collection features a story that reveals one of Doc’s listeners—his daughter. At this point Doc is 80 and it’s the 70s, but it implies his daughter wasn’t normally his audience and I imagine he wasn’t always 80 when he told his tales.
So five stars for the content of the book, zero stars for the actual book. Great stories, but horrendously published. Just like many C&L books. So sad to see such wonderful content get such shabby treatment. I’m feeling less forgiving today after reading the fifth infuriatingly-messy Dr. Hawthorne collection of stories.
As for the stories themselves: very good, only not as good as the earlier material. It’s easy to imagine while reading them that Hoch’s age is showing. The prose is weaker and sloppy in places. Repetitious. Even at least once confusing first and third person. Still, if puzzle is king these are very worthy puzzle pieces. Hoch was special. Which makes the bizarrely amateurish presentation of all of the Hawthorne stories so enraging. This volume even features paragraph alignment errors. Left, right, left, right. Add this to the sections of the book without any paragraph breaks, even during dialogue exchanges, and the sections with random paragraph orphans/widows/whatever... makes for hard reading, not good reading. Still recommended, of course. Especially for people who prefer to convert their ebooks to .docs and read/edit them in a word processor! I mean, who doesn’t, right?!
I’m just going to copy and paste my thoughts about this from another volume below because I like my free time, but here’s just one tiny exchange that is a great example of how careless this book was put together. A woman thinks she sees a ghost in her hospital room so she switches beds with another patient. That patient dies. Sam then breaks the news:
——
There was no point in keeping it from her. “The woman who was moved into your room died.”
“Died! What happened? Did she have a heart attack?” “We don’t know yet. It may have been natural causes.” But she was convinced. “She saw the ghost, same as I did.”
——
End quote. Cramming dialogue from two different characters into the same paragraph is annoying but I’ve had four collections to become used to it. The annoying bit here is the word “convinced.” It makes no sense. The patient who narrowly escaped death should be UNCONVINCED. I could go on and on, but who cares? Nobody. It’s obvious anyway why this is all wrong. There’s an error like this every other page. It should be something like this:
——
There was no point in keeping it from her. “The woman who was moved into your room died.”
“Died! What happened? Did she have a heart attack?”
“We don’t know yet. It may have been natural causes.”
But she was unconvinced. “She saw the ghost, same as I did.”
——
Below is my rant from the previous collection. The only thing I would change is my conclusion, that despite these problems I will still buy Crippen & Landru content. That is no longer true. I will still read it.
——-
I love this book’s publisher, Crippen & Landru. I think they have done the world of detective fiction a hell of a service in bringing to print some unparalleled classic stories. My book shelves and my Kindle both are filled with Crippen & Landru titles. Many of them, physical and digital, have errors. Typos, formatting kinks, spelling errors, etc. (My least favorite are the paragraph indents—sometimes dialogue is cut to a new paragraph making it appear like a character is talking to himself—very confusing especially in impossible crime stories where the devil’s in the details.) It seems the problem has gotten worse in the last few years. The first three volumes of Hoch’s Hawthorne weren’t bad. This, the fourth, is riddled with errata. It’s sad. It’s sad that these problems go unaddressed by Crippen & Landru. It’s sad that nobody else complains about them. If I want to enhance my reading experience of a significant portion of Hoch’s oeuvre, I will have to do it myself. That means reading not like a reader but an editor whilst fixing all the mistakes. What an undertaking.
These errors aren’t hard to find. They’re blatant. I just don’t understand how a company seemingly so dedicated to such a worthy cause can at the same time be so haphazard about it.
Judging by particular errors (for example, ‘lie’ instead of ‘he’) I think it’s safe to assume these old stories are simply scanned with an OCR text extractor and bundled together between front and back matter, and not exactly lovingly so. A lot of so-called vulture e-publishers do the same, often with public domain content, to much criticism, well-deserved in my opinion^^^. I’m happy to be proven wrong.
Regardless, I will still buy Crippen & Landru content*. I will still recommend them. I will certainly still read them. But, as a born and bred Yankee, I reserve my right to bitch about things that need bitching about.
*Not. Never again. Nope.
^^^ Also, with e-vultures: however predatory they are, they are still providing a worthy service. So much very good and great material is inaccessible to audiences. I know the authors would rather their stories be read in any fashion than not read at all. Not everyone can afford to track down rare pulp magazines that are almost a hundred years old to read a story.
^*^ Although, spoiler warning, this collection features a story that reveals one of Doc’s listeners—his daughter. At this point Doc is 80 and it’s the 70s, but it implies his daughter wasn’t normally his audience and I imagine he wasn’t always 80 when he told his tales.
August 11, 2024
Fifteen short stories set during WWII:
The Problem of Annabelle’s Ark: Plot: Telling stories and memories of his time in the small New England town of Northmont Dr. Sam begins with the time he looked into the killing of a pet cat at a veterinarian’s clinic that appears to be a locked room death. Review: a little more character development was needed and the solution is fairly preposterous, like many of these tales. But fun nonetheless. ***
The Problem of the Potting Shed: Plot: Dr. Sam is called on to look into a locked-room death that at first is ruled a suicide. Review: appropriately logical solution to what is actually not a suicide. ***
The Problem of the Yellow Wallpaper: Plot: Sam looks into helping a woman who is suffering from a mental crisis, who then disappears from a room. Review: Somewhat preposterous back-story that I couldn’t believe the husband and missing wife were involved in. *
The Problem of the Haunted Hospital: Plot: When a woman claims she sees a ghost in her room she is moved to another room. Her replacement is found dead the next morning. Review: we get some more of Sam’s personal life unfolding, but the crime and the killer’s motive is so preposterous that it left a bad feeling about the story. *
The Problem of the Travelers Tale: Plot: Sam and the sheriff look into a hiker’s claim that he came across a wanted man living nearby. Review: Lackadaisical tale with a locked-room and a villain who acts in the most stupid way possible. *
The Problem of Bailey’s Buzzard: Plot: Sam and new wife Annabel postpone their honeymoon after Pearl Harbor is attacked and spend time with a friend who owns a horse farm. Review: An uptick in the stories. Sam’s personal life continues to be revealed and it’s like chapters in a longer book in which a crime happens in each one. This was a nice tale although it was a let-down when one of the more pleasant characters is killed since it’d have been good to follow the victim’s friendship with Sam and Annabelle. There is also a sub-plot about a civil war general’s re-internment that gives Sam another puzzle to solve. ***
The Problem of the Interrupted Séance: Plot: Sam attends a séance at a patient’s request as she tries to contact her son, killed at Pearl Harbor. Another death occurs at the event. Review: getting to be more interesting about Sam’s life at the start of WWII than the mysteries. This one was ok, but the motive and actions of the culprit were so preposterous that it made this a failed attempt. **
Problem of the Candidate’s Cabin: Plot: a week before the election for sheriff, the current one – and friend of Sam – is implicated in a locked room murder. Review: one of the characters keeps a pet monkey in a cage, and that colored the distasteful feeling I had about the whole story. OK solution to the locked room problem (no, they prove the monkey didn’t do it.) **
The Problem of the Black Cloister: Plot: A former town resident, now a Hollywood actor, returns for a bond-drive rally and meets an unexpected end. Review: A good entry, with Sam uncovering what was behind two deaths, that occurred over twenty years apart. ****
The Problem of the Secret Passage: Plot: Sam plays “Unlock” Holmes to stir up interest in war-time scrap metal drives. A day after discovering a trove of old radiators at a local man’s barn, the man is found dead in a locked room. Review: Satisfyingly told tale, although at the end you’ll wonder why the solution wasn’t obvious (unless you had figured it out already.) ****
The Problem of Devil’s Orchard: Plot: It’s 1943 and the apparent disappearance of a young draftee days before leaving for the Army is looked into by Sam and the police. Review: Again, it’s more interesting to get a glimpse of the town’s people during the war then the pretty silly premise and solution to the mystery. *
The Problem of The Shepherd’s Ring: Plot: a man threatens to get away with killing his neighbor by becoming invisible. Then the neighbor dies but no one saw the man who threatened him enter or leave the home. Review: enjoyable entry with logical solution. ***
The Problem of the Suicide Cabin: Plot: As time for delivery of their child approaches, Sam and Annabelle spend time at a lake-side cabin where two deaths occurred in previous years. When another death occurs in the locked-tight cabin, Sam discovers how it was done. Review: As both WWII and these stories come to an end, this is a satisfying entry in the list. ****
The Problem of the Summer Snowman: Plot: As the war enters its final year, Sam looks into the locked-room death of a young man who might have been stabbed by what a witness describes as a snowman entering his house. Review: OK story where justice is served by the war itself and not the US Justice system. ***
The Problem of the Secret Patient: Plot: Sam meets with an FBI agent and told of a patient coming to the hospital for a brief time who needs medical care before being moved to a secure location. But he dies under impossible conditions before he is moved. Review: Kind of silly premise and the motive behind the death makes very little sense, although the method is clever. **
The First Edition hardback contains a pamphlet with an addition story by Hoch and the writer of the book’s introduction, Josh Pachter, called The Spy and the Suicide Club. Plot: when a man in charge of secret agent lists dies, the government reaches out to a former agent to uncover the dead man’s contacts, made through a suicide society. Review: nothing to do with Dr. Sam, so more interesting. Clever denouement. *****
The Problem of Annabelle’s Ark: Plot: Telling stories and memories of his time in the small New England town of Northmont Dr. Sam begins with the time he looked into the killing of a pet cat at a veterinarian’s clinic that appears to be a locked room death. Review: a little more character development was needed and the solution is fairly preposterous, like many of these tales. But fun nonetheless. ***
The Problem of the Potting Shed: Plot: Dr. Sam is called on to look into a locked-room death that at first is ruled a suicide. Review: appropriately logical solution to what is actually not a suicide. ***
The Problem of the Yellow Wallpaper: Plot: Sam looks into helping a woman who is suffering from a mental crisis, who then disappears from a room. Review: Somewhat preposterous back-story that I couldn’t believe the husband and missing wife were involved in. *
The Problem of the Haunted Hospital: Plot: When a woman claims she sees a ghost in her room she is moved to another room. Her replacement is found dead the next morning. Review: we get some more of Sam’s personal life unfolding, but the crime and the killer’s motive is so preposterous that it left a bad feeling about the story. *
The Problem of the Travelers Tale: Plot: Sam and the sheriff look into a hiker’s claim that he came across a wanted man living nearby. Review: Lackadaisical tale with a locked-room and a villain who acts in the most stupid way possible. *
The Problem of Bailey’s Buzzard: Plot: Sam and new wife Annabel postpone their honeymoon after Pearl Harbor is attacked and spend time with a friend who owns a horse farm. Review: An uptick in the stories. Sam’s personal life continues to be revealed and it’s like chapters in a longer book in which a crime happens in each one. This was a nice tale although it was a let-down when one of the more pleasant characters is killed since it’d have been good to follow the victim’s friendship with Sam and Annabelle. There is also a sub-plot about a civil war general’s re-internment that gives Sam another puzzle to solve. ***
The Problem of the Interrupted Séance: Plot: Sam attends a séance at a patient’s request as she tries to contact her son, killed at Pearl Harbor. Another death occurs at the event. Review: getting to be more interesting about Sam’s life at the start of WWII than the mysteries. This one was ok, but the motive and actions of the culprit were so preposterous that it made this a failed attempt. **
Problem of the Candidate’s Cabin: Plot: a week before the election for sheriff, the current one – and friend of Sam – is implicated in a locked room murder. Review: one of the characters keeps a pet monkey in a cage, and that colored the distasteful feeling I had about the whole story. OK solution to the locked room problem (no, they prove the monkey didn’t do it.) **
The Problem of the Black Cloister: Plot: A former town resident, now a Hollywood actor, returns for a bond-drive rally and meets an unexpected end. Review: A good entry, with Sam uncovering what was behind two deaths, that occurred over twenty years apart. ****
The Problem of the Secret Passage: Plot: Sam plays “Unlock” Holmes to stir up interest in war-time scrap metal drives. A day after discovering a trove of old radiators at a local man’s barn, the man is found dead in a locked room. Review: Satisfyingly told tale, although at the end you’ll wonder why the solution wasn’t obvious (unless you had figured it out already.) ****
The Problem of Devil’s Orchard: Plot: It’s 1943 and the apparent disappearance of a young draftee days before leaving for the Army is looked into by Sam and the police. Review: Again, it’s more interesting to get a glimpse of the town’s people during the war then the pretty silly premise and solution to the mystery. *
The Problem of The Shepherd’s Ring: Plot: a man threatens to get away with killing his neighbor by becoming invisible. Then the neighbor dies but no one saw the man who threatened him enter or leave the home. Review: enjoyable entry with logical solution. ***
The Problem of the Suicide Cabin: Plot: As time for delivery of their child approaches, Sam and Annabelle spend time at a lake-side cabin where two deaths occurred in previous years. When another death occurs in the locked-tight cabin, Sam discovers how it was done. Review: As both WWII and these stories come to an end, this is a satisfying entry in the list. ****
The Problem of the Summer Snowman: Plot: As the war enters its final year, Sam looks into the locked-room death of a young man who might have been stabbed by what a witness describes as a snowman entering his house. Review: OK story where justice is served by the war itself and not the US Justice system. ***
The Problem of the Secret Patient: Plot: Sam meets with an FBI agent and told of a patient coming to the hospital for a brief time who needs medical care before being moved to a secure location. But he dies under impossible conditions before he is moved. Review: Kind of silly premise and the motive behind the death makes very little sense, although the method is clever. **
The First Edition hardback contains a pamphlet with an addition story by Hoch and the writer of the book’s introduction, Josh Pachter, called The Spy and the Suicide Club. Plot: when a man in charge of secret agent lists dies, the government reaches out to a former agent to uncover the dead man’s contacts, made through a suicide society. Review: nothing to do with Dr. Sam, so more interesting. Clever denouement. *****
December 21, 2018
Edward D Hoch was a genius. He was the master of the detective short story and of locked room short stories. From 1973 until his death in 2008 there appeared a story by him in each issue of Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine. And most of them were very ingenious. Many other stories appeared elsewhere. He also created numerous detectives. One of them is the thief Nick Velvet who only steals worthless things. My favorite however is dr. Sam Hawthorne, a small town country doctor, who solves locked room and other impossible crimes. This is the last of the five volumes of dr. Sam stories produced by Crippen and Landru. They all take place during the Second World War. And in my opinion it contains some of the best dr. Sam stories. I really enjoyed this volume. What a pity that there are no more. I will now have to start reading them all again.
Many of his other stories also feature locked room stories. And all have good puzzles and mostly surprising solutions. And I have not yet read all of them. So there are still many good days to come.
Many of his other stories also feature locked room stories. And all have good puzzles and mostly surprising solutions. And I have not yet read all of them. So there are still many good days to come.
September 5, 2022
The fifth and final volume of Edward D. Hoch's short stories chronicling the mystery-solving skills of always compassionate, always curious New England physician Sam Hawthorne--who diagnoses crime scenes as thoroughly as he diagnoses his patients--begins in the spring of 1941 and concludes in October of 1944. Most of these clever locked-room puzzles relate in some way to World War II, with the dire international situation affecting even sleepy Northmont . . . but there are also great surprises and developments in Dr. Sam's personal life, as the longtime bachelor finally meets his perfect match. Enjoy!
February 2, 2020
I loved the characters in this book: Dr. Sam, Annabel, the sheriff, and the various townspeople. They almost all seemed salt-of-the earth--except for the criminals, of course. However, the plots seemed too simplistic to me and the denouements of the mysteries didn't seem all that convincing. Compared to the sophisticated and twisting plots of more recent mystery authors, Mr. Hoch's stories didn't seem all that compelling. I thank Kindle Unlimited for making this author's book available, as I had never heard of him previously.
April 8, 2020
Ottima raccolta di racconti incentrati su camere chiuse/delitti impossibili di Edward D. Hoch, uno degli autori di racconti gialli più prolifici della seconda metà del Novecento.
Quelli raccolti qui sono davvero molto piacevoli, sebbene non ci sia nulla di nuovo o di particolarmente sbalorditivo. Ottime riproposizioni di vecchi trucchi in racconti piacevoli, in cui si assiste anche all'evoluzione del personaggio del Dr. Hawthorne.
Quelli raccolti qui sono davvero molto piacevoli, sebbene non ci sia nulla di nuovo o di particolarmente sbalorditivo. Ottime riproposizioni di vecchi trucchi in racconti piacevoli, in cui si assiste anche all'evoluzione del personaggio del Dr. Hawthorne.
December 3, 2024
Charming locked room mysteries with a delightful protagonist and a lovely supporting cast. Most of these stories (if not all of them) were originally published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
The protagonist is Dr. Sam Hawthorne, who practices medicine in a small New England town with a higher than usual murder rate. These are period pieces, and this volume collects the stories taking place before and v during World War II.
The protagonist is Dr. Sam Hawthorne, who practices medicine in a small New England town with a higher than usual murder rate. These are period pieces, and this volume collects the stories taking place before and v during World War II.
November 28, 2018
Edward D. Hoch was one of the best when it came to writing mystery short stories. I particularly like his Dr. Sam Hawthorne stories and have read all the previous collections. Each stands alone, but taken together they chronicle the 1920s through the mid-1940s in a small New England town, which just adds to the enjoyment. Fans of cozy mysteries would enjoy these.
December 1, 2019
This collection of stories is set during World War II. Just because a large part of the population has been sent overseas doesn't mean that murders, theft, and other crimes are going to stop. Luckily, Dr. Sam is there to help. We also get to hear about the birth of Dr.Sam's daughter and learn that she is the audience for at least some of the stories that have been told.
December 9, 2019
Pleasant Reading
A bit dated and a bit far fetched yet enjoyable reading. More laid back and friendly than challenging and certainly more Marple than Chandler. Nice characters, nice outback setting.
A bit dated and a bit far fetched yet enjoyable reading. More laid back and friendly than challenging and certainly more Marple than Chandler. Nice characters, nice outback setting.
January 8, 2021
Entertaining collection. Fun to try and solve before the reveal.
Recommend this collection to fans of classic locked room mysteries. Very entertaining and fun reads. Try to solve before the end.
Recommend this collection to fans of classic locked room mysteries. Very entertaining and fun reads. Try to solve before the end.
May 8, 2020
Hit and miss collection of locked room/impossible crime short stories.Fans of Hoch and the genre will find things to enjoy here,but nothing particularly new or mind boggling.
February 25, 2023
Same good quality as the rest of the series
September 17, 2023
The final collection of Hoch’s locked room mysteries featuring series character Dr. Sam Hawthorne.
September 10, 2018
Another top notch collection of locked room mysteries. Full review at classicmystery.blog
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews