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Crime without Murder
301 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1970
12 people want to read
About the author
Dorothy Salisbury Davis
63 books15 followersDorothy Salisbury Davis is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, and a recipient of lifetime achievement awards from Bouchercon and Malice Domestic. The author of seventeen crime novels, including the Mrs. Norris Mysteries and the Julie Hayes Mysteries; three historical novels; and numerous short stories; she has served as president of the Mystery Writers of America and is a founder of Sisters in Crime.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 28, 2023
Crime without murder? Surely the overwhelming percentage of crimes committed don't involve murder - very few people jaywalking kill someone at the same time. So what makes the concept of the book Crime Without Murder worthy of consideration?
Simply this: a large percentage of mystery fiction does involve murder. Would readers be interested in reading a book titled Who Blackmailed Roger Ackroyd? Death adds urgency.
And yet, the twenty-five stories in this anthology are for the most part sufficiently intriguing to keep a reader's interest. Of course, all these stories are short; the two longest are each only twenty pages.
This was the twenty-fifth volume in this series of anthologies published under the aegis of the Mystery Writers of America. Many of these have themes; in this one, obviously, that theme is telling of crimes that do not includes murders. The book does cheat, in my opinion; one of the stories is about an attempted murder, which I think should have ruled it out.
In most of the new volumes in this series (as I write this in 2023) all the stories are being published for the first time. That is not the case here. At least twenty-three of the stories had appeared previously. I think that the two that have no earlier publication listed in the "Acknowledgments" were probably new to this collection. Those are "Deerglen Queen" by Bill Knox and "Rape" by David Montross. The earliest of the other stories is from 1940. At least seven of these stories are entries in series; there might be others of which I am unaware.
I mentioned in another review on this site that I had recently read and greatly enjoyed three stories written by the editor of this anthology, Dorothy Salisbury Davis. She does pretty well as an editor, although this book as a whole does not match the quality of Davis's own fiction. Her "Introduction" to this volume is longer and much more thoughtful than most of those that I have read in this series. It is not strictly about crimes that do not include murders but rather about violence in literature, particularly in mystery fiction. She writes:
Murder in such fiction is as credible as its motive, and motive goes to character... I confess now to the reason for having, as a matter of conscience, raised the question of writing violence: where an otherwise unnecessary act of violence is concocted to the purpose of story structure, to wake the reader up, or to distract him from weakness of motive or thinness of characterization, I suggest the greatest violence is to the writer himself and to his reader, and by extension, to society.
(An explanatory aside: Early in this essay, Ms. Davis writes [concerning author Rex Stout], "one is tempted to paraphrase that learned critic who so despises the mystery and say, Who cares who writes the great American novel?" I suspect that many readers would not know to whom this refers. The author Edmund Wlson wrote a well-known denunciation of mystery fiction under the title "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?")
The stories in this anthology appear in alphabetical order by the authors. I will use that in my comments as well.
"Spy-Haunts of the World: A Realistic Guide for the Romantic Traveler" by Eric Ambler is the only entry in this collection that is not a story; it is, rather, what some magazines used to call a "non-fact article." It is also one of the few items here intended to be funny - and it is. Spies, Ambler wrote, were a vanishing breed and must be maintained, as with elephants or American buffaloes. Perhaps there could be a preserve, "to be called the E. Phillips Oppenheim Memorial Park." (I would suggest that sections of the park might be named for Ambler himself, for Graham Greene, for John le Carré, and for Antonio Prohias [the artist who drew the "Spy vs Spy" cartoons in Mad magazine.]) This was from 1956; I think that it holds up very well.
"Impossible crimes" are an important part of mystery fiction. They can be wonderfully clever or just silly. "The Footprint in the Sky" by John Dickson Carr falls into the "silly" category. The fact that this is by John Dickson Carr proves that, as an old saying states, even Jove nods. This is part of a series featuring Colonel March.
Why do people in the American South still wave Confederate flags and revere Robert E. Lee? The victors do indeed write the history but that does not mean that those not victorious do not remember. "Freedom Fighter" by Michael Collins has nothing to do with the American Civil War; it is about Hungarians and people from what once was Yugoslavia in New York after the 1956 Hungarian revolution. But hatreds do not disappear just because some conditions change.
Stanley Ellin was perhaps the greatest writer of short mystery fiction of his time - or, possibly, of any time. "The Nine-to-Five Man" deals with crime as a business, not all that different from other businesses. I can't decide if I think that the last sentence is perfect or is too easily ironic. Either way, this story is wonderful.
"A Matter of Honor" by Robert L. Fish is a series tale about Kek Huuygens, smuggler, con man, and yet, man of principles. A stolen Franz Hals painting must be brought to Madrid. This is pleasant but complicated; I am not sure exactly who does what.
In Michael Gilbert's series story "The System," the continuing "character" is not one person; it is a British legal firm, originally named Horniman Brewer & Coates. A member of the firm is tricked into helping a potential spy to get a passport. But the firm's records are quite extraordinary and seem to have information about everything and everyone. This is the firm in what I recall as an excellent novel, Smallbone Deceased. Two brief relevant excerpts: "'A firm of family solicitors...is one of the few unchanging things in a changing world'" and "'The Special Branch, the Secret Service, the police,' he said. 'No doubt they're all right in their own way. But they haven't got our facilities.'"
Counterfeiting Confederate currency might seem to be a waste of time, but it might come in handy in "A Matter of Pride," a very brief tale by Morris Hershman. But there may be more trickery involved than first anticipated.
One of my favorite stories in this book is the somber "If You See This Woman" by Dolores Hitchens. A mentally challenged young woman is working for a couple with a baby. She overhears a conversation about the possible necessity to "throw out the baby with the bathwater" and determines to stop that from happening. I don't recall reading anything else by Hitchens; was she always this good?
Nick Velvet is the leading character in a series by Edward D. Hoch. Velvet is a thief; he steals items of little obvious financial value for large fees. In "The Theft of the Brazen Letters," Velvet is hired to steal three of the seven brass letters in a company name displayed outside their plant. As is not always the case, this time the method used in the theft seems almost plausible. But why do people want this done? Readers must remember that "brazen" has two meanings: one is "made of brass," the other is "bold and without shame."
A review on this site by Drew Weatherton made me aware that "Jeffery Hudson," credited as the author of "How Does That Make You Feel?," was actually a pseudonym used by Michael Crichton. An angry patient, who had reason to believe that his wife was having an affair with his psychiatrist, bursts into that psychiatrist's office, evidently homicidally mad. The doctor is the most calm and level-headed person on the planet:
"Sit down," Dr. Eyck said, his voice soothing. "Calm yourself."
"I don't want to calm myself."
"What do you want to do?"
"I want to kill you," Finney said, reaching into his pocket and taking out a gun. It was a short, stubby black automatic.
"How long," said Dr. Eyck, "have you wanted to kill me?"
This is, obviously, another humorous story - and a very clever one.
Dorothy B. Hughes' "The Granny Woman" in one way is a bad choice for this anthology. A university professor compiling mountain ballads comes to a small community in the Ozarks, seeking the "Granny Woman," an almost-witch reputed to know a lot about this subject. He is greeted with hostility and informed that she is dead. Much of the charm of this story is in the narration by a woman who had been an adolescent when these events took place.
"Deerglen Queen" by Bill Knox is another tale with considerable charm. A thirty-seven year old unmarried American woman inherits a distillery in the parish of Deerglen in Scotland. That company makes nothing but excellent single malt scotch. It has been in the same family for almost three hundred years. The woman gets a good offer to sell the distillery. She initially turns it down, but then a series of "accidents" befall the distillery.
"The Man Who Talked to Books" is a brief story by Lucille Lewis. A retired man whose wife has died and whose children are grown has moved into a rooming house. He has many books; they are important to him. One room in his building would be perfect for him - lots of book shelves. But the woman who lives there shows no sign of wanting to move. She also has many books, which seem to be shelved haphazardly and never read. Then the man comes to realize something which might resolve his problem. This is not a very good story.
Also not very good is "The Plot" by Margaret Manners. A married woman who never feels quite well anymore has stopped her career as an author of fiction. She believes that her husband is very attracted to a waitress at a local inn. The woman keeps thinking of story plots in her mind, all involving herself and things that might happen to her. Perhaps, she thinks, her husband might want to kill her.
A bank is robbed and one of the tellers believes he has a plan to keep this from ever happening again in "Loaded with Money" (a most appropriate title) by Anthony Marsh. The bank's policy is that if there is a robbery, the bank staff should give the robbers the money and do nothing to fight back, and the manager insists that they must follow that policy. The teller, however, has other ideas.
"Rape" by David Montross points out an upside to being raped. I can't understand why Ms. Davis included this story.
"Shutterbug" by Al Nussbaum is narrated by a man who is sort of an American version of a paparazzo. He obsessively takes pictures of horrible things that happen to people. His coworkers regard him as unfeeling. He covers World War II and the Korean War, photographing suffering. And then he meets a woman.
Bill Pronzini has a continuing character, a detective whose name is never given. That detective is the narrator of "The Snatch." An eight year old boy has been abducted and his family has received a demand for ransom - two hundred fifty thousand dollars. The detective is asked to be the contact person, the man delivering the money to the kidnappers. The boy's father, a well-known entrepreneur, has recently made some bad deals and is practically broke. Another investor, a more careful one, agrees to put up the money, but he has some reservations. Soon the detective does as well; he feels that something is wrong, but he does not want to put the child in more danger. Pronzini is a master of this kind of story, and this one is quite good.
Ellery Queen is the continuing character in a series credited to "Ellery Queen." The Queen stories revel in puzzles, which frequently are the only point to the stories. In "Mystery at the Library of Congress," someone is using books in the library to inform other people about another person. (Don't expect this to make sense; Queen stories are often preposterous.) In three instances, law enforcement was able to find the link among three books that identify the person. In one case, the authors' initials were the relevant factor; in another, all the book titles in some way referred to a particular color. But what is the connection linking the latest three books? Queen figures it out - and so did I, although I didn't get any of the earlier ones. I think that all these Queenian puzzle stories are poor, certainly including this one.
"Jump Job" by Carl Henry Rathjen is, I believe, intended to give the reader edge of your seat excitement. I found it both confusing and dull. A police officer is newly assigned to a unit that handles would-be suicides who threaten to jump from high places. The narrator is the officer's supervisor. The first potential jumper the young officer must deal with is his former girlfriend.
Jaime Sandaval's narrator in "Art for Money's Sake" (a variation on the phrase "art for art's sake) is a long-time museum employee suddenly faced with forced retirement. He has very little money saved. However, he can paint, although he has never made money from his artwork. Perhaps, though, he could carry out a complicated scheme to forge a Delgardi painting. This is clever, amusing, and just plain nice.
In the story "The Man Who Talked with Books" discussed above, a man wants to have a particular room and hopes that the woman who is currently occupying that room will leave. "The Fall of the High-Flying Dutchman by Georges Simenon begins with that same situation, but otherwise they are not similar. A man checks into a hotel, requesting a particular room. That room is occupied, but the hotel management says that when the woman checks out, he can take over the room. So he waits...and waits...and waits. And then he takes action. Eventually the reader finds out why he wants access to that room.
In "Present for Minna" by Richard Martin Stern, a sailor has returned from a voyage with a case of brandy to share with his wife. But he had given no thought to paying the duty on the brandy, which is more money than he has. Another sailor suggests he could smuggle the brandy through Customs. The first sailor says that would not be honest. His friend taunts him and offers to bet ten to one that he couldn't get the brandy through Customs even if he tried. The first sailor comes up with an ingenious plan. The end of the story is pleasantly surprising.
Lillian de la Torre had a well-known series of stories featuring Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. Boswell narrates these. In "The Monboddo Ape Boy," set in 1773, the two men are visiting Lord Monboddo in Scotland. Monboddo is an amateur scientist and alchemist. He is bright but extremely gullible and given to embracing odd theories. Two men of unsavory appearance sell Monboddo what appears to be a feral child, an "ape boy" that they say was living in a tree when they found him. Monboddo, who is not otherwise shown to be stupid, believes this, evidently thinking that the boy was raised by simians in the jungles - or was it the savannahs?- of darkest Scotland. Johnson resolves all the related problems but long before that I had decided that this story was too ridiculous to care about.
The last story is "Suburban Tigress" by Lawrence Treat. A housewife has called for a plumber. The man spends his time at her home preparing to blackmail her, claiming they were lovers. The woman is smart, brave, and determined. This has a most satisfactory solution.
One problem with setting up a collection of short fiction using something like alphabetical order is that the editor is then tied in to that order. In most such collections, the editor could arrange stories in different ways so that, say, not all the very long stories are together and stories with some plot similarities might be kept apart. In this book, most of the really good stories are in the earlier part of the book and almost all of the bad ones are in the last part. If one were reading the stories in this order (and, of course, agreed with all my opinions about the stories), the reader would undoubtedly be disappointed as he or she kept reading.
And as for my opinions - my favorite stories in this anthology are "Spy-Haunts of the World" By Eric Ambler, "Freedom Fighter" by Michael Collins, "The Nine-to-Five Man" by Stanley Ellin, "The System" by Michael Gilbert, "If You See This Woman" by Dolores Hitchens, "How Does That Make You Feel?" by Jeffery Hudson, "Deerglen Queen" by Bill Knox, "Art for Money's Sake" by Jaime Sandaval, and "Suburban Tigress" by Lawrence Treat. The very best, I think, are the stories by Ellin and Hitchens.
Simply this: a large percentage of mystery fiction does involve murder. Would readers be interested in reading a book titled Who Blackmailed Roger Ackroyd? Death adds urgency.
And yet, the twenty-five stories in this anthology are for the most part sufficiently intriguing to keep a reader's interest. Of course, all these stories are short; the two longest are each only twenty pages.
This was the twenty-fifth volume in this series of anthologies published under the aegis of the Mystery Writers of America. Many of these have themes; in this one, obviously, that theme is telling of crimes that do not includes murders. The book does cheat, in my opinion; one of the stories is about an attempted murder, which I think should have ruled it out.
In most of the new volumes in this series (as I write this in 2023) all the stories are being published for the first time. That is not the case here. At least twenty-three of the stories had appeared previously. I think that the two that have no earlier publication listed in the "Acknowledgments" were probably new to this collection. Those are "Deerglen Queen" by Bill Knox and "Rape" by David Montross. The earliest of the other stories is from 1940. At least seven of these stories are entries in series; there might be others of which I am unaware.
I mentioned in another review on this site that I had recently read and greatly enjoyed three stories written by the editor of this anthology, Dorothy Salisbury Davis. She does pretty well as an editor, although this book as a whole does not match the quality of Davis's own fiction. Her "Introduction" to this volume is longer and much more thoughtful than most of those that I have read in this series. It is not strictly about crimes that do not include murders but rather about violence in literature, particularly in mystery fiction. She writes:
Murder in such fiction is as credible as its motive, and motive goes to character... I confess now to the reason for having, as a matter of conscience, raised the question of writing violence: where an otherwise unnecessary act of violence is concocted to the purpose of story structure, to wake the reader up, or to distract him from weakness of motive or thinness of characterization, I suggest the greatest violence is to the writer himself and to his reader, and by extension, to society.
(An explanatory aside: Early in this essay, Ms. Davis writes [concerning author Rex Stout], "one is tempted to paraphrase that learned critic who so despises the mystery and say, Who cares who writes the great American novel?" I suspect that many readers would not know to whom this refers. The author Edmund Wlson wrote a well-known denunciation of mystery fiction under the title "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?")
The stories in this anthology appear in alphabetical order by the authors. I will use that in my comments as well.
"Spy-Haunts of the World: A Realistic Guide for the Romantic Traveler" by Eric Ambler is the only entry in this collection that is not a story; it is, rather, what some magazines used to call a "non-fact article." It is also one of the few items here intended to be funny - and it is. Spies, Ambler wrote, were a vanishing breed and must be maintained, as with elephants or American buffaloes. Perhaps there could be a preserve, "to be called the E. Phillips Oppenheim Memorial Park." (I would suggest that sections of the park might be named for Ambler himself, for Graham Greene, for John le Carré, and for Antonio Prohias [the artist who drew the "Spy vs Spy" cartoons in Mad magazine.]) This was from 1956; I think that it holds up very well.
"Impossible crimes" are an important part of mystery fiction. They can be wonderfully clever or just silly. "The Footprint in the Sky" by John Dickson Carr falls into the "silly" category. The fact that this is by John Dickson Carr proves that, as an old saying states, even Jove nods. This is part of a series featuring Colonel March.
Why do people in the American South still wave Confederate flags and revere Robert E. Lee? The victors do indeed write the history but that does not mean that those not victorious do not remember. "Freedom Fighter" by Michael Collins has nothing to do with the American Civil War; it is about Hungarians and people from what once was Yugoslavia in New York after the 1956 Hungarian revolution. But hatreds do not disappear just because some conditions change.
Stanley Ellin was perhaps the greatest writer of short mystery fiction of his time - or, possibly, of any time. "The Nine-to-Five Man" deals with crime as a business, not all that different from other businesses. I can't decide if I think that the last sentence is perfect or is too easily ironic. Either way, this story is wonderful.
"A Matter of Honor" by Robert L. Fish is a series tale about Kek Huuygens, smuggler, con man, and yet, man of principles. A stolen Franz Hals painting must be brought to Madrid. This is pleasant but complicated; I am not sure exactly who does what.
In Michael Gilbert's series story "The System," the continuing "character" is not one person; it is a British legal firm, originally named Horniman Brewer & Coates. A member of the firm is tricked into helping a potential spy to get a passport. But the firm's records are quite extraordinary and seem to have information about everything and everyone. This is the firm in what I recall as an excellent novel, Smallbone Deceased. Two brief relevant excerpts: "'A firm of family solicitors...is one of the few unchanging things in a changing world'" and "'The Special Branch, the Secret Service, the police,' he said. 'No doubt they're all right in their own way. But they haven't got our facilities.'"
Counterfeiting Confederate currency might seem to be a waste of time, but it might come in handy in "A Matter of Pride," a very brief tale by Morris Hershman. But there may be more trickery involved than first anticipated.
One of my favorite stories in this book is the somber "If You See This Woman" by Dolores Hitchens. A mentally challenged young woman is working for a couple with a baby. She overhears a conversation about the possible necessity to "throw out the baby with the bathwater" and determines to stop that from happening. I don't recall reading anything else by Hitchens; was she always this good?
Nick Velvet is the leading character in a series by Edward D. Hoch. Velvet is a thief; he steals items of little obvious financial value for large fees. In "The Theft of the Brazen Letters," Velvet is hired to steal three of the seven brass letters in a company name displayed outside their plant. As is not always the case, this time the method used in the theft seems almost plausible. But why do people want this done? Readers must remember that "brazen" has two meanings: one is "made of brass," the other is "bold and without shame."
A review on this site by Drew Weatherton made me aware that "Jeffery Hudson," credited as the author of "How Does That Make You Feel?," was actually a pseudonym used by Michael Crichton. An angry patient, who had reason to believe that his wife was having an affair with his psychiatrist, bursts into that psychiatrist's office, evidently homicidally mad. The doctor is the most calm and level-headed person on the planet:
"Sit down," Dr. Eyck said, his voice soothing. "Calm yourself."
"I don't want to calm myself."
"What do you want to do?"
"I want to kill you," Finney said, reaching into his pocket and taking out a gun. It was a short, stubby black automatic.
"How long," said Dr. Eyck, "have you wanted to kill me?"
This is, obviously, another humorous story - and a very clever one.
Dorothy B. Hughes' "The Granny Woman" in one way is a bad choice for this anthology. A university professor compiling mountain ballads comes to a small community in the Ozarks, seeking the "Granny Woman," an almost-witch reputed to know a lot about this subject. He is greeted with hostility and informed that she is dead. Much of the charm of this story is in the narration by a woman who had been an adolescent when these events took place.
"Deerglen Queen" by Bill Knox is another tale with considerable charm. A thirty-seven year old unmarried American woman inherits a distillery in the parish of Deerglen in Scotland. That company makes nothing but excellent single malt scotch. It has been in the same family for almost three hundred years. The woman gets a good offer to sell the distillery. She initially turns it down, but then a series of "accidents" befall the distillery.
"The Man Who Talked to Books" is a brief story by Lucille Lewis. A retired man whose wife has died and whose children are grown has moved into a rooming house. He has many books; they are important to him. One room in his building would be perfect for him - lots of book shelves. But the woman who lives there shows no sign of wanting to move. She also has many books, which seem to be shelved haphazardly and never read. Then the man comes to realize something which might resolve his problem. This is not a very good story.
Also not very good is "The Plot" by Margaret Manners. A married woman who never feels quite well anymore has stopped her career as an author of fiction. She believes that her husband is very attracted to a waitress at a local inn. The woman keeps thinking of story plots in her mind, all involving herself and things that might happen to her. Perhaps, she thinks, her husband might want to kill her.
A bank is robbed and one of the tellers believes he has a plan to keep this from ever happening again in "Loaded with Money" (a most appropriate title) by Anthony Marsh. The bank's policy is that if there is a robbery, the bank staff should give the robbers the money and do nothing to fight back, and the manager insists that they must follow that policy. The teller, however, has other ideas.
"Rape" by David Montross points out an upside to being raped. I can't understand why Ms. Davis included this story.
"Shutterbug" by Al Nussbaum is narrated by a man who is sort of an American version of a paparazzo. He obsessively takes pictures of horrible things that happen to people. His coworkers regard him as unfeeling. He covers World War II and the Korean War, photographing suffering. And then he meets a woman.
Bill Pronzini has a continuing character, a detective whose name is never given. That detective is the narrator of "The Snatch." An eight year old boy has been abducted and his family has received a demand for ransom - two hundred fifty thousand dollars. The detective is asked to be the contact person, the man delivering the money to the kidnappers. The boy's father, a well-known entrepreneur, has recently made some bad deals and is practically broke. Another investor, a more careful one, agrees to put up the money, but he has some reservations. Soon the detective does as well; he feels that something is wrong, but he does not want to put the child in more danger. Pronzini is a master of this kind of story, and this one is quite good.
Ellery Queen is the continuing character in a series credited to "Ellery Queen." The Queen stories revel in puzzles, which frequently are the only point to the stories. In "Mystery at the Library of Congress," someone is using books in the library to inform other people about another person. (Don't expect this to make sense; Queen stories are often preposterous.) In three instances, law enforcement was able to find the link among three books that identify the person. In one case, the authors' initials were the relevant factor; in another, all the book titles in some way referred to a particular color. But what is the connection linking the latest three books? Queen figures it out - and so did I, although I didn't get any of the earlier ones. I think that all these Queenian puzzle stories are poor, certainly including this one.
"Jump Job" by Carl Henry Rathjen is, I believe, intended to give the reader edge of your seat excitement. I found it both confusing and dull. A police officer is newly assigned to a unit that handles would-be suicides who threaten to jump from high places. The narrator is the officer's supervisor. The first potential jumper the young officer must deal with is his former girlfriend.
Jaime Sandaval's narrator in "Art for Money's Sake" (a variation on the phrase "art for art's sake) is a long-time museum employee suddenly faced with forced retirement. He has very little money saved. However, he can paint, although he has never made money from his artwork. Perhaps, though, he could carry out a complicated scheme to forge a Delgardi painting. This is clever, amusing, and just plain nice.
In the story "The Man Who Talked with Books" discussed above, a man wants to have a particular room and hopes that the woman who is currently occupying that room will leave. "The Fall of the High-Flying Dutchman by Georges Simenon begins with that same situation, but otherwise they are not similar. A man checks into a hotel, requesting a particular room. That room is occupied, but the hotel management says that when the woman checks out, he can take over the room. So he waits...and waits...and waits. And then he takes action. Eventually the reader finds out why he wants access to that room.
In "Present for Minna" by Richard Martin Stern, a sailor has returned from a voyage with a case of brandy to share with his wife. But he had given no thought to paying the duty on the brandy, which is more money than he has. Another sailor suggests he could smuggle the brandy through Customs. The first sailor says that would not be honest. His friend taunts him and offers to bet ten to one that he couldn't get the brandy through Customs even if he tried. The first sailor comes up with an ingenious plan. The end of the story is pleasantly surprising.
Lillian de la Torre had a well-known series of stories featuring Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. Boswell narrates these. In "The Monboddo Ape Boy," set in 1773, the two men are visiting Lord Monboddo in Scotland. Monboddo is an amateur scientist and alchemist. He is bright but extremely gullible and given to embracing odd theories. Two men of unsavory appearance sell Monboddo what appears to be a feral child, an "ape boy" that they say was living in a tree when they found him. Monboddo, who is not otherwise shown to be stupid, believes this, evidently thinking that the boy was raised by simians in the jungles - or was it the savannahs?- of darkest Scotland. Johnson resolves all the related problems but long before that I had decided that this story was too ridiculous to care about.
The last story is "Suburban Tigress" by Lawrence Treat. A housewife has called for a plumber. The man spends his time at her home preparing to blackmail her, claiming they were lovers. The woman is smart, brave, and determined. This has a most satisfactory solution.
One problem with setting up a collection of short fiction using something like alphabetical order is that the editor is then tied in to that order. In most such collections, the editor could arrange stories in different ways so that, say, not all the very long stories are together and stories with some plot similarities might be kept apart. In this book, most of the really good stories are in the earlier part of the book and almost all of the bad ones are in the last part. If one were reading the stories in this order (and, of course, agreed with all my opinions about the stories), the reader would undoubtedly be disappointed as he or she kept reading.
And as for my opinions - my favorite stories in this anthology are "Spy-Haunts of the World" By Eric Ambler, "Freedom Fighter" by Michael Collins, "The Nine-to-Five Man" by Stanley Ellin, "The System" by Michael Gilbert, "If You See This Woman" by Dolores Hitchens, "How Does That Make You Feel?" by Jeffery Hudson, "Deerglen Queen" by Bill Knox, "Art for Money's Sake" by Jaime Sandaval, and "Suburban Tigress" by Lawrence Treat. The very best, I think, are the stories by Ellin and Hitchens.
May 21, 2017
BOTTOM LINE: 1970 edition of the Mystery Writers of America short story anthology series. This one is edited by Dorothy Salisbury Davis and is excellent.
Superb introduction by Davis about the nature of violence and our enjoyment of reading and writing about it, and a grand bunch of wonderful stories. The best, IMO, include “If You See This Woman”, Dolores Hitchens; “Deerglen Queen”, Bill Knox; “The Plot”, Margaret Manners; “The Shutterbug”, Al Nussbaum. Also includes stories by Eric Ambler, John Dickson Carr, Michael Collins, Stanley Ellin, Robert L. Fish, Michael Gilbert, Morris Hershman, Edward D. Hoch, Jeffrey Hudson, Dorothy B. Hughes, Lucille Lewis, Anthony Marsh, David Montross, Bill Pronzini, Ellery Queen, Carl Henry Rathgen, Jaime Sandaval, Georges Simenon, Richard Martin Stern, Lillian DeLaTorre, Lawrence Treat.
Eric Ambler, “Spy Haunts of the World”, 1956
— droll tongue-in-cheek bewailing the loss of the professional, pre-ww2 spy
John Dickson Carr, “The Footprint in the Sky”, 1940
— nifty little Colonel March tale of robbery and a snowstorm
Michael Collins, “Freedom Fighter”, 1962
— old hates never die, they just brood, easy to figure out now but interesting
Stanley Ellin, “The Nine-to-Five Man”, 1961
— classic tale of a true “odd jobs man”
Robert L. Fish, “A Matter of Honor”, 1969
— nice smuggling story with a keen edge, circa 1948
Michael Gilbert, “The System”, 1970
— tidily twisted tale of lawyers and spies
Morris Hershman, “A Matter of Pride”, 1966
— antiquers trying to out-do each other, nice quickie
Dolores Hitchens, “If You See this Woman”, 1965
— a young girl misunderstands her family’s dynamic, with sad results, superb
Edward D. Hoch, “The Theft of the Brazen Letters”, 1968
— tidy little Nick Velvet caper
Jeffrey Hudson, “How Does that Make You Feel?”, 1968
— sly and sharp twist played on an adulterous psychiatrist
Dorothy B. Hughes, “The Granny Woman”, 1963
— superbly moody down-home tale, beautifully crafted
Bill Knox, “Deerglen Queen”
— blackmail and whiskey, Highland style, with panache
Lucille Lewis, “The Man Who Talked With Books”, 1956
— nice little bit about a librarian with a good memory and a taste for crime
Margaret Manners, “The Plot”, 1947
— superb little bit about an author and her greedy husband
Anthony Marsh, “Loaded with Money”, 1967
— peculiar anti-robbery tale, sweet
David Montross, “Rape”
— dark, maddeningly obscure moral tale, intriguing writer though
Al Nussbaum, “Shutterbug”, 1969
— lovely “mad artist” bit, nifty last twist
Bill Pronzini, “The Snatch”, 1969
— kidnaping with a difficult moral edginess
Ellery Queen, “Mystery at the Library of Congress”, 1960
— neat little puzzler, a mite too precious but beautifully done
Carl Henry Rathgen, “Jump Job”, 1966
— a girl who won’t let go, creepy
Jaime Sandaval, “Art for Money’s Sake”, 1970
— a forger gets caught, but not by the cops
Georges Simenon, “The Fall of the High-Flying Dutchman”
— gentle con job, excellent characters
Richard Martin Stern, “Present for Mamma”, 1960
— sweet story about a not-so-stupid seaman
Lillian de la Torre, “The Monboddo Ape Boy”, 1945
— not interested, don’t like her “Dr. Sam” stories at all.
Lawrence Treat, “Suburban Tigress”, 1957
— plumber tries to blackmail a gentle housewife, but...
Superb introduction by Davis about the nature of violence and our enjoyment of reading and writing about it, and a grand bunch of wonderful stories. The best, IMO, include “If You See This Woman”, Dolores Hitchens; “Deerglen Queen”, Bill Knox; “The Plot”, Margaret Manners; “The Shutterbug”, Al Nussbaum. Also includes stories by Eric Ambler, John Dickson Carr, Michael Collins, Stanley Ellin, Robert L. Fish, Michael Gilbert, Morris Hershman, Edward D. Hoch, Jeffrey Hudson, Dorothy B. Hughes, Lucille Lewis, Anthony Marsh, David Montross, Bill Pronzini, Ellery Queen, Carl Henry Rathgen, Jaime Sandaval, Georges Simenon, Richard Martin Stern, Lillian DeLaTorre, Lawrence Treat.
Eric Ambler, “Spy Haunts of the World”, 1956
— droll tongue-in-cheek bewailing the loss of the professional, pre-ww2 spy
John Dickson Carr, “The Footprint in the Sky”, 1940
— nifty little Colonel March tale of robbery and a snowstorm
Michael Collins, “Freedom Fighter”, 1962
— old hates never die, they just brood, easy to figure out now but interesting
Stanley Ellin, “The Nine-to-Five Man”, 1961
— classic tale of a true “odd jobs man”
Robert L. Fish, “A Matter of Honor”, 1969
— nice smuggling story with a keen edge, circa 1948
Michael Gilbert, “The System”, 1970
— tidily twisted tale of lawyers and spies
Morris Hershman, “A Matter of Pride”, 1966
— antiquers trying to out-do each other, nice quickie
Dolores Hitchens, “If You See this Woman”, 1965
— a young girl misunderstands her family’s dynamic, with sad results, superb
Edward D. Hoch, “The Theft of the Brazen Letters”, 1968
— tidy little Nick Velvet caper
Jeffrey Hudson, “How Does that Make You Feel?”, 1968
— sly and sharp twist played on an adulterous psychiatrist
Dorothy B. Hughes, “The Granny Woman”, 1963
— superbly moody down-home tale, beautifully crafted
Bill Knox, “Deerglen Queen”
— blackmail and whiskey, Highland style, with panache
Lucille Lewis, “The Man Who Talked With Books”, 1956
— nice little bit about a librarian with a good memory and a taste for crime
Margaret Manners, “The Plot”, 1947
— superb little bit about an author and her greedy husband
Anthony Marsh, “Loaded with Money”, 1967
— peculiar anti-robbery tale, sweet
David Montross, “Rape”
— dark, maddeningly obscure moral tale, intriguing writer though
Al Nussbaum, “Shutterbug”, 1969
— lovely “mad artist” bit, nifty last twist
Bill Pronzini, “The Snatch”, 1969
— kidnaping with a difficult moral edginess
Ellery Queen, “Mystery at the Library of Congress”, 1960
— neat little puzzler, a mite too precious but beautifully done
Carl Henry Rathgen, “Jump Job”, 1966
— a girl who won’t let go, creepy
Jaime Sandaval, “Art for Money’s Sake”, 1970
— a forger gets caught, but not by the cops
Georges Simenon, “The Fall of the High-Flying Dutchman”
— gentle con job, excellent characters
Richard Martin Stern, “Present for Mamma”, 1960
— sweet story about a not-so-stupid seaman
Lillian de la Torre, “The Monboddo Ape Boy”, 1945
— not interested, don’t like her “Dr. Sam” stories at all.
Lawrence Treat, “Suburban Tigress”, 1957
— plumber tries to blackmail a gentle housewife, but...
August 31, 2017
Feeling the blood pounding on either side of her skull, feeding her thoughts, she wondered why she should be ill with this incredible never-ending lassitude. In a story it would have had a reason, this illness, an emotional reason. That was the current fashion, and she had been a fashionable writer. She laughed to herself. No one knew better than she that fiction wasn't life at all. Art wasn't life either. All the ingredients were there except truth ... the part of yourself you never found. Your heroines found it, not too easily, of course; but at last their fingers did grasp it, their eyes were opened, and the reader with a sigh of satisfaction knew that a solution had been reached. Fiction gave you an answer; life never did.
An unusual collection of short stories, somehow avoiding murder in every outing. The title here fooled me. Sounded like an intriguing outsider to the usual run of murder mysteries, surely a source that has been overwhelmingly explored by now, if not exhausted. (It's not exhausted; the combination of mystery plus murder seems never to run dry, with new and original ventures every year. Authors who don't view it as 'genre' are the reason.)
But without Murder? What strange side streets and byways might these bring us down, what sort of writer goes in for, say, deception-- but not the ultimate crime? Are we fascinated yet?
Well, no. The answer to the question is: any writer looking to sell short little puzzley brain-twisters . . . to THE PULPS.
The Pulps (Ellery Queen, et al.) were a kind of train station wire-rack commodity, meant to amuse and distract the traveler between taking his seat and falling asleep before the destination. So the stories are short, punchy (sometimes outright hokey) and come in a couple sizes: the classic, standard 3.5 pager, the 7 pager where it's not all just quips and action, or the deluxe 16+ pager, presumably about much more consequential things.
Occasionally page length, and inspiration, allow for a nice Chandleresque moment here and there. In a story called The Snatch by Bill Pronzini, apparently a pulp repeat-offender, we get just that :
I drove out of Hillsborough and onto El Camino Real, north. I drove slowly, both hands on the wheel, concentrating on the darkening pavement, trying to keep my mind on what lay ahead.
But there was something bothering me. I couldn't place the feeling, and it made me uncomfortable. It seemed to be nagging just out of reach.
Forget it, I thought;. You've got to stay on op of this thing.
I drove up El Camino through Millbrae and into San Bruno. At Sneath Lane, I turned left and followed it across Junipero Serra Boulevard and then Skyline, up into the hills in back of Riverside Park. It was totally dark by then, and the fog floating in across Pacific from the ocean gave an eerie, disembodied quality to the lights of the Peninsula behind and below me...
While the Pulps were certainly the father of both hardboiled fiction and noir cinema, they are notable for their quantity, though not necessarily consistent quality. These authors were getting paid by the word but had to hold to the format, so a sameness crept into the lesser efforts. Their very subject matter inclined them toward the seedy and the disreputable. So while they are, at their best, proudly vivid anti-fairytales, a modernist recreation of the dystopian underworld of their day-- at their opposite pole, they're meanspirited little timewasters, a barrel full of snapping turtles in the marketplace of short fiction.
Here we have both, though certainly not the worst. Gotta say what really drew me in was the inclusion of the occasional real-deal writer, and not just mystery writers. John Dickson Carr, Dorothy Hughes, Eric Ambler and even Georges Simenon are here, not in their usual guises, but drawing little episodic what-ifs around people with strange incentives. Criminal intent gets you in the door, but stay on for the big scam.
One of the authors here, Michael Gilbert, founding member of the British Crime Writers Association, is notably mentioned in wikipedia: "Gilbert was known for writing only during his five-times-a-week commute by train between Kent and Lincoln's Inn. He was quoted as saying that this habit allowed him to "carry out a full and normal day's work as a solicitor, and to devote the evenings and weekends to my family."
I felt over and over again while reading these --that I could be on some period Connecticut commuter train, cigarette in one hand and palmsized crime gazette in the other. Speeding home to Everywhere, U.S.A., where a faithful wife awaited my imminent return with a shaker of martinis. What sounds pretty good on first consideration can go a little familiar with repetition.
Interesting collection from a meta standpoint, story by story though-- a mixed bag.
An unusual collection of short stories, somehow avoiding murder in every outing. The title here fooled me. Sounded like an intriguing outsider to the usual run of murder mysteries, surely a source that has been overwhelmingly explored by now, if not exhausted. (It's not exhausted; the combination of mystery plus murder seems never to run dry, with new and original ventures every year. Authors who don't view it as 'genre' are the reason.)
But without Murder? What strange side streets and byways might these bring us down, what sort of writer goes in for, say, deception-- but not the ultimate crime? Are we fascinated yet?
Well, no. The answer to the question is: any writer looking to sell short little puzzley brain-twisters . . . to THE PULPS.
The Pulps (Ellery Queen, et al.) were a kind of train station wire-rack commodity, meant to amuse and distract the traveler between taking his seat and falling asleep before the destination. So the stories are short, punchy (sometimes outright hokey) and come in a couple sizes: the classic, standard 3.5 pager, the 7 pager where it's not all just quips and action, or the deluxe 16+ pager, presumably about much more consequential things.
Occasionally page length, and inspiration, allow for a nice Chandleresque moment here and there. In a story called The Snatch by Bill Pronzini, apparently a pulp repeat-offender, we get just that :
I drove out of Hillsborough and onto El Camino Real, north. I drove slowly, both hands on the wheel, concentrating on the darkening pavement, trying to keep my mind on what lay ahead.
But there was something bothering me. I couldn't place the feeling, and it made me uncomfortable. It seemed to be nagging just out of reach.
Forget it, I thought;. You've got to stay on op of this thing.
I drove up El Camino through Millbrae and into San Bruno. At Sneath Lane, I turned left and followed it across Junipero Serra Boulevard and then Skyline, up into the hills in back of Riverside Park. It was totally dark by then, and the fog floating in across Pacific from the ocean gave an eerie, disembodied quality to the lights of the Peninsula behind and below me...
While the Pulps were certainly the father of both hardboiled fiction and noir cinema, they are notable for their quantity, though not necessarily consistent quality. These authors were getting paid by the word but had to hold to the format, so a sameness crept into the lesser efforts. Their very subject matter inclined them toward the seedy and the disreputable. So while they are, at their best, proudly vivid anti-fairytales, a modernist recreation of the dystopian underworld of their day-- at their opposite pole, they're meanspirited little timewasters, a barrel full of snapping turtles in the marketplace of short fiction.
Here we have both, though certainly not the worst. Gotta say what really drew me in was the inclusion of the occasional real-deal writer, and not just mystery writers. John Dickson Carr, Dorothy Hughes, Eric Ambler and even Georges Simenon are here, not in their usual guises, but drawing little episodic what-ifs around people with strange incentives. Criminal intent gets you in the door, but stay on for the big scam.
One of the authors here, Michael Gilbert, founding member of the British Crime Writers Association, is notably mentioned in wikipedia: "Gilbert was known for writing only during his five-times-a-week commute by train between Kent and Lincoln's Inn. He was quoted as saying that this habit allowed him to "carry out a full and normal day's work as a solicitor, and to devote the evenings and weekends to my family."
I felt over and over again while reading these --that I could be on some period Connecticut commuter train, cigarette in one hand and palmsized crime gazette in the other. Speeding home to Everywhere, U.S.A., where a faithful wife awaited my imminent return with a shaker of martinis. What sounds pretty good on first consideration can go a little familiar with repetition.
Interesting collection from a meta standpoint, story by story though-- a mixed bag.
March 17, 2016
I picked this up purely for the Michael Crichton short it contains; "How Does that Make You Feel" written under the pen name Jeffery Hudson. This 8-page short is one of the more difficult Crichton stories to track down but it's worth the effort if you're a fan. It's a conversation between a psychiatrist and a patient that escalates for a variety of reasons. I enjoyed it.
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