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Hunter and Hunted: The Ed and Am Hunter Novels
Fredric Brown was a popular American pulp writer whose work appeared in mystery and science fiction magazines of the 1930s through the 1960s. Hunter and The Ed and Am Hunter Novels, Part One reprints four of his mystery novels that originally appeared in the period from 1947 to 1950. The novels included in chronological order in this volume -- The Fabulous Clipjoint, The Dead Ringer, The Bloody Moonlight, and Compliments of a Fiend – feature the uncle-and-nephew detective team of Ed and Ambrose Hunter, the only recurring characters in Brown’s longer fiction. The Fabulous Clipjoint was Brown’s first published novel and is as much a coming-of-age novel as it is a mystery novel. In the book, young Ed Hunter sets out to enlist his Uncle Ambrose’s aid in tracking down his father’s killer. In the process, Ed comes to terms with his upbringing in the slums of Chicago and finally escapes to a new life in the traveling carnival. The Dead Ringer finds Ed and his Uncle Am on the road in a creepy murder mystery filled with vivid descriptions and authentic slang from the bygone days of the carnival. The Hunters take on a job for the Starlock Detective Agency in The Bloody Moonlight, and Ed finds himself alone in a disturbing rural setting that seems to include werewolves and radio signals from the moons of Jupiter. Finally, in Compliments of a Fiend, Uncle Am himself becomes the victim in a race against time. The only clue to solving the mystery of his disappearance seems to be a passage in the works of paranormal investigator Charles Fort. Hunter and Hunted collects the early Ed and Am Hunter novels together in one volume for the first time ever. A second volume is planned that will collect the later novels and stories featuring the Hunters.
640 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
1 person is currently reading
46 people want to read
About the author
Fredric Brown
807 books354 followersFredric Brown was an American science fiction and mystery writer. He was one of the boldest early writers in genre fiction in his use of narrative experimentation. While never in the front rank of popularity in his lifetime, Brown has developed a considerable cult following in the almost half century since he last wrote. His works have been periodically reprinted and he has a worldwide fan base, most notably in the U.S. and Europe, and especially in France, where there have been several recent movie adaptations of his work. He also remains popular in Japan.
Never financially secure, Brown - like many other pulp writers - often wrote at a furious pace in order to pay bills. This accounts, at least in part, for the uneven quality of his work. A newspaperman by profession, Brown was only able to devote 14 years of his life as a full-time fiction writer. Brown was also a heavy drinker, and this at times doubtless affected his productivity. A cultured man and omnivorous reader whose interests ranged far beyond those of most pulp writers, Brown had a lifelong interest in the flute, chess, poker, and the works of Lewis Carroll. Brown married twice and was the father of two sons.
Never financially secure, Brown - like many other pulp writers - often wrote at a furious pace in order to pay bills. This accounts, at least in part, for the uneven quality of his work. A newspaperman by profession, Brown was only able to devote 14 years of his life as a full-time fiction writer. Brown was also a heavy drinker, and this at times doubtless affected his productivity. A cultured man and omnivorous reader whose interests ranged far beyond those of most pulp writers, Brown had a lifelong interest in the flute, chess, poker, and the works of Lewis Carroll. Brown married twice and was the father of two sons.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 6, 2012
This book is one of the finest collection of mystery novels from a single-author who was never part of the hard-boiled trio, and even then had carved his own niche in the genre that, at times, seemed to outshine even his "mother" base, i.e. science-fiction. It is a genuine tragedy that the publisher went kaput after releasing this single volume of Frederic Brown Mystery Library, since it clearly shows that had they persevered in their venture we, the mystery lovers, were in a for a treat. The novels, individually, are acclaimed gems that hardly require any review. They are: -
1) The Fabulous Clipjoint: trying to solve a mystery of the most personal kind, the uncle-nephew partnership gets forged, and they learn a thing-or-two about themselves.
2) The Dead Ringer: another episode in the life of the duo, another solution which leaves life rather open-ended for them, again.
3) The Bloody Moonlight: trying to settle the mystery of possible signals from Mars, the matter gets complex with talks about a werewolf and the younger Hunter himself being suspected of murder.
4) Compliments of a Fiend: the vanishing of the senior Hunter becomes sinister as there are suspicions regarding am "Ambrose" collector who might be collecting Ambrose-s (including Ambrose Bierce) for a long time.
The mysteries are unique. The characters are authentic in all their flaws & strengths. The plotting & narratives are entirely realistic. In short, you would really like to find out the publishers of this volume to know why they had chickened out from publishing the subsequent volumes. Until some saint comes up to resume their venture, you are whole-heartedly recommended towards getting hold of this volume and immersing yourself therein.
1) The Fabulous Clipjoint: trying to solve a mystery of the most personal kind, the uncle-nephew partnership gets forged, and they learn a thing-or-two about themselves.
2) The Dead Ringer: another episode in the life of the duo, another solution which leaves life rather open-ended for them, again.
3) The Bloody Moonlight: trying to settle the mystery of possible signals from Mars, the matter gets complex with talks about a werewolf and the younger Hunter himself being suspected of murder.
4) Compliments of a Fiend: the vanishing of the senior Hunter becomes sinister as there are suspicions regarding am "Ambrose" collector who might be collecting Ambrose-s (including Ambrose Bierce) for a long time.
The mysteries are unique. The characters are authentic in all their flaws & strengths. The plotting & narratives are entirely realistic. In short, you would really like to find out the publishers of this volume to know why they had chickened out from publishing the subsequent volumes. Until some saint comes up to resume their venture, you are whole-heartedly recommended towards getting hold of this volume and immersing yourself therein.
February 4, 2017
So much drinking. So much.
How were these characters even able to walk, let alone not be puking their guts out continually. They go to someone's house, have three highballs, and one more drink since they'll be driving(!). Then got a bar and have a few more, but not feel tight at all, they say. Cops drink, doctors drink. Everyone drinks.
Maybe that's why time doesn't seem to matter. Dates that start at 2 am. Calling people up to ask simple questions at midnight. No one ever seems to sleep. I know it's not a good idea to read out real social life from fiction--but were the forties even partially like this?
This is an omnibus edition of the first four of Fredric Brown's Ed and Am Hunter novels. (plans to do a second volume, completing the stories, seems to have died.) Ed is a young man who, in the first, loses his father; Am is his uncle and fill-in father. He's currently working in a carnival, but, like Ed's dad, has lead a wild and woolly life in which he's done a little bit of everything, including working for a doctor, studying psychology, and working as a detective. A handy set of skills.
The first of the four novels, "The Fabulous Clipjoint," won the Edgar Award in 1947. Some of it has not aged particularly well. There is a lot of slang, for instance; there's the drinking, of course, and--problems that appear in most of the books--love and women are portrayed naively and horribly, respectively. The women are all venal manipulators. Ed falls in love at the drop of a hat.
The central mystery--who killed Ed's father, Am's brother--is good enough, though some of the props for making the mystery stick are weak: he couldn't have killed himself, Am says, because Am read books on psychology and tested him, finding he had a psychological hang-up that made it absolutely impossible(!). There are some weird grace notes--that work because of their weirdness--the cop who is investigating is friendly, but also on the make. Ed's stepsister keeps walking around half naked to get a reaction from him. (Remember: venal.) But then it wraps up very quickly at the end of a very short novel.
The story works better as a coming of age tale, with Ed awakening to a wider world of strange forces (and, of course, losing his virginity: to another bad woman). There's a whole subplot that ends up having very little to do with the central mystery, but it seems there to make the point to Ed that the world is bigger than he ever imagined, and his memories are tricky. The central message is made clear in an end speech by Am, about how weird the world is, but wonderful, too.
The second novel, The Dead Ringer--like all of them here, it is short--is the weakest of the four. Ed has followed Am into the life of a carney, when a midget is found dead where they work--but not on associated with the carnival. The slang is doubly hard to penetrate here because in addition to dated uses their is carnival argot. (This was about the time William Gresham's noir carnival book Nightmare Alley came out, too.) The real problem is that the mystery is both ridiculous and, from today's vantage point, extremely insulting; the racism is pretty thick--expected, I guess--but the use of the small people is hard to take seriously. There are more bad women, too, and Ed falling in love with one, while callously using another who actually seems good and does love him, too.
There's also the problem that Am seems under-motivated, which is a problem throughout all but the first novels. He is completely missing from the fourth, "Compliments of a Fiend" (sic), which is one of Brown's most famous stories. It is based on a snippet from Charles Fort, that there might be someone "collecting" Ambroses. And so Am--short for Ambrose--is collected; Ed, who is now working for a detective agency and hoping to start his own, with Ambrose--goes full bore to find him.
The story spins its wheels for the first third or so, trying to get a grip. There's some ridiculous folderol at the beginning to stretch out the mystery, and Ed doesn't start doing anything really useful for a while--until he decides to follow his uncle's last steps. (This should have been one of the first things anyone did.) Once he does, he finds, as one should expect, acquaintances with impure motives. He's done bad by a good woman, of course, but also makes the money he needs for his own agency--by playing footsies with some numbers runners--and finds his uncle. Turns out Am's simple job had--spoiler alert, for a book that is now 67 years old!--put him onto a conspiracy among thieves and that had gotten him kidnapped (and saved by a friend, rather than killed.)
For my money, the best of the stories here is the third one, The Bloody Moonlight. There slang here is the most penetrable; Am is off to the sideline for a good reason; the women don't come across particularly well-except for one older matron--but not as bad as in others, either. There's no casual racism. There are hints of the supernatural, but these are explained away, in the end. And they mystery is relatively solid, with a number of people interfering with Ed for their own nefarious purposes.
It also has a funny set up, with Ed hired to do one case, and continually failing at that because of interference. This adds a bit of extra suspense to the book--suspense not being something these novels have a lot of: they are more about character, especially Ed's development. He's not yet the Continental Op, but one can see how he is on his way to it. He is at odds with the law here, which is not the case in any of the other books, a legal and moral freelancer.
But he still drinks. A lot.
How were these characters even able to walk, let alone not be puking their guts out continually. They go to someone's house, have three highballs, and one more drink since they'll be driving(!). Then got a bar and have a few more, but not feel tight at all, they say. Cops drink, doctors drink. Everyone drinks.
Maybe that's why time doesn't seem to matter. Dates that start at 2 am. Calling people up to ask simple questions at midnight. No one ever seems to sleep. I know it's not a good idea to read out real social life from fiction--but were the forties even partially like this?
This is an omnibus edition of the first four of Fredric Brown's Ed and Am Hunter novels. (plans to do a second volume, completing the stories, seems to have died.) Ed is a young man who, in the first, loses his father; Am is his uncle and fill-in father. He's currently working in a carnival, but, like Ed's dad, has lead a wild and woolly life in which he's done a little bit of everything, including working for a doctor, studying psychology, and working as a detective. A handy set of skills.
The first of the four novels, "The Fabulous Clipjoint," won the Edgar Award in 1947. Some of it has not aged particularly well. There is a lot of slang, for instance; there's the drinking, of course, and--problems that appear in most of the books--love and women are portrayed naively and horribly, respectively. The women are all venal manipulators. Ed falls in love at the drop of a hat.
The central mystery--who killed Ed's father, Am's brother--is good enough, though some of the props for making the mystery stick are weak: he couldn't have killed himself, Am says, because Am read books on psychology and tested him, finding he had a psychological hang-up that made it absolutely impossible(!). There are some weird grace notes--that work because of their weirdness--the cop who is investigating is friendly, but also on the make. Ed's stepsister keeps walking around half naked to get a reaction from him. (Remember: venal.) But then it wraps up very quickly at the end of a very short novel.
The story works better as a coming of age tale, with Ed awakening to a wider world of strange forces (and, of course, losing his virginity: to another bad woman). There's a whole subplot that ends up having very little to do with the central mystery, but it seems there to make the point to Ed that the world is bigger than he ever imagined, and his memories are tricky. The central message is made clear in an end speech by Am, about how weird the world is, but wonderful, too.
The second novel, The Dead Ringer--like all of them here, it is short--is the weakest of the four. Ed has followed Am into the life of a carney, when a midget is found dead where they work--but not on associated with the carnival. The slang is doubly hard to penetrate here because in addition to dated uses their is carnival argot. (This was about the time William Gresham's noir carnival book Nightmare Alley came out, too.) The real problem is that the mystery is both ridiculous and, from today's vantage point, extremely insulting; the racism is pretty thick--expected, I guess--but the use of the small people is hard to take seriously. There are more bad women, too, and Ed falling in love with one, while callously using another who actually seems good and does love him, too.
There's also the problem that Am seems under-motivated, which is a problem throughout all but the first novels. He is completely missing from the fourth, "Compliments of a Fiend" (sic), which is one of Brown's most famous stories. It is based on a snippet from Charles Fort, that there might be someone "collecting" Ambroses. And so Am--short for Ambrose--is collected; Ed, who is now working for a detective agency and hoping to start his own, with Ambrose--goes full bore to find him.
The story spins its wheels for the first third or so, trying to get a grip. There's some ridiculous folderol at the beginning to stretch out the mystery, and Ed doesn't start doing anything really useful for a while--until he decides to follow his uncle's last steps. (This should have been one of the first things anyone did.) Once he does, he finds, as one should expect, acquaintances with impure motives. He's done bad by a good woman, of course, but also makes the money he needs for his own agency--by playing footsies with some numbers runners--and finds his uncle. Turns out Am's simple job had--spoiler alert, for a book that is now 67 years old!--put him onto a conspiracy among thieves and that had gotten him kidnapped (and saved by a friend, rather than killed.)
For my money, the best of the stories here is the third one, The Bloody Moonlight. There slang here is the most penetrable; Am is off to the sideline for a good reason; the women don't come across particularly well-except for one older matron--but not as bad as in others, either. There's no casual racism. There are hints of the supernatural, but these are explained away, in the end. And they mystery is relatively solid, with a number of people interfering with Ed for their own nefarious purposes.
It also has a funny set up, with Ed hired to do one case, and continually failing at that because of interference. This adds a bit of extra suspense to the book--suspense not being something these novels have a lot of: they are more about character, especially Ed's development. He's not yet the Continental Op, but one can see how he is on his way to it. He is at odds with the law here, which is not the case in any of the other books, a legal and moral freelancer.
But he still drinks. A lot.
December 13, 2018
I used this edition....cuz I was happy to find it online! :) Fredric Brown novels are hard to find, for a reasonable price. And you know me, I like this 'ol '40's/'50's pulp stuff. I know he wrote a lot of Sci-Fi , but he did write quite few pulp stories.
"The Fabulous Clipjoint", is the first in the Ed and Am Hunter series. Ed is, (as he tells a young lady that's 25 years old) almost 19, Em is Uncle Ambrose. A lighthearted but a suspenseful start to the series (won the first Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award in 1947.) A wonderful sense of place of '40's New York.
This edition (2002) has the first 4 in the series (of 7). Wish they would have published another one, with the other 3 in it.
"The Fabulous Clipjoint", is the first in the Ed and Am Hunter series. Ed is, (as he tells a young lady that's 25 years old) almost 19, Em is Uncle Ambrose. A lighthearted but a suspenseful start to the series (won the first Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award in 1947.) A wonderful sense of place of '40's New York.
This edition (2002) has the first 4 in the series (of 7). Wish they would have published another one, with the other 3 in it.
March 10, 2014
The allure with the works of Brown is that he weaves complexity with what seems preposterous and improbable. So much that the journey to the end of the story takes many turns and distractions making it possible for you to one day pick up the book again and realize that though you slightly remember (not much) how it ended you can't make heads or tail out of how it arrived there and you are, as a result compelled to read the book again (several times). This is is what feature grew fans for Brown, At least this has been my experience. I once attempted to sell a small collection (17 volumes) of Brown's works to the Mysterious Bookshop (NYC) and was told though they bought books, the purchase of Brown books had to be overseen by Otto Penzler himself. So I was thrilled to have him look over my collection. He owns the shop and publishing house (Mysterious Press) and also edits mystery anthologies. He is a fan of the works of Fredric Brown. Brown was uncannily successful in both crime mysteries and science fiction. The slang of those days is beautiful and preserved in the works of Brown. Imagine, Brown hated to write. I love the works of Brown am a knowledgeable and die hard fan.
March 14, 2009
Just read the first story "The Fabulous Clipjoint".
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews