"I don't see that there was much luck in it," said Brodribb. "You calculated the probabilities and adopted the greatest."
"At any rate," said Thorndyke, "there was Merrill and there was Crick; and as soon as I saw them I knew that Horder was the murderer. For the whole tableau had obviously been arranged to demonstrate that Crick died before Merrill and establish Horder as Merrill's heir."
"A diabolical plot," commented Brodribb. "Horribly ingenious, too. By the way,—which of them did die first in your opinion?"
"Merrill, I should say, undoubtedly," replied Thorndyke.
"That will be good hearing for Crick's next of kin," said Brodribb. "And you haven't done with this case yet, Thorndyke. I shall retain you on the question of survivorship."
Footnote
Originally published in the U.K.: The Puzzle Lock (1925); in the U.S.: The Dr. Thorndyke
Omnibus (1932). Reprinted by permission of A. P. Watt Ltd. on behalf of W. L. B. Family Trust.
Copyright © 2012 R. Austin Freeman
DEPARTMENTS
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The Lineup
MITCH ALDERMAN won the Shamus Award for his June 2008 AHMM story "Family Values," which also featured the private detective Bubba Simms. Long-time AHMM author JOHN H. DIRCKX is the author of Dr. Thorndyke's Dilemma, a novel-length pastiche of R. Austin Freeman's detective. Booked & Printed...
BOOKED & PRINTED
ROBERT C. HAHN
A publisher of authoritative reference works on subjects both popular and esoteric, McFarland has recently published three volumes that should be of wide interest to crime fiction aficionados. All contain extensive bibliographies. ED MCBAIN/EVAN HUNTER: A LITERARY COMPANION by Erin E. MacDonald...
MYSTERIOUS PHOTOGRAPH
No Laughing Matter We will give a prize of $25 to the person who invents the best mystery story (in 250 words or less, and be sure to include a crime) based on the above photograph. The story...
THE STORY THAT WON
The June Mysterious Photo- graph contest was won by Peter R. Hart of New Britain, Connecticut. Honorable mentions go to Ben Butler of New York, New York; Lowell Bergeron of Iowa, Louisiana, Dennis W....
INDEX
Alderman, Mitch Eureka Dec 15 Block, Lawrence Part of the Job Mar 104 Boland, John C. Marley's Rescue Jul/Aug 32 Marley's Winter Nov 58 Burns, Rex Constable Smith and the...
MYSTERY CLASSIC
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The Lineup
MITCH ALDERMAN won the Shamus Award for his June 2008 AHMM story "Family Values," which also featured the private detective Bubba Simms.
Long-time AHMM author JOHN H. DIRCKX is the author of Dr. Thorndyke's Dilemma, a novel-length pastiche of R. Austin Freeman's detective.
Booked & Printed columnist ROBERT C. HAHN reviews mysteries for Publishers Weekly, among other places, and is the former mystery columnist for the Cincinnati Post.
TERRIE FARLEY MORAN'S short story collection The Awarenes and Other Deadly Tales came out December 2011 and is available for e-readers. She also edited the anthology Muder New York Style: Fresh Slices.
Former magazine editor and cross-genre author KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH blogs on many topics at www.kriswrites.com. Her new novel Blowback, in her Retrieval Artist series, will be available in December from WMG Publishing.
MARIANNE WILSKI STRONG is a Professor Emeritus at Prince George's Community College, where she taught for twenty-eight years.
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BOOKED & PRINTED
ROBERT C. HAHN
A publisher of authoritative reference works on subjects both popular and esoteric, McFarland has recently published three volumes that should be of wide interest to crime fiction aficionados. All contain extensive bibliographies.
ED MCBAIN/EVAN HUNTER: A LITERARY COMPANION by Erin E. MacDonald ($39.95) offers as thorough an accounting of Hunter's work as anyone might want and an extensive bibliography of both acknowledged and disputed works. MacDonald has assembled both chronological and alphabetical listings of novels, novellas, plays, teleplays, and short story collections, as well as maps of the 87th Precinct and the Precinct's Detective Squad Room. The book also offers extensive treatments of important characters and themes as well as critical commentary that seeks to avoid spoilers in plot summaries.
Both prolific and versatile, Evan Hunter (1926-2005) virtually defined the ensemble police procedural genre with his 87th Precinct series, which was written under his best-known pseudonym, Ed McBain. The author's birth name was Salvatore Albert Lombino but he legally became Evan Hunter in 1952. He also adopted many other pseudonyms for his fiction, including Richard Marsten, Hunt Collins, Ezra Hannon, and Curt Cannon. In 1992, he published the thriller Scimitar as John Abbott, but Hunter could be coy about his use of other names. At a McBain book-signing, the author declined to sign a copy of Scimitar, saying that he "wouldn't take credit for something someone else wrote."
MacDonald takes an essentially neutral position in her discussion of the erotica that has been ascribed to, but was never acknowledged by, Hunter. These works were published in the 1960s by Nightstand Books under the house pseudonym Dean Hudson. Many talented writers are known to have penned novels for the house, including Lawrence Block, Donald Westlake, and Marion Zimmer Bradley, and MacDonald analyzes some of the titles that have been attributed to Hunter seeking similarities in style, themes, and even the use of names that relate to his known works. But Hunter never acknowledged the Hudson pseudonym, and his widow Dragica Hunter denies that he ever used it. MacDonald concludes that "it may never be known for certain whether Evan Hunter was Dean Hudson."
Among the many fascinating entries in MacDonald's companion are those detailing Hunter's many and varied involvements with television. These included writing of stories for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Chrysler Theatre, and a couple of the thirty-episode 87th Precinct series that ran in 1961 and 1962. In addition, McBain novels and stories were adapted for episodes of Columbo, and two Curt Cannon stories served as episodes of Mike Hammer. Other stories, such as "Lightning" (1995) and "Ice" (1996) became TV movies.
MacDonald covers Hunter's involvement with Hollywood not in a single entry but in discussions of specific films. Among others, these include entries on Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, for which he wrote the screenplay, and The Blackboard Jungle, which was a 1954 Evan Hunter novel that was made into a memorable film starring Glenn Ford and Sidney Poitier.
MacDonald's book is exemplary for the thoroughness with which she discusses and dissects individual titles and characters in the Hunter pantheon and for the extensive cross-referencing she provides to lead the reader on to new discoveries. This book is a must for the Hunter/McBain collector and aficionado and a boon to readers yet to discover the Hunter oeuvre.
Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor have compiled MICKEY SPILLANE ON SCREEN: A COMPLETE STUDY OF THE TELEVISION AND FILM ADAPTATIONS ($45). Collins was Spillane's collaborator on many projects, including several posthumous Mike Hammer novels beginning with The Goliath Bone (2008). Collins and Traylor are perfect choices for the Spillane volume; they each worked closely with him, interviewed him on several occasions, and have written about him frequently.
Spillane's tough-talking, hard-hitting investigator Mike Hammer has hit the big screen eight times; this run of adaptations is bookended by two separate versions of I, the Jury, the first filmed in 1953 with Biff Elliot in the lead and the latest in 1982 with Armand Assante. In between, Ralph Meeker portrayed Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly, Robert Bray in My Gun is Quick, and Spillane himself in The Girl Hunters. Films based on Spillane's non-Hammer works include The Long Wait starring Anthony Quinn; Ring of Fear, featuring Spillane's screen debut; and The Delta Factor, starring Christopher George.
Numerous attempts have been made to bring Mike Hammer to TV, beginning with a young Blake Edwards dir
ecting Brian Keith as Hammer in an unsuccessful 1954 series pilot. An adaptation featuring Darren McGavin made it to the air in 1958-59, while Stacy Keach starred as Hammer in two different TV series as well as four television movies.
A transcription of Collins's 1997 interview with Spillane is included as an appendix. Here, Spillane talks as straight and as bluntly as his famous hero when he discusses his career:
MAC: So you dropped out of college and went back to New York and the writing game.
SPILLANE: Yeah, I started with slicks, then I worked my way down to the pulps, then I worked my way down to comic books. Now you're going downhill in class. But you're goin' up in money. And I made a lot more out of comic books than I ever did out of slick magazines.
Lucia Rinaldi has authored a guide to the work of Andrea Camilleri, the octogenarian Italian author who continues to add to his impressive series of mysteries about Sicilian Inspector Salvo Montalbano. ANDREA CAMILLERI: A COMPANION TO THE MYSTERY FICTION ($39.95) covers not only Montalbano novels and short stories but the author's other crime fiction as well. Fourteen of Camilleri's Montalbano novels are now available in English translation from Penguin, including the recently published The Age of Doubt.
Although five of Camilleri's Montalbano novels have been finalists for the prestigious International Dagger Award given by the British Crime Writers Association, he remains underappreciated in the United States. His long and varied career includes extensive experience in directing radio shows, television dramas, and plays. Even so, he didn't publish his first Montalbano novel, The Shape of Water, until 1994, when he was sixty-nine.
Montalbano, with his sly sense of humor, his voracious appetite, his love of food and women, and his insatiable curiosity, is delightful to follow as he deals with aging issues, rage against crime, and growing disenchantment with society and its problems. Lucia Rinaldi's detailed discussion of Camilleri's novels and characters includes an extensive bibliography. This volume should help bring the author to the attention of American audiences, while Penguin's handsome paperback editions of the Montalbano novels make acquiring a taste for the detective's adventures easy and inexpensive.
Copyright © 2012 Robert C. Hahn
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MYSTERIOUS PHOTOGRAPH
Fer Gregory / Shutterstock.com
No Laughing Matter
We will give a prize of $25 to the person who invents the best mystery story (in 250 words or less, and be sure to include a crime) based on the above photograph. The story will be printed in a future issue. Reply to AHMM, Dell Magazines, 267 Broadway, New York, New York 10007-2352. Please label your entry "December Contest," and be sure your name and address are written on the story you submit. If you would like your story returned, please include an SASE.
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THE STORY THAT WON
Smit / Shutterstock.com
The June Mysterious Photo- graph contest was won by Peter R. Hart of New Britain, Connecticut. Honorable mentions go to Ben Butler of New York, New York; Lowell Bergeron of Iowa, Louisiana, Dennis W. Allen of Garland, Texas; Steve Pake of Los Angeles, California, Tom Woodward of Marietta, Georgia; Donna Balash of Canton, Michigan; Judy Rich of Lyons, Michigan; Edward W. L. Smith of Statesboro, Georgia; and Gil Stern of Las Vegas, Nevada.
CHICKEN FEED
PETER R. HART
"I don't get it Sarge, what's with the chickens?"
"Easy, Ray," his boss replied. "They're going to show us who the perp is. After the silent alarm sounded in the farm gift shop we blocked the parking lot, the right thing to do. And what do we find, these two mopes in the yard, both claiming to work here, keeping up the property, feeding the animals. They say they don't know each other, and the farmer and his wife are on extended vacation. So we don't know which is which."
"So?"
"So watch," the sergeant replied. He opened the gate to the chicken pen and they all ran out. After they pecked around for a moment or two, they all made a beeline for the guy on the left, looking for seed.
The guy on the right looked frantically about, then turned and took off running across the adjacent field. Ray took off after him just as quickly.
"Hey!" Ray yelled. "Stop! What are you? Chicken?"
The sergeant only smiled.
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INDEX
VOLUME FIFTY-SEVEN 2012
Alderman, Mitch
Eureka Dec 15
Block, Lawrence
Part of the Job Mar 104
Boland, John C.
Marley's Rescue Jul/Aug 32
Marley's Winter Nov 58
Burns, Rex
Constable Smith and the Lost Dreamtime Oct 4
Cleland, Jane K.
Georgette Heyer Intro Sept 92
Last Supper Jun 62
Cooper, Mike
The Sellout Jun 6
Corrigan, John R.
364 Days Jul/Aug 138
Costa, Shelley
Strangle Vine Nov 15
Deverell, Diana
Dubstep Apr 92
Dirckx, John H.
Autumn Chill Jul/Aug 14
Calculus for Blondes Jan/Feb 112
R. Austin Freeman Intro Dec 86
Window of Time Nov 78
Druett, Joan
Salt Apr 4
DuBois, Brendan
Caretaker Apr 50
Family Trade, A Mar 98
Elliott, Garnett
Vaudeville Detective, The Sept 4
Estleman, Loren D.
Big Band Jan/Feb 6
Elevator Man, The Nov 64
Finch, Doc
Big Watts Sept 36
Fisher, Eve
Wind Power May 38
Floyd, John M.
Lewis and Clark May 21
Freeman, R. Austin
Green Check Jacket, The Dec 87
Gardiner, Wayne J.
Carry-On May 97
Last Call Jan/Feb 150
Gates, David Edgerley
Burning Daylight Jul/Aug 84
Crazy Eights Oct 86
Devil to Pay,The Apr 24
Gore, Steven
Defender of Justice Nov 4
Goree, Raymond
Change of Heart, A Oct 68
Goulart, Ron
Fun for the Whole Family May 54
Hagerty, David
Pot Hunters, The Jun 80
Harper, C. J.
No Uncertain Terms Jan/Feb 53
Heyer, Georgette
Night at the Inn Sept 93
Hockensmith, Steve
Frank Oct 54
Ingraham, Jim
Best Laid Plans, The Sept 72
Law, Janice
Best Thing for the Liver, The Jul/Aug 6
Lawton, R. T.
Spring Break May 26
Tightening of the Bond Jul/Aug 110
Levin, Doug
Sheltered Assets Mar 48
Lewis, Evan
Mr. Crockett and the Bear May 86
Limón, Martin
Beehive Round Sept 18
Long, Dee
Fool's Gold Sept 56
Lopresti, Robert
Brutal Sept 64
Shanks Commences May 6
McGuire, D. A.
Old Cedar Jan/Feb 160
Menge, Elaine
Death on the Range Jul/Aug 42
Milosevic, Mario
Property Lines Mar 63
Moffitt, Donald
Assignment in Clay Jul/Aug 61
Moran, Terrie Farley
Jake Says Hello Dec 4
Muessig, Chris
Coming Up from Cape Fear O
ct 32
Sunny South, The Mar 22
Nethercott, Michael
O'Nelligan and the Lost Fates Mar 70
Nevins, Francis M.
Cornell Woolrich Intro . Jun 93
Parker, I. J.
Confessions Nov 36
Parks, Brad
Dr. Juiceman Apr 79
Petrin, Jas. R.
Mad Dog Oct 16
Richards, Tony
Very Edge of New Harare, The Jan/Feb 36
Ross, James L.
Bears in Mind Jan/Feb 24
Ross, Stephen
Pueri Alleynienses Apr 16
Rusch, Kristine Kathryn
Pandora's Box Jan/Feb 122
Trick or Treat Dec 64
Rutter, Eric
All Prayers Are Answered Apr 62