Edward D. HochBesprekingen

With a title like that, this should be a classic, a great book.
Sorry, it isn't.
Leslie Charteris is a ... well, at least in this entry, he is a terrible writer. He badly over-writes, trying, I guess, to make his character a real character. I just could not finish the first story.
Even Michael Gilbert's "The Cleaners" disappoints, and he's usually dependable.
Dorothy Sayers' "The Incredible Elopement of Lord Peter Wimsey" doesn't really meet expectations, and she is nearly always better.
Well, maybe my three-star rating is off. Maybe two would be more accurate, but you read this small collection, knowing all the people connected, except maybe Charteris, usually do, not just better, but well, and you decide.

I stumbled on Hoch totally by fortuitous accident. Hoch, who died in 2008, was a prolific short story writer with several series to his credit. Perhaps the most famous involves Nick Velvet, a thief who specializes in stealing very odd, often worthless things. For example, why steal three letters (only a certain three) from a building sign and do it while being watched by the police; or, why steal all the water from a certain swimming pool on a certain day, or a rare tiger from a zoo. He accepts only a huge flat fee for his work. Velvet has to be a detective as well as a thief in order to suss out the reasons behind the peculiar requests. He does, and sometimes it requires turning tables on his employer.

This volume also contains stories about Rand, the spy master. Like Velvet, Rand needs to play detective often to figure out the motives behind people’s actions.

I’m hooked and intend to read all the 950 stories. They’re charming.

A short little read that's a nice treat at Christmas time!
It reads on the back, "A Holiday Gift with the compliments of The Mysterious Bookshop", and it is partially set in that bookshop. Ten boxes of books are donated to that bookshop, but one of the books has something really, really important inside it! Nick Velvet is hired to retrieve that item before anyone finds out!

In my experience, collections of the "year's best" short stories offer works that vary a good bit in (perceived) quality. This collection is no exception.
Despite inclusion of some notable authors (Westlake, Block, and Rendell), I did not find much in terms of real stand-outs, among a group of stories that struck me as ordinary to mediocre. One exception is Clark Howards' "The Dublin Eye" (ranked at 4 stars by me), while selections by Lawrence Block and Michael Z. Lewin were a cut above the rest.

Finally, one has to wonder at the ethics of editor Edward D. Hoch at having chosen one of his own stories among the year's best, especially given that it was (in my estimation) the poorest short story of the group.

Below are listed the stories, with my own ratings (on a scale of 1 to 5 stars).

Lawrence Block: “By the Dawn’s Early Light” 3*
Peggy Wurtz Fisher: “The Pickup” 2*
Stephen Greenleaf: “Iris” 2*
Reginald Hill: “The Worst Crime Known to Man” 2*
Edward D. Hoch: “The Vanished Steamboat” no *
Clark Howards: “The Dublin Eye” 4*
Michael Z. Lewin: “The Reluctant Detective” 3*
John Lutz: “High Stakes” 2*
Gregory McDonald: The Robbery” 2*
Shannon O'Cork: “Well Worth It” 1*
John Pachter: The Dilmun Exchange” 1*
Bill Pronzini: “Skeleton Rattle Your Mouldy Leg” 1*
Ruth Rendell: “Father’s Day” 1*
Donald E. Westlake: “After I’m Gone” 1*½

I'm not much of a fan of short stories as a rule, but these dozen "impossible crimes" left me wishing for more.

Anyone familiar with vintage mysteries such as those in Ellery Queen or Alfred Hitchcock Magazines has heard the name Edward D. Hoch – and, in fact, many think he is the finest author in this genre. He has received the Mystery Writers of America’s highest honour, the Grand Master Award, and he has been recognized for Lifetime Achievement by the Private Eye Writers of America and the Bouchercon. According to FantasticFiction.com, Ed Hoch is the only author who specializes in the mystery short story to receive such recognition.

Dr. Sam is a country doctor in what I recall seemed the early part of the twentieth century. There were still horses and carriages, but Dr. Sam did have a nice roadster. Aside from making house calls and doctoring the county, Dr. Sam is an amateur sleuth.

Many of these stories first appeared in one of those fine mystery magazines mentioned above. If you’re a fan of those, you’ll love this. I did.

Thank you to the Puzzle Doctor at In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel for letting me know about this.

4 stars

Ed Hoch is a genius, but these stories were a bit too dark for me. (Example: In one story, a man kills his wife over what turns out to be a suitcase full of Bibles.)

A very good collection of Sam Hawthorne mystery short stories marred by a poor copy editing job.

I bought this book because I very much like many of Hoch's highly competent short stories, especially the "Nick Velvet" stories about a clever thief who only steals ostensibly worthless objects for a high fee, and those of Rand from Concealed Communications. . This story is more like a Rand tale because it focuses (like many of the short stories) on a single clue in the form of a message. Like many of his stories (and those of other writers of his era such as Ellery Queen, who published many Hoch stories in his magazine), the clue is a bizarre final message from a dying victim. In this case, the victim, TV newsman Ross Craigthorn, is shot by an ingenious guntube built into his microphone while he is accepting a "Raven" award from the Mystery Writers of America as 'mystery fan of the year" and the clue is that he deliberately smashes the raven award itself, so the question becomes how the raven is linked to his killer. The answer to this question is postponed by a rather feeble romance between Barney Hamet, a former detective turned mystery writer and VP of the MWA, who is assigned by the MWA to find the killer, and Susan Veldt, a reporter for Manhattan, a New York City-oriented magazine whose editor has assigned her to do a series of articles on awards given out in New York (the Emmies, Tonies etc.) and who is therefore covering the awards dinner. The story is told in alternating chapters from these two points of view, with occasional chapters from the point of view of the killer. The attempt at a female POV is not very convincing, and the romance simply does not strike the sparks that really effective mystery-romances do. The solution to the mystery is prepared credibly (especially for Graham Greene fans), but my overall feeling is that it could have been done more effectively as a short story without the romance. For fans of 50s mysteries, one bonus is that it does include a lot of (presumably) reliable information about how the MWA and its awards system worked at the time, and small cameo appearances by real mystery writers, including Rex Stout and half of Ellery Queen.

This is a cyber wars thriller. We try to save the president from a corrupt election. It is interesting for it's grasp of early computing capability, and cosmology. Mr. Hoch is not an inspiring writer.½

Collection really two sets of stories from series that Hoch did in Ellery Queen Magazine. The ones about Rand of Concealed Communications are competent spy stories, often with a code or "dying message" aspect. But the real joy of this book is the stories about Nick Velvet, the thief who will only steal valueless objects --for a minimum fee of $20,000. The author must have had a lot of fun devising highly improbable reasons for stealing valueless things, and the ingenious methods by which Nick teals them. My favorite is one in which he steals the water from a swimming pool. Naturally, these objects have a hidden real value, and Nick often has to deduce what is really going on and outwit villains who are often his clients, in addition to the police.

Generally I like Edward D. Hoch's stories, but these are below average for him, perhaps because they have a supernatural element. Simon Ark is a 1700 year old Copt who is bound to the destruction of evil --the evils often also being equally old. The one I remember best concerns a whole town persuaded to commit suicide by someone reviving the cCrcumcellions, the extremist Donatists of late ancient North Africa --but they committed suicide with reason under persecution, while these people seem motiveless.

Oh no! Vander Defoe, the inventor of the new transvection machine that's going to save humanity, has been murdered! At least that's how it appears. He goes to the hospital to have his appendix removed and the mechanical surgeon causes blood to start spurting out at the first incision and the human nurse helping out can't save him. Since Vander is one of the president's cabinet members (of extraterrestrial defense?), it's important to get to the bottom of things. So the CIB is called in. The CIB stands for Computer Investigation Bureau, and their director is Carl Crader. His younger sidekick is Earl Jazine. They head from NYC to DC to meet with the president and be briefed by his assistant, Maarten Tromp. There are possible paths they could follow, but where to start? Crader decides to return to New York to look for a criminal who has escaped a prison on Venus named Euler Frost. He was in prison for murder and had been hooked up with a revolutionary group of people dedicated to eradicating the world of the computers and machines that have taken over society. He sends Earl to investigate Vander's wife, Gretel, and his ex-parter -- and one of her lovers -- Hubert Ganger. Turns out they had talked about killing Vander just that day, only they don't tell Earl that. They deny all knowledge. That path is taken away. Earl goes to interview the nurse, thinking she had to have been the murderer since everyone knows machines can't murder, can't make mistakes, can't screw up. She denies everything, says everything went by the book. He interviews her doctor supervisor who stands up for her and the hospital, again saying it couldn't have been the machine. What now?

But what is the transvection machine, you ask? It's a device that transports anything and anyone from one place to another, whether it's in a room, different cities, or possibly even different planets. Vander is the only one who knows how it works and he's proven it works by transvecting a monkey from Boston to another city and by transvecting a Chinese girl from the US to India. The government is seriously interested in his machine, because if it can be proven to transport people between planets safely, then they can populate Venus and beat the Russo-Chinese at it, the country that is dominating Venusian populating. But there's a dark secret behind the transvection machine.

Crader is concerned about Frost, because apparently he escaped from Venus last week and could have made it back to earth in time to kill Vander. Turns out Frost is back. The author gives us the story from everyone's vantage point throughout the novel, which is interesting, but at times a little irritating as well. And he does try to kill Vander, but his plot is foiled when one of his assistants appears and saves him from his unsuspecting death. A CIB researcher has found out that the revolutionary group Frost was a part of has actually grown during the time he was on Venus and is headquartered on a small Pacific island known for tourism. Crader decides to go there to look for Frost. On the way, he meets a minister and they strike up a friendship. The minister decides to stay on the island with him, so they can have a good time together. And that is his undoing. The minister is none other than the leader of HAND, this group, and he kidnaps Crader, but only to have him return to the president to relay a message to him, that Gloria Chang has gone over to their side. Crader does this and the message is meaningless to the president. But things are starting to make sense to Crader. And also to Earl. He sees the nurse creeping along the street by the new White House, seemingly hoping not to be found, and witnesses her meeting someone in a parking garage. The man she meets is the doctor. Earl confronts him and the doctor attacks him and escapes. Sometime later, the nurse re-enters the operating room to look at the machine, which couldn't have done it, and is murdered. By whom? The machine again? Earl is at the hospital looking for her and encounters the doctor, who he confronts again. The doctor pleads innocence. Just then, Earl looks up and sees Vander's ex-parter in hospital scrubs and takes off after him. Meanwhile, HAND is planning to destroy the computers at the Federal Medical Center, to spark a revolution against computers and technology everywhere. And Crader has had plenty of time to think about HAND's motivations and has doubts about computers himself now.

And that's all of the plot you'll get from me! If you want to know who murdered Vander, if HAND succeeds in blowing up the Federal Medical Center, if a revolution is started, what happens to Frost, what happens to Crader, etc., you'll have to get the book and read it yourself. It's a very short book. I read it in a day. It's an easy read too. The science is hogwash, but if you can get beyond that, it's an enjoyable story. And Vander's wife, soon to be ex, is a drug addled nympho, who's pretty funny. My only real complaint about the book is that the author is SO anti-computer, SO anti-machine, SO anti-technology, that he beats it into your damn head virtually every damn page! It gets old very fast. Talk about beating a dead horse. And this is sci fi!!! I understand, however, that the author is actually a mystery writer, so maybe he was anti-technology. This was published many years ago. Who knows? It's just damned annoying. Still, as a lightweight, escapist read, it's fun. Somewhat recommended.

As I've burned through all of Conan Doyle's repertoire, I'm glad that people are writing more Holmes stories. While Hoch's doen't quite match Conan Doyle's (most recreations don't,) they are quite faithful to the originals. The stories cover the early years of Holmes's career through his retirement. The faithful peripheral characters also make appearances. Irene Adler turns up in Canada, and Holmes does further battle with Moriarty. Worth reading for Holmes aficionados.½

This collection is a great introduction to two classic Hoch characters. The spy, Jeffery Rand, who finds himself needing to solve real-life puzzles, not just the codes he is in charge of breaking. (Example: Why did the Russians kill their agent *before* he stole the code book and not after?) And the thief, Nick Velvet, who only steals things that have no intrinsic value (example: all the water in a swimming pool). Both sets of stories have a "vintage" vibe, set in the post-WWII, pre-Vietnam era, and the plots are excellent. No one writes a better mystery short story than Edward D. Hoch.

This is a collection of stories that I ran across somewhere. Clearly, Lawrence Block was not the first to create the congenial thief, nor was Donald Westlake. Nick Velvet — he changed his name from Velvetta to avoid the obvious confusion — takes on rather bizarre assignments. In one case he was hired to steal — and keep — the water from a particular swimming pool. He learned later that the water was to be used as evidence by the daughter of the owner's first wife to prove that her stepfather had murdered her mother. Rarely does Nick steal anything of ostensible monetary value. In "The Theft of the Clouded Tiger," he is hired to steal a rare tiger from a zoo for a Persian prince. In this case he profits handsomely but only by using the tiger to dispatch the real villains of the story. Unlike James Bond, whom Hoch originally intended Nick to be patterned after, Nick remains faithful to his girlfriend, Gloria, and he doesn't require the vast array of gadgets that make James Bond stories such fun for technophiles. In a truly classic story, "The Theft of the Meager Beavers," Nick is hired by the small country of Jabali to steal an entire major league baseball team. It seems the country's president has gone to great lengths to create a team for his country, but they have no one to play. Not wishing to disrupt the pennant race, Nick pours over the standings and selects the last place Beavers. As in all the stories, nothing is as it appears, and sure enough, Nick's sixth sense warns him that the nine members of the baseball team, the nine seashells on Jabali's flag, the Nine House, where the president resides, and the nine members of a firing squad all have considerable significance. In other stories, Nick is stolen himself, and has to make off with seven ravens. These are a lot of fun.

A nice historical review of the development of the American detective story, from its origins in the 19th century, through the 1960s. Preference is given to less-familiar stories by the well-known authors included, and to authors who were once famous but now lie largely forgotten or overshadowed. So, for Poe we're given 'Thou Art the Man!', rather than 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue'; for Chandler, they contribute 'The Pencil,' a long later story; and so on. Most of this collection should prove unfamiliar, the quality is impressively high, and the stories and styles diverse - making it an excellent addition to any collection of detective fiction.

Includes: Edgar Allan Poe's 'Thou Art the Man'; Jacques Futrelle's 'The Stolen Rubens'; Anna Katharine Green's 'The Second Bullet' (a 1915 story featuring detective Violet Strange, not only an early female detective, but one of the tradition of 'society' sleuths, as well!); Melville Davisson Post's 'The Age of Miracles'; T.S. Stribling's 'The Shadow'; C. Daly King's 'The Episode of the Nail and the Requiem'; Craig Rice's 'His Heart Could Break'; Carter Dickson's 'The House in Goblin Wood'; Ellery Queen's 'The Dauphin's Doll'; Mary Roberts Rinehart's 'The Splinter'; Raymond Chandler's 'The Pencil'; and Cornell Woolrich's 'One Drop of Blood'.

This was a fun collection of stories that each feature an impossible crime. Told in a series of flashbacks, Dr. Sam Hawthorne begins his recollections as a country doctor in rural Connecticut in the 1920s.

The contents include (my favorites marked with a *):
1. The Problem of the Covered Bridge*
2. The Problem of the Old Gristmill
3. The Problem of the Lobster Shack*
4. The Problem of the Haunted Bandstand
5. The Problem of the Locked Caboose*
6. The Problem of the Little Red Schoolhouse*
7. The Problem of the Christmas Steeple
8. The Problem of Cell 16
9. The Problem of the Country Inn*
10. The Problem of the Voting Booth
11. The Problem of the County Fair
12. The Problem of the Old Oak Tree

There is also, at the end of the book, a chronology of Sam Hawthorne stories.

The stories were fun, but by the end, picking up on Hawthorne's methods, I was pretty much able to figure out the last few. However, it is a joy to read -- the author tells his stories in a folksy tone and doesn't take himself too seriously as a mystery writer.

I think people who like locked-room mysteries or impossible crimes will really enjoy this one; even cozy readers will probably like this one because it is easy to read, uninvolved and uncomplicated. This book is a welcome addition to my mystery shelves, and I can definitely recommend it.

Selection of short stories of Alfred Hitchcook collection.