Edward D. Hoch (1930–2008)

A collection of classic horror and thriller tales by some very famous and some not so well known, including some overlooked stories by the famous. The Introduction is by Uncle Stevie, and briefly covers a lot of the same ground as did his non-fiction masterpiece on horror, [Danse Macabre]. The book is worth the price just for this missive on the inner workings of horror literature. Some of the names you'd expect: [[Edgar Allan Poe]], [[H. G. Wells]], [[H. P. Lovecraft]]. Others, not so: show more [[Winston Churchill]] with a thriller about a man overboard; [[Theodore Dreiser]] with a spiritualism tale.

Rather than capture all the stories, I'll hit what I thought were the high points:

The Squaw by [[Bram Stoker]], a tale of revenge from the most unlikely of characters, a cat. While this one has been largely lost to the world, no doubt owing partially to the less than politically correct title, it's chilling.

The Girl with the Hungry Eyes by Fritz Leiber, a vampire of a very different sort, and one that is imminently more frightening than most, especially the sparkly kind so popular these days.

Camps by Jack Dan, a man balances on the edge of death, dreaming of a life he didn't live in a concentration camp.

Sardonicus by Ray Russell, beware what you wish for, as the consequences may outstrip your expectations. A horribly disfigured man coerces a doctor to cure him, but the cure imprisons him beyond his original disfigurement.

The Oblong Room by Edward D. Koch, a police procedural that requires the gumshoe to expand his mind beyond the natural.

The Party by William F. Nolan, a fevered dream that cannot be escaped.

The Crate by Stephen King, this one bears a slight resemblance to [[Douglas Preston]]'s [The Relic]. Here, a man opens a long forgotten crate in a university research laboratory and unleashes a very hungry entity. But the twist here - after the beast eats a couple people, the man's friend realizes its utility in doing away with his shrew of a wife.

Highly Recommended!!!!!
4 1/2 bones!!!!! show less

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 show more 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. show less

Edward D. Hoch wrote a small number of novels, but he was principally a writer of short stories. In 2001, he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, the first writer given that honor who was not primarily a novelist.

His most enduring relationship was with Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine; between May 1973 and May 2007, Hoch had a story appear in every issue of the magazine, with the occasional issue featuring a second Hoch story published under a pseudonym.

Part of how he show more managed to be so prolific was that he created multiple series characters of different types, working in different settings. Whatever idea for a story he came up, there was probably an existing character into whose milieu the story could easily be fit.

This collection features stories about Simon Ark, a mysterious figure who investigates events with mystical, occult, or religious overtones. While Ark never comes out and directly says very much about his history, it is frequently implied that he is older than Christ and possibly immortal. It appears that he has been cursed by God to wander the earth in search of Satan.

That's as far as the occult elements go in these mysteries, though, since they all have mundane solutions with no supernatural explanations required. And that makes all of the "ooh, he's immortal, ooh, cursed by God" stuff seem a bit silly; if it's not going to have anything to do with the mysteries, why bother?

Simon Ark is a potentially interesting character, but based on these stories, which Hoch selected himself as the best of roughly 40 Ark stories, Hoch never came up with any mysteries that would justify his particular set of quirks and oddities. show less

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 show more 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. show less