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

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

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 show more 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. show less