Short Story Wednesday: Leopold's Way

 

Leopold's Way is a collection of short stories by Edward D. Hoch (1930-2008). Hoch wrote over 900 short stories. Starting in 1962, he had a short story published in every issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery magazine for 34 years. Over the years, he had many series characters in his short stories. I am a newbie to the Hoch's stories. I have purchased several collections of Hoch's stories, but have only sampled stories from a few of them.

This short story collection, originally published in 1985, contains stories featuring Captain Leopold, the head of the Violent Crimes Squad of a police department in a fictional city in Connecticut. The book has an excellent introduction by Francis M. Nevins, which gives an overview of many of the series characters that Hoch created, and goes into more detail about Captain Leopold and the stories featuring that character. By the end of 1984, when the introduction was written, Hoch had published 72 stories about Captain Leopold. Now I believe that the total is over 100 stories.

Recently I read the first five stories in the collection. They were all good but I did have my favorites. A few of the stories had ambiguous endings, leaving the reader to decide how the situation was resolved. I usually like that kind of ending fine and they worked for me here.

The stories:

A ten-year-old boy is found dead in "Circus." He was walking to the circus from his home, which was nearby. The solution to this one was unexpected and sad.

"Death in the Harbor" starts with the death of a man who was alone on his yacht. At first the police assume it was suicide, but later there are more deaths in the harbor. Captain Leopold starts an investigation into skindivers in the area. This one also had an unexpected ending, at least for me. 

"A Place for Bleeding" is a murder / kidnapping story. I thought the resolution for that one was pretty obvious, but still a good story.

In "Reunion," Captain Leopold is visited by Harry Tolliver, a man who went to high school with Leopold and graduated the same year. Twenty five years later, Harry wants to plan a reunion, and asks Leopold for assistance. All he has to do is locate thirteen people from the yearbook and contact them. Leopold is reluctant but agrees to help. Later Harry will regret getting Leopold involved, when the death of one of the students from their graduation class comes up again.

In "The House by the Ferris," a woman is accused of killing a man who owns an amusement park. The wife of the dead man says that Stella Gaze is a witch who foretold the death of her husband and his three other business partners. Stella Gaze is an old woman who lived in a house on the property to be developed for the amusement park, and the park was built up around her house when she refused to sell the house. This is probably the most creepy of the five stories.

The last two stories are my favorites in this group. I hope to be reading more of these stories soon, because there is a Christmas story later in the book.

Other resources: 

George Kelly's review, including a list of the stories.

A list of Hoch's series detectives and short stories in collections, as of July 2018, at Mysteries, Short and Sweet.

Mike Grost's page on Edward D. Hoch.