Short Story Wednesday: Three Captain Leopold Stories by Edward D. Hoch

 

Recently I read another three stories in Leopold's Way by Edward D. Hoch. I read the first five stories in the book in November 2023. See this post for my thoughts on those stories and notes about the book and the author.

These are the three stories I read:

"The Oblong Room"

A college student has been killed in his dorm room, and his roommate stayed in the room with him after his death for at least 20 hours before the student next door discovered the situation. The assumption is that the roommate killed him, but question is why. This one was more spooky than most. It was a puzzle, of course, but it had a psychological element too.

This story won an Edgar award. My only complaint is that Captain Leopold keeps saying that this case is Sergeant Fletcher's case, but then he seems to take the lead. Still a great story. From what I have read, it has been reprinted many times.

"The Vanishing of Velma"

In this story, a teen-age girl has been reported as missing under very unusual circumstances. The young man who she was out with reports her missing; he says she took a ride on the Ferris wheel but never got off. It is a very good puzzle but Leopold figures it out.

The story mentions events in a previous story in this book, "The House by the Ferris," and Stella Gaze, a character in that story.

The solution was outstanding.

"The Athanasia League"

Of the three, this was my least favorite, but very interesting nevertheless. A woman is dead at the Athanasia League, a sort of home for older people run by Dr. Raymond Libby. He is not a medical doctor, but he leads a group of older people who pay to live in the home, "striving for deathlessness and immortality." A very strange case, since there seems to be no one with a motive to kill the woman, who was a member of the group.

Two interesting aspects are that Sergeant Fletcher has taken the test to become a Lieutenant and the only other policeman competing with him is one with a questionable reputation, not above taking graft or using force with a suspect. Also both Leopold and Fletcher have conflicts with the Mayor and a staff member. Unfortunately the story leaves it up in the air whether Fletcher gets his promotion or not.

Why do I like the Captain Leopold stories?

• Captain Leopold is a very likable character. Dedicated to his job, smart and intuitive. I also like Sergeant Fletcher, who works with Leopold most of the time.
• There were over 100 Captain Leopold stories and I have only read nine of them, so I am no expert. But so far in each story we learn just a bit more about Leopold and his background. (In "The Vanishing of Velma" the missing girl is 15 years old and he wonders if he might have a daughter that age if he and his wife had not divorced.)
• The stories are always interesting and never too far-fetched. 

Short Story Wednesday: Christmas Mysteries

Today I am featuring two Christmas mysteries:

"A Christmas Tragedy" by Agatha Christie was first published in January 1930 in The Story-Teller magazine (UK) under the title The Hat and the Alibi. In 1932, it was published as the tenth story in the The Thirteen Problems. 

The stories in The Thirteen Problems all feature a group of people who meet and discuss unsolved mysteries. Each week, one person in the group tells a story from their own experience, and then the others try to figure out the real solution. Miss Marple always does very well in coming up with solutions, of course.

In this case, several people are at a dinner party hosted by Colonel Arthur Bantry and his wife Dolly. Sir Henry Clithering, the former head of Scotland Yard, insists that Miss Marple tell a story; she modestly protests because she doesn't think she has the expertise. However, she relents and tells the story of a death that occurred when she was visiting a spa.

Miss Marple meets other guests staying at the Kestron Spa Hydro. Almost as soon as she meets Jack and Gladys Sanders, she senses that Jack wants to get rid of his wife. However, when his wife is murdered a few days later, Jack has an airtight alibi.

This really isn't much of a Christmas story; the only real connection is that the people are visiting the spa just before Christmas and go out shopping for Christmas presents. However it is a good mystery, whether it is Christmassy or not.

"Christmas is for Cops" by Edward D. Hoch is a Captain Leopold story. Captain Leopold, the head of the Violent Crimes Squad of a police department in a fictional city in Connecticut and I talked about Leopold's Way, a collection of the early Leopold stories in a previous post.

This story begins on the day before the annual department Christmas Party. Captain Leopold is following up on an accusation against Sergeant Tommy Gibson regarding his accepting money to overlook crimes. Gibson admits to the crime but insists that another detective in the department was working with him. He refuses to identify the other man but he promises Leopold that he will bring him the evidence within 24 hours.

The next day, Gibson has not brought in the evidence by the end of the day. Leopold discovers that Lieutenant Fletcher has sent Gibson to the Christmas Party to help set up the tree at the party. After Leopold arrives at the party, Gibson's body is discovered in the Men's Room. At that point they know the other culprit is at the party and try to figure out who it is. 

This story gives us a picture of Leopold as a loner with no family ties:

The party would really commence around five, when the men on the day shift arrived at Eagles Hall, and it continued until well past midnight, enabling the evening men to join in after their tours of duty.

Then there would be a buffet supper, and lots of beer, and even some group singing around the big Christmas tree. Without the family attachments of Fletcher and the other men, Leopold tended to look forward to the party. In many years it was the main event of his otherwise lonely holiday season.

It also features lots of policemen in the department, with returning secondary characters and some new characters. Fletcher works with Leopold on many of his cases.

This story was more Christmassy plus a good example of a Captain Leopold  mystery. 

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.

Short Story Wednesday: More from Mistletoe Mysteries

 

I purchased this book in 2014 after reading a post at GeorgeKelley.org. I read a few stories at that time, then just two years ago I featured the book on my blog, having read 6 more stories in the book. 

Today I feature three more stories from this book. I still haven't read all the stories in this book, but I hope to finish the last three by the end of 2022.

"Dutch Uncle" by Aaron Elkins

Per Charlotte MacLeod's introduction, this was the first short story Aaron Elkins wrote. At the time he had published a few mystery novels, but no short stories. [He has now published 18 novels in the Gideon Oliver series, two other shorter series, and four standalone novels.]

This story is about a lawyer who is hired by a client to help him purchase a piece of art for his wife's Christmas present -- at the last minute. It takes place on Christmas Eve in the late afternoon and that is the last thing he wants to be doing on Christmas Eve.  On top of that the client is extremely obnoxious. The two men find only one art gallery open at that time. With great difficulty they decide upon a painting to purchase, and return home on the ferry. There are two or three (maybe even four) twists before the end of the story and I liked them all.

"The Man Who Loved Christmas" by Henry Slesar

A police office in a small suburb of Dayton is called into work on Christmas morning. He is unhappy about this because his wife is very pregnant with their first child and could have the baby at any time. The case is the disappearance of a man whose wife reported him missing; he wasn't in bed when she woke up and she could not locate him anywhere. The missing man has two children and Christmas is very important to him, so the wife insists he has not just abandoned his family. 

This is another story with unexpected twists, but the results are more serious in this one.

"The Touch of Kolyada" by Edward D. Hoch

This is a Simon Ark story by Hoch, written especially for this anthology. Simon Ark is a mysterious man who claims to be 2000 years old, a Coptic priest hunting down evil. His tales are told by a friend who has known him for many years. His friend doesn't really believe his claims but he does notice that he hasn't aged in the time he has known him. I haven't read any Simon Ark stories yet but I do have a fairly recent collection of those stories from Crippen & Landru on my shelves. 

In this story, Simon Ark encounters a figure from Russian folklore, the elf maiden Kolyada, who distributes gifts to children at Christmas, similar to Santa Claus in western countries. It is an entertaining story, not very complex, and I like the way the narrator tells the story.

Short Story Wednesday: "Stranger Station" by Damon Knight

Last year I featured a book of mostly science fiction short stories, Bug-Eyed Monsters, edited by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg. After all these months, I have finally read some stories from that book. That post shows the front and back covers of the book and lists all the stories in the book.

"Stranger Station" is the first story in the Bug-Eyed Monsters anthology. It was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1956, but has been included in a good number of anthologies since then. I had never read it or any other story by Damon Knight, so I was happy to have this opportunity.

It is a first contact story, except that the story is set long after the first contact and this is more about the impact years after the initial meeting. The aliens were so massive and repulsive to humans that the contact has been sparse and only occasionally do the aliens visit a space station that is set aside especially to enable that visit. When one of the aliens comes, it is only for one purpose, to provide a substance for the humans which the humans have come to rely on. A lot of the background is left to the imagination, which was OK because I can make up my own story around the events. 

One human is selected to facilitate the exchange with the alien being. He is alone on Stranger Station until the alien arrives. He is supplied with a talking computer, an "alpha network" that can provide all his needs and that may be close to a sentient being. The human calls it "Aunt Jane" and they develop a bit of a relationship with each other. 

"Stranger Station" is a longish story (about 30 pages) and most of it consists of the  human, Sergeant Wesson, getting ready for his encounter with the alien and trying to find out more about the station. I enjoyed the story and will be looking for more to read by Damon Knight. I would also enjoy the same story with more length and explanation.

A side note: I was recently motivated to read this story and others in this book because Todd Mason had written a post at Sweet Freedom on short stories by Damon Knight in 1956 and "Stranger Station" was listed there. 

After reading "Stranger Station," I read four more stories in the anthology.

• "Talent" (1960) by Robert Bloch
• "The Other Kids" (1956) by Robert F. Young
• "Puppet Show" (1962) by Fredric Brown
• "The Faceless Thing" (1963) by Edward D. Hoch

Only one of those stories has an actual bug-eyed monster. The stories by Robert Bloch and Fredric Brown were my favorites. The other two had ambiguous endings, which usually don't bother me, but in these cases I wanted more than that.

Short Story Wednesday: Edward D. Hoch collections

Last week for Short Story Wednesday, George Kelley featured a collection of stories by Edward D. Hoch, Funeral in the Fog, which contains 16 Simon Ark mysteries. George's post has an overview of the book and Hoch's short stories, and lists the Table of Contents. The book has an introduction by Gigi Pandian, who describes Simon Ark as an occult detective, "drawn to mysteries that seem to have a supernatural explanation."

On the same day, after reading George's post, I ordered a copy of Funeral in the Fog and another collection of Hoch's stories, Hoch's Ladies, both published by Crippen & Landru. Hoch's Ladies includes stories about three female sleuths: Susan Holt, a department store manager; Libby Knowles, a professional bodyguard; and Annie Sears, a police detective. If you are interested in more information, there are reviews at In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel and George Kelly's blog.

I have not read the stories in either of these books yet but I will be sampling from both of them soon.

Short Story Wednesday: The Big Book of Espionage, ed. Otto Penzler

I first learned about this book of short stories at George Kelley's blog. George gives a good overview of what the book has to offer and lists all the stories and authors, so be sure to check out his post.

The book has four sections with a total of 55 stories: The Great War (19); World War II (6); Other Terrors, Other Battles (19); and The Cold War (11). The book is large format with over 800 pages. Some of the authors are surprising, at least to me (Sara Paretsky, Erle Stanley Gardner, Brendan DuBois).

I have only read the Introduction by Otto Penzler and two stories so far. The introduction is very informative, and I enjoyed both of the stories.

"Charlie’s Shell Game" by Brian Garfield is one of 12 Charlie Dark stories. Charlie Dark is an American agent, in the CIA. This story was first published in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Feb 1978, and was also published in the collection Checkpoint Charlie. Fortunately I have that collection on my Kindle, so I can read more of the stories.

"The Spy Who Clutched a Playing Card" by Edward D. Hoch is one of his Jeffery Rand stories. Rand is a British agent, director of the Department of Concealed Communications. This story is very complex and a lot of fun (plus it is the first thing I have ever read by Hoch!). Per the Spy Guys and Gals site: "approximately 81 stories were written about Rand from the first in 1965 to the last published the year of the author's death, 2008." Again, I am fortunate to have an e-book of The Spy and the Thief: A Jeffery Rand and Nick Velvet Collection, which includes seven of the Jeffery Rand stories. I will be looking for other collections of stories by Hoch.

Even if these two stories and the other stories about those characters was the only thing I got out of this book, it would be well worth the price. But I am sure I am going to find many more stories to enjoy in this book.