Robert W. Cochran appears
to have been an obscure, little-known pulp writer who seems to have
exclusively penned short stories for numerous periodicals, such as
Argosy, Detective Fiction Weekly, G-Men Detective
and 10 Story Mystery Magazine, but that's all the internet
could tell me – making him one of the more obscurer names discussed
on this blog. I'm not sure from who, or where, I heard of Cochran,
but had jotted down the title of one of his short stories as a
possible item of interest. My hunch was not entirely wrong.
"Mystery At the Dog
Pound" was published in the May, 1942, issue of Street &
Smith's Detective Story Magazine and has not been reprinted
since.
The story takes place in
Clarkesville, "a town of only eight thousand," which is
less than a month removed from an important election and the
incumbent sheriff, Tom Russell, is gloomily trying "to device
some method" to succeed himself as county sheriff – only to
be disrupted by a telephone call. Charlotte Trent is on the other end
of the line and tells Russell that her husband, Jonathan Trent, took
her Great Dane to the pound "to have it destroyed." And
she wants Russell to save her dog.
So, together with the
narrator of the story, Ray, they go down to the pound, but when they
arrive the gas-chamber has already done its work. However, when they
peer through the small glass panel of the metal door, what they see
is not the foot of a dog, but that of a man. One of the most
prominent citizens of Clarkesville, Jonathan Trent, has been gassed
to death. Everything seems to point to murder.
"Mystery At the Dog
Pound" has a solid premise and an original setting, which has to my
knowledge never been used before or since, but lacked detection and
proper clueing. This could have easily sunk the whole story. However,
I really liked the explanation as to how Jonathan Trent, instead of
his dog, ended up behind the metal door of the gas-chamber and died –
a well-done play on the blinkin' cussedness of things. A competent
plotter could have spun gold out of this wonderful idea, but has
sadly gone to waste in Cochran's hands.
That being said, I think "Mystery At the Dog Pound" is still worth a read, if only for
having an original thought, but don't expect anything more from the
end product than a curiosity excavated from the bottom of a
long-forgotten trunk in the dusty attic of the genre. You can read
this short story in the issue of Street & Smith's Detective
Story Magazine on the Internet
Archive.
Sorry for the short
review, but this all that can be said about the story and I'll be
back with a regular review before too long. So stay tuned.
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