Crippen
& Landru announced Edward
D. Hoch's first collection of Simon Ark short stories since The
Quests of Simon Ark (1984) back
in 2007, but it took thirteen years for Funeral in the Fog
(2020) to finally materialize – gathering sixteen of "the
strange mysteries of Simon Ark" originally published between
1964 and 2005. Simon Ark claims to be a 2000-year-old Coptic priest
who's doomed to wander the earth and exorcise evil wherever he goes.
Ark believes his destiny, or salvation, is to some day do battle with
nobody less than Satan himself. So he's naturally drawn to crimes of
an ostensibly supernatural persuasion with more than one locked room
murder and impossible crime coming his way.
"Funeral
in the Fog" originally appeared in the 1973 Summer publication of
Weird Tales and brings Simon Ark into contact with a man from
upstate New York, Jason Bloomer, who "claims the Devil is
threatening to kill him." Bloomer has even seen this devil, in
human form, strangle a woman without touching her or leaving a mark
on the body. This happened six years ago, in Vietnam, during the
early days of the American troop buildup when Bloomer fled to Java to
engage with Rolf Dagon and Li Chow in a treasure hunt for Japanese
gold that was hidden at the end of World War II. Bloomer witnessed
how Dagon watched Li Chow "as if some invisible hands were
choking the life from her" and now Dagon is coming for Bloomer.
A very unusually-structured impossible crime tale, like an open-air
locked room mystery a la Glyn
Carr, in which Ark continues to elaborate on the multiple
plot-threads right up till the end. A great pick to headline this
collection!
"The
Avenger from Outer Space" was first published in the October, 1979,
issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and has Simon Ark
engaged by NASA when an American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut,
David Woodword and Valery Feokarov, were killed by lightening within
the span of eight days – which had been predicted by "something
of a minor prophet." Conrad Blaze warned NASA two weeks
previously that all their astronauts were doomed to die at the hands
of "an avenger out of space who would destroy them for having
ventured too far from earth." You would think this otherworldly
threat is aliens, but no, the space avenger is apparently Thor
("...the strongest of gods and men, hurling lightning bolts from
the heavens at all who would invade his sacred territory").
Ulysses 31
two years before its time! However, the how behind these miraculous
deaths is not what makes the story a memorable one, but the
brilliant, space-age twist on the age-old motive that lies behind the
elaborate scheme. Hoch can be a little uneven when you read him in
bulk, but he rarely let's you forget why he was one of the masters of
the traditional detective story during the second half of the 20th
century!
"The
Sorceress of the Sea," originally published in the August, 1980,
issue of EQMM, brings Simon Ark to Sarasota, Florida, to
investigate a mysterious murder on the sea. Hans Belkor went out
alone in his ketch late Saturday afternoon and disappeared until the
Coast Guard spotted the ketch drifting several miles off shore. They
discovered Belkor had been "strangled with a long tress of
blonde hair that had been twisted into a garrote" and strange
entries in the ship's logbook. Belkor wrote how he witnessed the sea
glow, bubble and steam before "a beautiful woman with long
blonde hair came to the surface" named Doris. He believed her
to be some kind of sorceress. While the solution to the murder is
average at best, I liked the imagery and explanation to the
appearance of the titular sea-witch.
A
note for the curious: Simon Ark's answer to the bird question is
that (ROT13) "vg vf oryvrirq va
pregnva cnegf bs gur jbeyq gung pntrq oveqf xrrc tubfgf naq rivy
fcvevgf njnl sebz n ubhfr gung znl or unhagrq." I've never
heard of that one before and a quick internet search yielded no
results. So is that actually believed in certain parts of the world
or did Hoch made that detail up for storytelling purposes?
"Prisoner
of Zerfall" originally appeared in the November, 1985, issue of
Espionage and brings Simon Ark to Berlin where the curtain is
about to fall on one of the last chapters of the Second World War. A
convicted Nazi war criminal, Erwin Witterberg, has been imprisoned at
Zerfall Castle, West Berlin, since Nuremberg trials nearly forty
years ago. The now 76-year-old Witterberg is the last surviving
prisoner guarded by "a joint force of American, British, French
and Russian military police" and his "imprisonment has
become something of a political symbol." Witterberg has
inexplicably vanished from the exercise yard. One moment he was seen
circling the yard and the next he had disappeared without a trace!
So
this story belongs to that rare subcategory of impossible crime
stories dealing with prisoners who mysteriously disappear from
tightly locked and closely-guarded prisons or holding cells. Some
examples include Jacques
Futrelle's "The Problem of Cell 13" (1905), Maurice Leblanc's "L'évasion
d'Arsène Lupin" ("The Escape of Arsène Lupin," 1906),
Curtiss T. Gardner's "Sorcery
in the Death House" (1943), James Holding's "The
Philippine Key Mystery" (1968) and Bill
Pronzini's "The Arrowmont Prison Riddle" (1976). Sadly,
Hoch's method to make the prisoner disappear is not nearly as good as
the tricks in those stories or as inspired as the clever motive
behind the vanishing act. So this one works better as a Cold War spy
caper than an impossible crime story. However, Simon Ark tells a
legend from 1815 of a prisoner, named Diderici, who had been held
captive at a Prussian prison, at Weichselmunde, where he "vanished
while walking in chains in a walled exercise yard" and
“prisoners walking behind him say he simply faded from sight"
– chains falling to the ground and "nothing more was ever seen
of him.” Ark gives a possible solution to this historical myth
that would not have been out-of-place on the pages of a Seishi
Yokomizo or Soji
Shimada novel. I don't understand why Hoch used it as an
anecdotal clue instead of writing a full-fledged short story around
the idea, because it would have added another locked room classic to
his body of work.
"The
S.S.S." was originally published in the November, 1986, issue of
Mystery Scene and gives a slightly bigger role to Simon Ark's
nameless narrator. This nameless narrator is a senior editor of the
publishing company, Neptune Books, who published Ark's book on
Satanism and the now company has drawn the ire of the Society for the
Suppression of Satan. The S.S.S. claim the company's colophon, or
emblem, is "the devil because he's holding a pitchfork"
rather than Neptune wielding his trident. So they threaten to
organize a nationwide boycott unless they change it, but a chat with
Simon Ark reveals the S.S.S. would consider a financial contribution
to their cause "overwhelming proof" of their innocence and
would force them to reconsider their position. So, apparently, a
run-of-the-mill extortion plot, but soon complications arise that
requires some actual detective work. A decent enough detective story
and nothing more. I think this story demonstrates that the series
only works when Simon Ark has bizarre, otherworldly or downright
impossible puzzles to pick apart. Anything less just makes the story
feel like minor stuff. For example, one of the later stories in this
collection can be described as minor stuff, but the strange,
unnerving nature of the problem makes it feel a lot more substantial
than it really is. More on that one in a minute.
"The
Way Up to Hades" was first published in the January, 1988, issue of
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and delivers the bizarre,
otherworldly and downright impossible that makes the series work.
Simon Ark drags his nameless narrator to rock concert at Madison
Square Garden in New York where a rockstar, Rager, summons the devil
on stage and ends his shows by crying out, "Satan, take me! If
there is a Lord of the Underworld, let me be with you this day in
Hades" – proceeding to vanish in "a burst of flames and
smoke." The narrator tries to explain to Ark it's all part of
the act, but Ark uses the editor to get backstage under the guise of
potential book deal. But what they eventually get is a front row seat
to an impossible disappearance. Rager is seen "to enter a glass
elevator which takes him up sixty floors and makes no stops on the
way," he's observed standing inside the elevator between
floors, but "when it reaches its destination he has vanished."
Just "one of his damned fireballs" that burned a hole in
the carpet.
"The
Virgins of Valentine" is Hoch's original contribution to 14
Vicious Valentines (1988), an anthology of short horror stories,
but Hoch delivered a simple and straightforward detective story.
Simon Ark travels to the town of Valentine, "nestled in the
hills of northern Pennsylvania not far from the New York State line,"
where an old St. Valentine's Day custom has been revived. On St.
Valentine's Eve, the local girls go to the graveyard at midnight,
sing a prescribed chant and run around the church twelve times. This
should conjure up the appearance of their future spouses. So,
naturally, the local boys ensure they're around "to put in an
appearance at the magical moment." The cemetery is quite
crowded on Friday, April 13th, which is used as a cover to kill a
local and colorful character, named Oliver Martin, who dresses like
the Devil. Despite all the story dressing, old customs and allusions
to the devil, the story is a simple, clearly reasoned whodunit
without any complications like unbreakable alibis, dying messages or
invisible killers. Just a whodunit. Not a bad one, either, but one
that feels out of place in a horror anthology and the Simon Ark
series. I think the story would have better suited one of Hoch's
other series-characters like Susan
Holt.
"The
Stalker of Souls" is another original contribution to an anthology,
Dark Harvest (1989), which this time is entirely in line with
the theme of that collection. A group of Swedish students made a pact
with the devil in early 1970s by exchanging their souls for success
in their chosen field. They all achieved a great deal of success,
while still under forty, but, decades later, "the devil was
starting to collect." One of them was decapitated in a
motorcycle accident and, a year later, Arno Blackmoor begins to hear
the sounds of "hoofbeats on the cobblestones" following
him home late at night – when he looks behind him "there is no
one in sight." Simon Ark goes to Stockholm after learning
Blackmoor had been murdered and decapitated in the street without a
trace of his murderer. What he discovers is not a cloven-hoofed
demon, but a very human kind of evil "doing the devil's work."
Sound
of ghostly footsteps is a fascinating variation on the no-footprints
scenario, but the number of possible solutions appears to be severely
limited and one-note. Just compare “The Stalker of Souls” to
Anthony Wynne's "Footsteps"
(1926). I think only C.
Daly King's "The Episode of the Tangible Illusion" (1935),
collected in The Complete Curious Mr. Tarrant (2003), managed
to do something different with the idea. So a pretty average entry in
the series.
"The
Society of the Scar" originally appeared in Predators
(1993), another anthology, in which the nameless narrator goes to
Istanbul, Turkey, to acquire the rights to three novels by Turkish
writer, Mustafa Byzas. Simon Ark had lived in the city in the 1920s
and comes along to renew his acquaintance with the place, but his
attention is drawn to a fascinating little problem by an old friend,
Professor Metzger. A retired art professor and acting curator of a
museum where eleven paintings have been slashed within three months'
time. The work of a madman who seems to be invisible to the guards.
A young man with a limp passes a note to Ark, "learn about the
Society of the Scar, Grand Hamam, four o'clock," which is a
Turkish bathhouse. But when they arrive, the man they were supposed
to meet had his throat slashed.
On
the surface, "The Society of the Scar" is a competently plotted
detective story expertly employing the backdrop and particularly the
murder in the bathhouse is very well done. A very well reasoned
solution why that person stood out as suspicious and why only that
person could have done it. However, the slashed paintings, while
perfectly motivated, makes no sense. How did the slasher hope to
(ROT13) ergevrir gur cncre uvqqra orgjrra gur pnainf jura fur bayl
unq n fcyvg frpbaq gb qb gur fynfuvat. This is not addressed in
the story.
A
note for the curious: this story strongly suggests Ark's claim to
immortality is not out of the realm of possibility. The narrator asks
Metzger what Ark was like in the 1920s and he answers, "much as
he is today" and that "he has changed very little."
To which the narrator surprisingly exclaims, "but that was over
sixty years ago!"
"The
Graveyard Ghoul" was originally published in the anthology Night
Screams (1996) and is the story is referred to when discussing "The S.S.S." George Mitchner has an estate with a family cemetery
on it, which has had its graves desecrated and vandalized as coffins
were dug up, opened and the family crypt was entered – covered in
spray-painted pentagrams. The bodies were neither not taken or robbed "as if the vandal simply wanted to view the remains."
Mitchner believes it was his son, Andrew, who opened the graves. Even
the grave of his dear mother. Hoch wove a historical plot-thread
through the story concerning why the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson opened
the coffin of his young wife thirteen months after she passed away.
Plot-wise, this is a very minor story centering on the interpretation
of behavior and actions without a sane reason or motivation behind
it, but the somber ghoulishness of it all makes the story feel so
much than it actually is.
"Master
of Miracles," originally printed in the May, 1999, issue of EQMM,
on the other hand is a throwback to the pulps of the early decades of
the previous century. Simon Ark learns that a former stage magician,
Thaddeus Lusk, has started a new religious cult in California, the
Luskites. Lusk performs "magic tricks and miracle cures"
by throwing out fireballs and then commanding rain to fall from the
cloudless sky to douse the fires. He also predicts that a member of
his congregation, Kelly Block, who broke the rules "will be gone
by noon tomorrow." On the following day, Kelly is seen driving
her car into a car wash and never exited on the other side. She and
the car had both vanished like a burst soap bubble. Hoch obviously
got the idea for the trick from a '90s toy (or toy commercial) and
not sure how well the trick would work, but it certainly counts as a
new take on the impossible disappearance. While the explanations to
the rain commands and miraculous disappearance can only be described
as pulp, Hoch employed them masterfully to stage a murder as
theatrical as it's gruesome. You can even call it nightmare fuel.
A
note for the curious: this story gives the reader another
indication Ark might actually be a lot older than should be humanly
possible ("but hadn't he seemed a vigorous man in his seventies
when we first met, decades ago?").
"The
Gravesend Trumpet" was originally published in the September, 2005,
issue of EQMM and gives the impression Hoch had been watching
Jonathan
Creek at the time, because the story could easily have been
an episode for that series. Simon Ark returns to England to visit the
town of Gravesend, where Pocahontas is buried, to visit the Hamstitch
Museum. Joshua Hamstitch was an archaeologist in the early 1920s who
found the trumpet of the Last Judgment near the town of Luxor on the
Nile. The legend tells that the trumpet can summon the dead, but when
Hamstitch 46-year-old Hamstitch blew on the trumpet he died on the
spot of old age. During his visit to the museum, their guide, Naomi
Swift, tells she has been tempted to blow it "just to prove how
harmless it is." During a second visit she blows the trumpet
with her husband, Ark and his narrator standing outside the door.
When they go inside they find Noami is not only dead, but the body
has aged into an old woman in her seventies. Just like with even the
better Jonathan Creek episodes, you have to suspend disbelieve
a little in order to swallow the plot. Not necessarily the trick
itself, which is relatively simple (in theory), but other elements
require some extra chewing. But a fun little story to close out this
collection.
Edward
D. Hoch is and likely always will have a presence in detective-themed
anthologies who can be relied upon to deliver one of the better
stories of an anthology, but short story collections devoted
exclusively to his own work often shows he could be very uneven –
both as a writer and plotter. Funeral
in the Fog
is no exception to that rule. On a whole, a good and solid collection
with one of Hoch's oldest and most fascinating series-detectives, but
only half a dozen stories truly lived up to Hoch's fabled reputation
as the Giant of Short Stories.
