The Hit List: Top 5 Favorite Mystery Short-Shorts

When patching together one of these lists, I always try to avoid the usual topic and opt for something slightly less obvious and original, "Top 10 Works of Detective Fiction Lost to History," "Top 10 Beneficiaries of the Reprint Renaissance" and "Top 10 None-English Detective Novels That Need to Be Translated," unless there's a good reason – like the 10th anniversary of the Rue Morgue Press shutting down. This time, I wanted to do a short story list, but not a basic list of favorite short stories or make it thinly-disguised locked room list.

So was considering starting working on a Halloween-themed list or do a part 2 of "Top 10 Favorite Hybrid Mysteries," when I got an idea. Why not do a short list of short-shorts?

The short-short detective story has admittedly not produced many classic or memorable examples, because it's tricky to setup and execute a good, satisfying detective story in 3-6 pages. So the short-short detective story is not the perfect vehicle to write a stunning and memorable detective story, but, going over them in my head and digging around on this blog, I quickly compiled a surprisingly solid top 5 – even having to cut a few candidates. I could have expanded the list into a top 10, but wanted the list to be short as well. I also changed the title of the list, "Top 5 Most Memorable Mystery Short-Shorts," because when it comes to short-shorts, everyone probably has a different reason why they remember a certain short-short – likely why everyone's top 5 picks would look very differently. That means there's something to disagree or nitpick about my top 5. Let me know in the comments.

"Leaving No Evidence" by Dudley Hoys (published in a 1938 issue of The Passing Show and collected in The Realm of the Impossible, 2017)

A short-short barely counting 6 pages bringing a traveler, named Cortland, to a remote, Lebanese mountain village where there's a legend of The Thing. Something that takes people. So he has pay good money to get some of the locals to guide him to snow-capped mountaintop, but during their climb two men disappear as by magic. I was surprised how clearly I remembered this story and it's original solution to the impossible disappearances. That makes it inclusion a no brainer.

Note for the curious: the barely 2-page excerpt from Aleksis Kivi's Seitsemän veljestä (Seven Brothers, 1870), also collected in The Realm of the Impossible, was considered, but "Leaving No Evidence" had more to offer.

"Who Killed Baker?" by Edmund Crispin and Geoffrey Bush (published in the October 30, 1950, edition of The Evening Standard and collected in Fen Country, 1979)

This is perhaps not the most original or surprising pick, but it's the most well-known short-short and a minor classic of its kind. Gervase Fen tells an acquaintance how Detective Inspector Casby solved a murder and answered the titular question. You can call this story gimmicky, a riddle in short story form, but it's a great gimmick and solution.

"Diamonds in Paradise" by Ellery Queen (published in the September, 1954, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and collected in Queens Full, 1965)

Queen's "Diamonds in Paradise" is not only one of my favorite short-shorts, but one of my favorite dying message stories. A surprisingly simple, straightforward short-short concerning a thief helping himself to some diamonds at The Paradise Garden, but ends up falling to his death while trying to escape – no diamonds are found on him. When the police asked the dying thief where he had hid the diamonds, he answered with his last breath "diamonds in paradise." Not only a clever take on the dying message story, but a surprisingly realistic one as well. Exactly the kind of story Isaac Asimov always tried to write for his Black Widower series.

"The Case of the Blue Bowl" by E.X. Ferrars (published in a December, 1958, edition of the London Evening Standard and collected in The Casebook of Jonas P. Jonas and Other Mysteries, 2012)

I came across this short-short fairly recently in the Crippen & Landru collection The Casebook of Jonas P. Jonas. A collection that begins with six short-shorts featuring Jonas P. Jonas, a retired private investigation, which appeared in the London Evening Standard during the second week of December 1958. "The Case of the Blue Bowl" is the standout of this short-lived series as Jonas solves the murder of a village miser based on the blue bowl left on the victim's doorstep. A 1930s village mystery in miniature!

"You Have a Friend at Fengrove National" by John Sladek (published in a 1968 issue of Tit-Bits and collected in Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek, 2002)

John Sladek gave me three short-shorts to chose from. A short-short genre parody ("The Locked Room," 1972) and a Thackeray Phin story ("It Takes Your Breath Away," 1974), but I picked the criminally overlooked and amusing "You Have a Friend at Fengrove National." A humorous tale about a criminal who worked out a clever cheque deposit scheme, but every thing goes wrong when the uncouth criminal classes decided to make a bank withdrawal. And ruin everything! Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek has a section, "Sladek Incognito," gathering eight of his still practically unknown crime short-shorts in which criminals fall prey to their own cleverness or simply bad luck. This one is, in my opinion, the best of Sladek's short crime pieces.