All But Impossible: The Impossible Files of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (2017) by Edward D. Hoch

Originally, I had planned to use this particular blog-post for either Christopher Bush, Bruce Campbell or Paul Doherty, but my previous read left me with a stronger-than-normal craving for impossible crime fiction and one serving was not going to satisfy it. Naturally, this brought to one of the most prolific locked room artisans of all-time, Edward D. Hoch.

During his long, storied career, Hoch wrote close to a thousand short stories and created a dozen, or so, series-characters such as Simon Ark, Ben Snow and Nick Velvet, but my personal favorite will always remain Dr. Sam Hawthorne – a small-town country physician often called upon to solve seemingly impossible crimes. Dr. Hawthorne practiced as a country doctor in the fictional New England town of Northmont, but this unassuming town has a higher murder-rate rivaling that of Cabot Cove and Midsomer County. And to complicate matters, all of the crimes are utterly bizarre and usually appear to be impossible nature!

However, what makes this series amazing is not only the incredible volume of locked room and impossible crime scenarios, but also the sheer variety in original premises and solutions. Hoch was not just content with bodies found behind locked doors or in the middle of a field of unbroken snow or wet sand. Oh, no. He imagined such puzzling situations as a horse-and-buggy vanishing from within a covered bridge. Fresh corpses turning up in a long-buried coffins or metal time-capsules. A murderous tree with a penchant for strangling people or a cursed tepee that nobody emerges from alive. These are only a handful of examples of the miracle problems Dr. Hawthorne solved over the decades.

Crippen & Landru has published four volumes of Dr. Hawthorne stories and the most recent title in this series is All But Impossible: The Impossible Files of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (2017), which is collection of fifteen short stories originally published between 1991 and 1999 in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (hereafter, EQMM). So let's dig right in!

"The Problem of the Country Church" was first published in the August, 1991, issue of EQMM and brings Dr. Sam Hawthorne to the Greenbush Inn, a popular mountain resort in Maine, owned by Andre Mulhone – who had married his former nurse, April (see "The Problem of the Snowbound Cabin" from Nothing is Impossible: Further Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, 2014). They recently had their first child, a boy, who they named after Dr. Hawthorne and asked him to be the child's godfather.

During the baptism service, the baby is inexplicably taken from its bassinet and replaced by "a curly-haired Shirley Temple doll" with a fifty thousand dollar ransom note stuck it. I'm not too big a fan of kidnap stories, because they're rarely any good, but this was a pretty decent effort. The trick used to switch the baby for the doll was not too bad, but almost immediately figured it out as it reminded me of another impossible situation, also set in a church, from a TV-series. I can hardly lay the blame for that at Hoch's feet. So a fairly decent curtain-raiser for this fourth volume.

"The Problem of the Grange Hall" was first published in the December, 1991, issue of EQMM and Pilgrim Memorial Hospital is celebrating its eighth anniversary with a community dinner and dance at Grange Hall. Usually, eighth anniversaries aren't worth celebrating, but "the Depression had been hard on Pilgrim Memorial" and the hospital needs money for new equipment. So they used the anniversary as an opportunity to raise money. The committee has even brought in a big New York band, Sweeney Lamb and his All-Stars, for the dance.

Dr. Lincoln Jones of Pilgrim Memorial went to high school with the trumpet player of the band, Bix Blake, but their reunion ends tragically when they fail to come out of a locked dressing room during the dance. The door is broken down and, upon entering, they find Dr. Jones kneeling next to the body of the trumpet player holding an empty, hypodermic needle in one hand – which had been "full of codeine." Dr. Jones claims Blake began to have trouble breathing and that there was no needle in the room when this happened. This is, admittedly, a fascinating impossible crime scenario with an uncommon murder weapon that makes the murder look even more impossible, but the experienced (locked room) mystery reader should have no problem piecing this puzzle together. And perhaps do so even quicker than Dr. Hawthorne.

"The Problem of the Vanishing Salesman" was first published in the August, 1992, issue of EQMM and is one of the innumerable detective stories playing with Dr. Watson's reference, in "The Problem of Thor Bridge" from Conan Doyle's The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927), to the unfinished tale of Mr. James Phillimore – "who, stepping back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world."

Mr. James Philby is a traveling salesman who returned to Northmont in the Spring of '37 to sell lightening rods, but pulls a vanishing act on the porch Abby Gaines with Dr. Hawthorne as the sole witness. Shortly thereafter, Philby reappears as if nothing has happened. However, Philby disappears a second time, on exactly the same spot, but this time its after shooting and killing a man. Dr. Hawthorne and Sheriff Lens watch him open the storm-door and vanish through a door that was locked and bolted from the inside! And he's nowhere to be found on the premises! The explanation for this vanishing trick is a little bit workmanlike, but this fitted the character of the murderer like a glove and made for a fun take on the inverted detective story.

"The Problem of the Leather Man" was first published in December, 1992, issue of EQMM and can now be counted as one of my favorite stories from this series.

The Leather Man is a remarkable character who really existed: "a laconic wanderer," rumored to have been of French decent, who dressed in a homemade leather suit and walked a 365-mile circuit between Connecticut and eastern New York State for thirty years during the late 1800s – which he did until his death in 1889. Hoch used the lore of the man in tattered leather to pen one of the more memorable entries in this series.

During the summer of 1937, the ghost of the Leather Man returned to Northmont and appears to have been involved with a fatal automobile accident. Dr. Hawthorne becomes fascinated by the story and assumes "someone is retracing the old route" for "reasons of his own." So he decided to follow the trail and eventually spotted "a slim, brown-clad figure." The man claims to be an Australian, Zach Taylor, who's "on a trek" and Dr. Hawthorne begins to walk along with the man. Along the way, they come across several of Dr. Hawthorne's acquaintances and, by the end of the day, they decide to stay the night at a Bed & Breakfast.

On the following morning, Dr. Hawthorne discovers that his leather-clad companion has disappeared from their shared room and the owners of the B&B tell him he had checked in all alone. Smelling of booze. All of the people, he had come across the previous day, swear they had not seen the Leather Man. Dr. Hawthorne had been walking by himself.

An absolutely marvelous, first-class premise with not one, but three, separate explanations that form together one single solution. Sheriff Lens has a point that this is "stretching coincidence a bit far," but, if you're going to use a patch-work of coincidences, this is the way how it should be done. A grand take on the 1880s urban legend of "The Vanishing Lady," which also inspired Basil Thomson's "The Vanishing of Mrs. Fraser" (Mr. Pepper, Investigator, 1925), John Dickson Carr's 1943 radio-play "Cabin B-13" and Simon de Waal & Dick van den Heuvel's Spelen met vuur (Playing With Fire, 2004). Only thing you can say against it is that, technically, it doesn't exactly qualify as an impossible crime story. But, as you can see, that did not prevent me from enjoying this story.

"The Problem of the Phantom Parlor" made its first appearance in the June, 1993, issue of EQMM and, plot-wise, is one of the better and stronger entries in this volume. Dr. Hawthorne receives a twelve-year-old girl, Josephine Grady, in his office who staying a week in Northmont with her aunt, Min Grady – who, according to the girl, is "sort of spooky" and her house has a ghost-room. There's a large, elaborate china closet, but sometimes there's "a little parlor" behind the double doors with a sofa, chairs and pictures on the wall. A parlor that appears and disappears at random.

Dr. Hawthorne gives Josephine his home phone-number and tells her to call him whenever something strange has happened, but, when she calls him, it's to tell him that she has found her aunt's body in the phantom parlor. When Dr. Hawthorne and Sheriff Lens arrive, the body is lying in the hallway and the parlor, once more, is nowhere to be found. This is a truly excellent and original story with a cleverly constructed impossible crime trick.

My only complaint is that the solution to this story has somewhat diminished my high opinion on another contemporary locked room novel, because the central idea from that novel obviously came from this short story. Not only the idea behind the locked room trick, but also the clue of the previous, long-dead resident of the house. Hoch originated the idea with this wonderful story.

"The Problem of the Poisoned Pool" first appeared in the December, 1993, issue of EQMM and Dr. Hawthorne is invited to the clambake party of Ernest Holland, published of the Northmont Blade, who tells everyone to bring their bathing suits – because the pool is open. During the party, his brother, Philip Holland, miraculously emerges from an empty swimming pool and is challenged by Ernest to do the trick in reverse by diving into "the pool and disappear." Philip accepts the challenge and dives back into the pool, but dies almost immediately of cyanide poisoning.

Unfortunately, this is not a good story at all and pretty much cheats the reader, because the correct solution to the impossible appearance was suggested early on and rejected. Only to be brought back on stage as the correct solution with a minor addition used to explain the poisoning part. Hoch should have known better, because, if I remember correctly, Carr mocked a variation on this solution in A Graveyard to Let (1949) – which also involves an impossibility in a swimming-pool. So not one of Hoch's better impossible crime stories.

"The Problem of the Missing Roadhouse" first appeared in the June, 1994, issue of EQMM and is, regrettably, not much better than the previous story. After a night out, Jack and Becky Tober are driving home when they come across a roadhouse where they accidentally hit a man with their car. Or so it appears. At the hospital, they find that the dead man has a bullet wound in his head, but when they return to the scene of the crime, the roadhouse has disappeared. I think Aidan of Mysteries Ahoy! described this story best when he said it was "awkward and unconvincing." I concur!

"The Problem of the Country Mailbox" first appeared in the December, 1994, issue of EQMM and is an improvement over the previous two stories, but still has its problems. The story takes place in the Fall of '38 and Northmont is experiencing a population growth, which brings change to the town and one of these changes is a small, private college that's being built in a neighboring town – encouraged a man named Josh Vernon to open a bookstore in town. Vernon has an impossible problem for Dr. Hawthorne concerning one of his customers, Aaron DeVille.

Three times, Vernon has left books DeVille had ordered in his mailbox and they simply disappeared. Sometimes, the books disappeared in less than a minute or two. Vernon placed a book in the mailbox and DeVille immediately stepped outside, to get it, only to discover an empty mailbox. Dr. Hawthorne decides to take this hungry mailbox to the test and personally delivers a copy of War and Peace, but when the package is opened, which contained a harmless book moments before, DeVille is blown to pieces by a bomb! A good premise and story-telling with an interesting solution.

However, I have one (tiny) problem with the explanation: why, from all the books in the house, would [redacted] pick that specific book? I think that's one hell of a coincidence. Still, all things considered, this was a good story.

"The Problem of the Crowded Cemetery" first appeared in the May, 1995, issue of EQMM and was famously anthologized by Mike Ashley in The Mammoth Book of Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes (2000), which was my first exposure to this series and, I believe, even Hoch. So I have a particular fondness for this story.

Spring Glen Cemetery used to be more of a park than a graveyard, bisected by a creek, which sometimes overflowed and flooded the graveyard when the warmth of spring melted the winter snow on Cobble Mountain – slowly eroding the soil on the banks of the creek. This resulted in the lost of several acres of cemetery land. So many of the graves had to be cleared and reburied, but Dr. Hawthorne, who was to oversee the procedure, is soon confronted with another a baffling impossible crime. One of the recently unearthed coffins, buried for more than twenty years, turns out to contain the body of a recently murdered man. A baffling situation with an explanation as simple as it's practical. I liked it for more than one reason.

"The Problem of the Enormous Owl" first appeared in the January, 1996, issue of EQMM and is a minor story about a playwright, Gordon Cole, who's found in the middle of a field with a crushed chest and feathers found on the body – identified as belonging to a great horned owl. More of an howdunit than an impossible crime. Only interesting aspect of the story is that Sheriff Lens is the one who solved the how-part of the crime. A role usually reserved for Dr. Hawthorne, but he gets to correctly identify the murderer.

"The Problem of the Miraculous Jar" first appeared in the August, 1996, issue of EQMM and is a good, old-fashioned and uncomplicated locked room mystery. 

 

Proctor and Mildred Hall, two prominent citizens of Northmont, returned from a two month holiday in the Mediterranean region and brought back a stoneware jar from Cana where Jesus had performed the first miracle at the wedding feast – by turning water into wine. Hall's give this Canaanite jar to one of their friends, Rita Perkins, but the wonder it performs to its new owner is a poisonous miracle.

Shortly after the jar is given, Dr. Hawthorne is called by Perkins to tell him she drank from the jar and is feeling "terribly dizzy." He rushes to her home, which is entirely locked from the inside and surrounded by unmarked snow. Dr. Hawthorne breaks a window and, inside the home, finds the body of Perkins. An autopsy revealed she had been pregnant and died from cyanide poisoning, but the question is how the poison was introduced into the locked house. The answer to this question also reveals the identity of the murderer.

So a pretty good, competently plotted locked room story and, had this story actually been written and published during the late 1930s, the motive and murder method would probably have shocked some readers.

"The Problem of the Enchanted Terrace" first appeared in the April, 1997, issue of EQMM and has, together with "Phantom Parlor," one of the best and most original impossible crime scenario and solution in this volume – a truly novel way to make a person vanish as if by magic. Dr. Hawthorne is one a long overdue, well deserved holiday together with his nurse, Mary Best, and two friends, Winston and Ellen Vance. They make a stop at New Bedford to visit newly opened Herman Melville museum and there they learn of "a haunted terrace" that attracts lightening strikes during thunderstorms.

Dr. Hawthorne experiences the paranormal quality of terrace first hand when he witnesses "a strange greenish light," which quickly vanishes, followed by the inexplicable disappearance of a man from the same terrace. The terrace was surrounded by walls or wet, unmarked brown soil. Somehow, a man had vanished from this place in the blink of an eye! As said above, the solution to this miracle problem is as novel as it original. You can almost say it was cartoon-like, but really appreciated the originality of the trick. Only weakness is the unconvincing motive. Granted, motives have always been a particular weakness of this series.

"The Problem of the Unfound Door" was first published in the June, 1998, issue of EQMM and is a pretty minor story about a miraculous disappearance during an inspection of an Anglican convent. However, the only notable aspect of this story is not the locked room trick, but how Hoch's attempt to invert the expectations of long-time mystery readers. A spirited attempt that has to be appreciated.

"The Second Problem of the Covered Bridge" was first published in the December, 1998, issue of EQMM and had the promise to be the standout story of this collection, but the story failed to live up to its premise and ended up absolutely hating it.

The story takes place in January, 1940, when Northmont celebrates its centenarian and the town wants to mark the occasion by dramatizing "the four most memorable events in Northmont history." One for each season. For winter, they want to memorialize the first impossible problem Dr. Hawthorne ever solved in Northmonth, "The Problem of the Covered Bridge" collected in Diagnosis: Impossible – The Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (1996), which took place eighteen years ago – when Dr. Hawthorne settled down in Northmont in 1922. Mayor Sumerset is to drive through the covered bridge on a horse-and-buggy, exactly 18 years ago, but halfway through the covered bridge, watched from both sides, he's shot through the head at close range. A marvelous premise using the history of the series itself, but completely soiled by using the same kind of solution as the one from "The Problem of the Voting Booth."

An unimaginative, cop-out solution that stopped being clever after Conan Doyle used it and writers really have to stop using it. You're not being clever and the only thing it achieves is killing potentially good (locked room) detective stories. I hate this solution so very much.

Finally, we have "The Problem of the Scarecrow Congress," culled from the pages of the June, 1999, issue of EQMM and is a relatively minor story with a nifty impossible situation: a body of a shot man who, somehow, appeared inside a scarecrow that was part of a competition. The trick here is not bad, a play on a technique Hoch often employs for his locked room stories, and is properly clues, but marred by a poor and unconvincing motive. So this collection ended with a bit of whimper.

In summation, All But Impossible is the traditional mixed bag of stories you like, dislike or feel indifferent about in turn, but, as a whole, they still form a pretty solid collection of impossible crime tales with "Leather Man," "Phantom Parlor," "Crowded Cemetery" and "Enchanted Terrace" as the standout cases. Overall, a definite improvement over the stories collected in the previous volume (Nothing is Impossible: Further Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, 2014) and very much enjoyed my return to Northmont. One of all-time favorite fictitious places. And it's always a pleasure to listen to Dr. Hawthorne narrate his old cases.

Lastly, Crippen & Landru have one more Dr. Hawthorne collection in the offing, apparently titled Challenge the Impossible – The Last Casebook of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (20??), but a definite publication date is, as of yet, not known. Personally, I think a book-title along the lines of Not As Impossible As It Seems: The Final Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne or Is It Really Possible?: The Last Casebook of Dr. Sam Hawthorne is better fitted for the truly last collection of one of the greatest specialists of impossible crimes.

Devil's Soil: Halter, Hoch and Hoodwinks

I know my blog is dominated by locked room mysteries and impossible crimes, which tends to come at the expense of regular detective stories, but the monster that Edgar Allan Poe created still has me firmly in its grip. Just like Vincent, "I'm possessed by this house and can never leave it again." Nevertheless, I do want to spread out my locked room reading in the future, but until then, I crossed two more short stories from my to-read list. Stories by two modern-day champions of the impossible crime story whose dedication and output rivaled that of the master, John Dickson Carr.

Edward D. Hoch's "The Problem of the Devil's Orchard" was originally published in the January, 2006 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and will be collected for the very first time in the forthcoming Challenge the Impossible: The Last Casebook of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (20??) – published by Douglas Greene of Crippen & Landru. A collection of short stories representing the closing chapters on a long-running series that was fully dedicated to the impossible crime story, but we can be downcast about this when the time comes.

"The Problem of the Devil's Orchard" takes place during Labor Day weekend of 1943, when the tide of the war in Europe was turning in favor of the Allies, but the war was not the only thing occupying the people of the New England town of Northmont. A young man had miraculously vanished from an apple orchard.

Phil Fitzhugh only recently celebrated his nineteenth birthday, works at the feed store of his family and is dating a girl, Lisa Smith, whom he intends to marry, but her folks won't hear of it. Phil became frantic when he finally received his draft notice.

So Lisa turned to Dr. Sam Hawthorne for help, who enlisted the assistance of Sheriff Lens, but after they pick a drunk Phil up at a bar, where he was "acting a bit unsteady," he escapes from Hawthorne's car and flees into Desmond's Orchard – known locally as the Devil's Orchard. The hundred-acre apple orchard is believed to be haunted and attracts "arcenous children," which is why the owner erected two, eight-feet chain-link fences topped by barbwire. Phil was completely trapped inside the orchard, but a subsequent search by fifty workers only turned up a blood-smeared shirt. And the strip of bare soil along the fences was soft enough to show footprints. Only problem is that the earth showed no signs of having been stood on. So how did he vanish from a locked and watched apple orchard?

Hoch has a deserved reputation of usually delivering one of the better, if not the best, short story in any mystery anthology that he's a part of, but this is not one of his finest pieces of impossible crime fiction.

The clues and hints to the solution where all there, like the stone that was found on the bloody shirt, but the fair play could disguise that the impossibility was weak and uninspired. An explanation that should have been used as a false, throw-away solution. Unworthy of Hoch, the King of the Short Detective Story.

So, now we go from one modern locksmith of the impossible crime story, who's no longer among us, to another artisan who still very much alive.

An English translation of Paul Halter's "The Robber's Grave" first appeared in the June, 2007 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and was translated, as always, by John Pugmire of Locked Room International. The story is a charming one and can be compared to the kind of impossible crime stories from Carter Dickson's The Department of Queer Complaints (1940).

Dr. Alan Twist had taken his car to escape the noisy, bustling city of London and lose himself in "the peaceful English countryside," but had ended up in a "desolate spot" across "the border of darkest Wales." There he stumbles into an inn and listens to the story of a nearby grave site where grass refuses to grow.

A hundred years ago, Idris Jones was denounced by "a couple of blackguards," who claim to have seen him rob and beat a beggar to death, but, despite his heated denials, Jones was hanged as a murderer. On his way to the gallows, Jones asked God not to allow "a blade of grass ever to grow over his grave" and the grass over his grave did turn yellow and then disappeared. And that's the last time green was seen on that patch of ground. An attempt to find a logical and natural explanation has driven a developer out of the village.

A property developer from Bristol, Evans, had bought the land and wanted to turn the grounds into a golf course, but you don't want your patrons to come across a haunted grave when they're doing a relaxing round of golf. So he vowed "to break the ancient curse" or "abandon the project." Evans went to a lot of trouble to prove it was all a trick or misunderstanding.

Evans removed the earth to a considerable depth and replaced it with rich, seeded loam, but the grass had scarcely began to grow when it began to turn yellow, died and a bare patch outlining a grave – which only made him double his efforts. The earth was replaced again and Evans hired the best gardeners in the region, but when even this failed he began to suspect sabotage from the locals. So he built a wall around the fence with a metal grille serving as a gate. Guards and dogs watched over this small fortress and the earth inside was, once again, replaced. But all to no avail. The grass refused to grow.

A good and novel impossible situation with a neat, simple and believable explanation that also betrayed the author is undeniably French.

I believe these type of peculiar problems and unusual impossibilities work best, as is demonstrated here, when the problem-solver of the story acts purely as an armchair detective who listens to these extraordinary accounts and then reasoning a logical answer from that same armchair – doing all of the work in his head. "The Robber's Grave" is not strictly an armchair story, because Twists does leave his seat, but he pretty much functions as one. And he figures out the method when he recalled a mean-spirited prank he played on a nasty neighbor as a child.

So we have a good, fun little detective story and another that began promising, but ended up being underwhelming. Well, we'll have to do with that, I guess, and I'll return with some non-impossible crime novels from the likes of Christopher Bush, E.R. Punshon and perhaps Erle Stanley Gardner. So stay tuned.

Quick on the Draw

"I'm sure you have lots of stories about the Old West."

- Mary Best (Edward D. Hoch's "The Problem of the Haunted Tepee," collected in Nothing is Impossible: Further Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, 2014)

Edward D. Hoch's The Ripper of Storyville and Other Ben Snow Tales (1997) is the only collection of short stories about his gunslinger character, Ben Snow, who's always "a long way from home," as he travels from town to town, but everywhere he goes he's followed by the ghost of the Wild West's most legendary gunfighter, Billy the Kid – to whom he bears a resemblance.

Snow is lightening quick on the draw and hailed from the State of New Mexico, where Billy the Kid was reportedly shot by Sheriff Pat Garrett, which convinced enough people that the outlaw had survived and adopted the name Ben Snow. This makes him a magnet for all kinds of problems. Everywhere he goes in the Old West, there are people who either want to take a shot at "the ghost of Billy Kid" or "hire the fasted gun in New Mexico." So the series places the traditional detective story within the framework of a Western and it worked like a charm.

I've to note here that I'm not very knowledgeable, or well-read, where Westerns are concerned, but, going by these fairly modern incarnations of that genre, I can understand why horse-and-cowboy tales were once as greedily consumed as the other popular forms of genre-fiction – such as our beloved detective story and the science-fiction genre.

According to the introduction, this collection of the first fourteen stories in the Ben Snow series "is really two books in one."

The first seven stories appeared between 1961 and 1965 in the British and American publications of The Saint Mystery Magazine, which are supposed to be read with "a bit of tolerance for a young writer," but these earlier stories are as good as the later ones. After 1965, Snow rode off into the sunset and would not be seen for another twenty years when Hoch resurrected the series for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. It would be a home for the wandering gunslinger until his literary father passed away in 2008.

So, now we got that out of the way, let's take a look at the short stories that makes up this splendid collection of historical mysteries, which all take place during the late 1800s and early 1900s!

"Frontier Street" was the secondly published story in the series, originally appearing in the May 1961 issue of The Saint Mystery Magazine (hereafter, SMM), but was intended by Hoch to be the series-opener – which is a mistake that has been corrected in this volume. Ben Snow has been hanging around the titular street for the pass two months, mostly enjoying complete obscurity, but then "the power on Frontier Street," Len Antioch, summons him to the Golden Swan. The gambling boss has gotten wise of the rumors surrounding Snow's identity and wants to hire his gun to get rid of the pesky deputy, Reilly, but his refusal places him a tight, dangerous spot. A spot that's tightened, like a noose, when the gambling boss is clubbed to death with a gun butt on the same day as the hit on the deputy was issued.

This is a pretty good story that only serves as an excellent introduction to the character of Ben Snow, but also has a very decent plot that plays on the least-likely-suspect gambit and how this character is brought to heel is exactly what you'd expect from a Western. Snow challenges the murderer to a showdown in the street with only a single bullet left in the cylinder of his six-shooter, which he spins to make it as dangerous as humanly possible. So he has no clue which chamber holds that all important bullet. It's like Russian Roulette for people who are bored with playing Russian Roulette! A solid opening story of this fine collection of stories.

"The Valley of Arrows" was the first story to be published in the series, printed on the pages of the May 1961 publication of SMM, but had originally been written as the second one and the plot might explain why they were, initially, published out-of-order. It has a relatively simple, but memorable, premise reminiscent of Robert van Gulik's "The Night of the Tiger" from The Tiger and the Monkey (1965). So it was probably picked by the magazine editors as the series-opener, because it would leave a stronger impression on their readers.

The story begins with the arrival of Snow at Fort Arrowhead, "a city in the making" or "a last outpost against the red man," where he came with a serious warning. Snow had come across hoof-prints in the valley, "showing that someone from the fort had met with two Navajos," which obviously was not a place where a peace meeting or truce talk had taken place – suggesting the potential presence of a traitor within the walls of the fort. After his arrival, the body of the legendary commending officer of the fort, Colonel Noakes, is found with "a Navajo arrow protruding from the left side of his neck." However, this is not even the beginning of their problems.

Snow is part of a two-men truce mission, conducted under a white flag, to offer the Colonel's body to the chieftain, Running Bear, in exchange for the safety of the people at the fort. Only problem is that the traitor has promised "the lives of one hundred men," which ends the truce talks in an exciting horse-race back to the fort that's followed by a full-scale siege of the place. So this is more of a Western than a detective, but a very good and memorable one.

"Ghost Town" was originally published in the September 1961 issue of SMM and brings Snow to an abandoned, reputedly haunted, town in a valley, called Raindeer, where he finds an ill-assorted group of people. There's the apparent leader of the group, a priest, whose obviously wearing a gun under his black suit and has two very mismatched companions: an Indian dressed as a cowboy, but with a knife, instead of a gun, on his belt and a foul-mouthed, tobacco-chewing old man with a beard. Finally, there's a woman who fired a bullet at Snow and tied him up for the night.

Unfortunately, for the group, the place is living up to its reputation and one of them is gruesomely murdered. The old bearded man is found "pinned to the wall like some giant butterfly" with a harpoon and the floor surrounding the body is soaking wet. As if some "creature from the sea" had struck down a man in "the middle of the desert." A story with a very enthralling, well executed premise, with a mounting body-count that turned the ghost town into a small graveyard, but Hoch did not neglect to drop a clue, or two, that hinted at the truth. Such as how the murderer was able to strike in dark places or the water-drenched floor. I liked it.

"The Flying Man" appeared in the December 1961 issue of SMM and the premise of the story showcased Hoch's sorely missed talent for setting the stage.

Snow has been spending time among the three-hundred odd citizens of Twisted River, "a dried-up hole," which is one day visited by a man in a wagon, Doc Robin, who calls himself The Flying Man. Doc Robin has brought an amazing invention from the East Coast of the United States: a contraption with a giant set of wings that is used in big cities, like New York, to glide off buildings. He has even brought newspaper articles with him to proof his claim and promises a demonstration before taking one-hundred dollar orders from the town folks with a ten buck down payment. But before the big demonstration, Doc Robin approaches Snow with an offer to become his bodyguard and ensure him a safe departure from the town (with the money). Snow refuses the offer.

On the following morning, the town had gathered to watch Doc Robin glide down from the hill on his mechanical wings, but what they saw instead was a man crashing down to earth. And the cause of the crash was a well-aimed bullet. This fact makes the murder a borderline impossible crime, because the shot could've only been made with a rifle and nobody in the crowd was seen carrying a large, cumbersome rifle – or even a simple sidearm. Hoch is daringly fair in dangling the tell-tale clue in front of the reader and the fact that the victim had approached another gunman with his offer provided the plot with a solid motive. Plot-wise, this is easily the best Snow story from the 1960s period of the series.

Assassination of President McKinley

"The Man in the Alley" was printed in the April 1962 issue of SMM and, story-wise, is arguably the most interesting entry in the series for two reasons. One of them is that the plot actually deals with the rumors that Snow is Billy the Kid and the other places him on the scene of the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. I can't say much else about the story except that the plot is a great example, or recipe, of how fiction can be mixed with actual historical events without having to take liberties with the latter (see the final lines of the story).

"The Ripper of Storyville" was originally published in the September 1962 issue of SMM and, according to the introduction, Cornell Woolrich approached Hoch at a Mystery Writers of America cocktail party to tell him personally how much "he admired the story" - which, at the time, was considerable praise for a then still young writer. And the compliment was more than deserved.

Snow is hired by a dying Texan rancher and oil millionaire, Archer Kinsman, whose daughter, Bess, ran away from home and ended up in the red-light district of New Orleans, but Kinsman wants to make amends before his time is up. Snow accepts the assignment and travels to the Storyville, New Orleans, where the preparations of Mardi Gras are in full swing. There is, however, a slight problem complicating his task: a number of woman have been brutally murdered and the general belief is that Jack the Ripper has come to the Americas. Initially, I assumed to plot would prove to be very simple and transparent ("you don't know what I've become"), but Snow uncovers a hidden connection between all of the victims.

A connection that had to be obliterated in order to obscure the all-revealing motive behind a previous crime that fueled the string of murders. This is one of those excellent serial-killer detective stories in the same vein as Ellery Queen's A Cat of Many Tails (1949).

"Snow in Yucatan" was printed in the January 1965 edition of SMM and marked the end of the first period in the series, which went into dormancy until the mid-1980s.

Once again, Snow was offered a big chunk of cash, two-thousand dollars, by three ex-soldiers to murder a man, Wade Chancer, who's a thousand miles away in Mexico. Chancer had served with the ex-soldiers under Teddy Roosevelt in Cuba, but had deserted his brothers-in-arms and good men had died as a consequence. So he has to pay with his own life. Only problem is that he has fled to Mexico and made himself a general with the ambition to take over the country. Or a large swath of it. Chancer wants to use to the native population for this purpose and appears to have a magical hold over the Indians, which becomes a problem when the self-appointed general dies under inexplicable circumstances.

The story has a ton of local color and great story-telling, but the plot is rather thin and easily seen through. You can easily guess the source of Chancer's power over the natives and figured out how he died based on the photographic clue, which immediately brought Rufus King's A Variety of Weapons (1943) to mind. So not a bad story, but not particular great either.

"The Vanished Steamboat" marked the resurrection of Ben Snow and made his debut on the pages of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (hereafter, EQMM) of May 1984, which also happens to be the first full-blown impossible crime story of the series.

Snow has been hanging around Vicksburg, Mississippi, where he has made some good friends, such as a riverboat gambler, Eddie Abilene, but Snow has to play detective again when a steamboat, known as River Ridge, vanishes impossibly from a stretch of the Mississippi River – as if it had suddenly ceased to exist between two ports. One of the people aboard had been Abilene. So the old gunslinger accepts an offer from the steamboat's owner to find out what happened to the River Ridge and does some old-fashioned detective work to reach the only correct conclusion, which even included a false solution based on Conan Doyle's famous 1898 short story, "The Lost Special."

Hoch came up with a perfectly acceptable and believable explanation for the impossibility of a vanishing steamboat, but one that most readers will probably instinctively guess and the clues only serve as a confirmation of your gut-feeling. A limited range of possibilities will always be a weak spot of impossible crime stories that attempt to make streets, houses, planes, trains or boats vanish into thin air.

"Brothers on the Beach" was published in the August 1984 issue of EQMM and is another story that mixes actual history with fiction, but not quite as successful as "The Man in the Alley."

Roderick and Rudolph Claymore pay Snow to protect a stretch of private beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where the Orville and Wilbur Wright are planning to make test flight with their heavier-than-air flying machine, which is going to attract a large crowd and the Claymore brothers want Snow to shoo away any trespassers from their private beach – which has something to with an archaeological discovery on the beach. A discovery pertaining to the site of Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony of Roanoke.

So there's enough material here for a good story, but the experiment of the Wright brothers only served as background decoration and the plot regarding the murder on the beach, and the archaeological angle, was pretty basic at best. A decent enough story, but nothing more than that.

"The 500 Hours of Dr. Wisdom" was published in the December 1984 issue of EQMM and takes place early on in Snow's career as a cowboy-detective, which can also be labeled as a borderline impossible crime story.

Snow arrives at a far-flung, sleepy town, called Waycliff Station, where the only excitement appears to be the regular visitations of Dr. Wisdom's medicine show. The patent medicine was a staple of the Old West, but this time the charlatan in the covered wagon had something genuinely interesting to sell: an extra hour in the day to spend as they wished. Dr. Wisdom guarantees that time will stand still outside of the town and resume again when the hour has drawn to a close, which he demonstrates on the following Sunday. The only train that day arrives at the station at noon, which is on schedule, but according to all of the clocks in town the train was an hour late. The town was given an "whole extra hour" that day!

I loved this portion of the plot and was placed in the father into the past on account of a historical event, in 1883, that made this time-trick possible, but was less enthusiastic about the murder of Dr. Wisdom and the sub-plot of a missing wad of cash – which cribbed a horrendously bad trick from Ellery Queen's The American Gun Mystery (1933). However, the resolution to the case was well done and Snow is pretty much run out of town after fatally shooting the murderer.

By the way, Snow shoots and kills nearly two dozen people over the course of only fourteen short stories.

"The Trail of the Bells" was published in EQMM of April 1985 and begins with Snow's discovery of a dying man by a water hole. The name of the man is Tommy Gonzales, a half-Mexican gunman, who had been the right-hand man of a masked outlaw, named "Poder," notorious for robbing banks and stagecoaches all over the New Mexico territory – culminating with the murder of a banker in Tosco. Snow happened to be in town on that day and was hired as a one-man posse to bring the two desperadoes to justice, but the last words spoken by the dying gunman is to "listen to the bells" if wants to find Poder. This dying clue leads Snow to a mission station, in San Bernardino, where he has to figure out which of the priests is moonlighting as a bank robber. What really makes this story memorable is the solution and the deductive reasoning that brought Snow to that conclusion, which evoked the works of both Ellery Queen and Victor Hugo.

"The Phantom Stallion" was originally published in the October 1985 issue of EQMM and is a locked room mystery in spirit of John Dickson Carr, which naturally makes this a personal favorite of mine, because you know me. :)

Snow is hired as a temporarily ranch hand at the Six-Bar Ranch of Horace Grant in West Texas. Grant is a broken man in his seventies and confined to bed, following a fall from a horse, but his sons have made life as pleasant as possible for their father. The bedroom is cooled with an expensive, and early, model of an air-cooling device (i.e. air conditioning) and from his window he can see the construction of a new family home some distance away. However, the man still has intense nightmares about being trampled by his now dead stallion.

Otherwise, everything seems pretty normal at the ranch and they even have a healthy, long-standing rivalry with the owner of the neighboring Running-W Ranch, Nathan Lee ("it's like the Civil War all over again"). However, Snow quickly comes to the conclusion that not everything is what it seems at the ranch and the illusion is shattered when Grant is brutally beaten to death in his bedroom, which had been securely latched from the inside – both the door and the window. The earth beneath the window showed no traces of footprints, but there was "a bloody horseshoe" imprinted on the skull of the victim!

Hoch cobbled together an excellent impossible crime story that made good use of the situation at the ranch, the bed-ridden victim and the air-cooling device, but also supplied a logical reason as to why the bedroom had to be locked from the inside. The locked room here actually function as a clue to the identity of the murderer. Same goes for the murder weapon. So, yes, easily one of my favorites from this collection.

"The Sacramento Waxworks" was published in the March 1986 issue of EQMM and finds Snow in the capacity of adviser to the new owner of a waxwork theater, Seymour Dodge, who plans to add a section of famous, and infamous, Western sheriffs and outlaws – on which he needs advice from an actual cowboy. There is, of course, a darker plot behind all of this, which could very well have placed a noose around Snow's neck. And that's about all that can be said about this fun, but minor, story in the series.

Finally, we come to the last story in this collection, "The Only Tree in Tasco," which originally appeared in the October 1986 issue of EQMM and has Snow arriving in town when they town folks were preparing "the only tree in Tasco for hanging."

Pedro Mapimi, a Mexican, had been tried and convicted of murdering a local banker by nearly cutting his heart out of his chest, but trial had been a quick one and the presiding judge was the victim's son – who had ignored the alibi offered by the accused and backed up by a witness. So the wandering gunslinger takes upon himself to proof that the man had been innocently convicted and tries to delay the hanging by dynamiting the tree, which only slows down the sheriff's determination to have the hanging down before too long. So the only option left is to find the real murderer and the peculiarity of the wound proves to be a dead giveaway.

This is where the story began to bother me: long, long ago, I've seen this exact same story play-out in a TV-series or movie, but can't for the life of me remember the title of the series or movie in question. However, I'm absolutely sure I have seen that wound-trick, in combination with a small town setting, before on the small screen.

Anyway, The Ripper of Storyville and Other Ben Snow Tales is easily one of my favorite short story collections by Hoch. The quality of all fourteen stories is not only consistent throughout, but of a high caliber without a single dud among them. Sure, there are one or two minor stories, but they hardly qualify as bad or even mediocre. So I really hope we can look forward, in the hopefully not so distant future, to a second collection of Ben Snow stories, because it has been twenty years since this one was published. I believe there are more than enough stories left to fill out one or two additional volumes.

Well, this review has gone on long enough, like all my short story reviews, but I can tell you that the next one will probably be of a short novel, or novella, in the same Western framework as these stories. It might even have an impossible crime sub-plot, but we'll both see how that pans out in my next post. So stay tuned!