The Hands of Mr. Ottermole - Thmoas Burke

Name of the story: The Hands of Mr. Ottermole

Author: Thomas Burke

Source: 101 Years of Entertainment: The great detective stories of over a century edited by Ellery Queen

Story Number: 4

My three previous posts have covered my favorite author, the story that started it all and my favorite short story collection by a single author. Next in line would be the best anthology read. 101 years of Entertainment, a compendium of 50 stories containing close to 1000 pages, selected by the duo of Ellery Queen as the best fifty tales to commemorate the 100 years of the publication of the first detective story would unarguably go down in history as the best of its kind.

The short story ‘The Hands of Mr. Ottermole’ by Thomas Burke, published for the first time in 1931, was picked as one of the 12 best detective short stories (or was it the best?) ever written by a very distinguished panel of mystery authors and in the introduction to this story in the collection, Ellery Queen has this to say about it “No finer crime story has ever been written, period.” And to this I can only say, Amen!

There are numerous novels about serial killers but how many short stories have been able to incorporate the theme of serial killer and multiple murders? A man with white hair and large white hands is terrorizing the streets of London by strangling people with no rhyme or reason. First victim is a man, second is a child and the third victim is a policeman, the fourth is a family of three and the fifth is the journalist who deduces who the murderer is! By the end of the story, the London Strangling Horrors account for 5 attacks with 7 victims, all having the characteristics of no motive, no pattern in the picking of victims and carried out right under the noses of the police force, accentuate the evocation of atmosphere and terror to its spine chilling best. This story can also boast of one other achievement – it conceals the identity of the murderer most cleverly by parading him right in front of the reader’s eyes, all the time. 

Unreasonable Doubt - Stanley Ellin

Name of the story: Unreasonable Doubt

Author: Stanley Ellin

Source: The Blessing Method and Other Stories. Also collected in ‘The Specialty Of The House’ (the complete mystery tales of Stanley Ellin).

Story Number: 3

The stories by Stanley Ellin are not detective stories and sometimes they might not even be eligible to be called as a mystery story but most of his stories have crime as its central theme with an exquisite plot exposing the dark side of the human mind to its ultimate best with a twist ending to boot. The complete collection to me is the best short story collection of stories from a single author. Not everyone would like his stories but if not for anything, they are worth reading for studying the art of the twist ending in crime literature. Anthony Boucher gave the best description for these stories when he acclaimed them as ‘subtle masterpieces’.

Stanley Ellin has won the Edgar for the Best Short Story of the year twice, 4 more have been shortlisted for Edgar and his short story ‘The Specialty of The House’ has been deemed the best ‘first mystery short story’ in modern times by Ellery Queen.

I’ve picked one of my personal favorite stories for today’s blog entry. In the story ‘Unreasonable Doubt’, Mr. Willoughby has been asked to take a vacation by his doctor as his only malady is with his mind – he just can’t stop thinking of problems. A vacation where he can fill his mind with nothing but idle talk, relieve his mind to such an extent that he shouldn’t even try a crossword puzzle. He has just started on the train journey and he is confronted with a legal problem when he becomes too involved in overhearing his club car companion’s narration of a defense lawyer’s most spectacular case which runs like this:

Ben and Orville are two brothers who are patiently waiting for their uncle to die so that they can enjoy his wealth. Not wanting to wait for too long, they decide to take the matter into their own hands, they study the law and come up with a novel way to murder their uncle and get away with it. Ben is arrested for his uncle’s murder and Ben requests the defense lawyer to just put Orville on the stand as his case for the defense. Orville confesses to killing his uncle on the witness stand and the jury has no option but to return a verdict of not guilty. Soon, Orville is charged with the murder and this time Ben confesses to the murder of his uncle on the witness stand and the jury again returns a verdict of not guilty. Both men being acquitted by juries cannot be tried for the same offence again. Neither can they be indicted together for conspiracy to murder. So the question posed by the listeners is whether these two committed a perfect crime? The defense lawyer answers that there was a surprise and that they didn’t get away with murder! How? Therein lays the smashing twist in the tale. J

After Twenty Years - O. Henry

Name: After Twenty Years

Author: O. Henry (William Sidney Porter)

Book: The Four Million – this book is available from project Gutenberg. The short story can also be read online from this location http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/636/

Story Number: 2

It’s time to go back to my childhood days where it all started. Everyone has that one story or one book which they come across in their earlier years which has such an impact on the mind that it turns them into a lover of books for life. For me that book turned out to be ‘The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe’. And the short story (which happens to be the only one that I remember from all those 10 years of school education) which made me a fan of the short story format happens to be O. Henry’s After Twenty Years. This story was featured in our 10^th grade English textbook. And the author needs no introduction as I would believe every literate man on this planet would have come across one of his stories in some form or the other.

Bob & Jimmy, two very close friends decide to go their separate ways to make their fortune in the world. While Jimmy stays back in New York, Bob decides to go to the west. But before they do that, they come to an understanding to meet exactly 20 years later. The story starts after these twenty years have elapsed. A policeman is doing the rounds of the city making sure that everything is in order on his beat. He meets Bob in the doorway of a darkened hardware store. Bob quickly explains his reason for lurking there – he tells the policeman his story about his appointment with his best friend and the policeman continues on his beat after hearing Bob’s story. After sometime, Bob is joined by another gentleman who enquires him whether he is Bob? Thinking that it is his friend Jimmy, they exchange pleasantries and continue to walk arm in arm to go to a place which they knew as young men so that they can catch up on all the lost years.

When they reach a corner where there’s abundant light, both gentlemen get a chance to look at each other’s face and Bob immediately complains that the other person is not his friend. The other gentleman informs him that he has been under arrest for some time and hands over a note to Bob. The note is from his buddy Jimmy and it tells him that he indeed kept the appointment at the intended time and place and that he recognized Bob as a wanted man in Chicago and hence not having the heart to arrest him (as Jimmy is the patrolman on duty) requested a plain clothes man to do the job for him. If one goes back and reads the story again, one can see the clues cleverly planted just like in a detective story to anticipate the twist ending. This story for me is a model of succinct technique.

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The New Invisble Man - John Dickson Carr

Name: The New Invisible Man

Author: John Dickson Carr

Source: 1. The Department of Queer Complaints 2. Merrivale, March & Murder

Story Number: 1

To officially start my crusade of exploring the detective short story, it is only apt to start with my favorite author John Dickson Carr. He is the ‘Miracle’ problem specialist, an exponent of one of the most fascinating gambit in crime literature- the Locked Room! A vivid imagination, scrupulous fairness to the reader, a lingering supernatural atmosphere with a locked room or impossible crime as its central theme form the ingredients of most of his books(and stories) to serve the reader with a wonderful recipe for murder and plays the ‘Grandest Game in The World’ like a true world champion.

Carr was one of the most versatile authors of detective fiction: with 4 series characters, numerous novels, short stories, radio plays, classic crime stories & historical mysteries, it’s very difficult to pick one favorite short story. With one of my aims being to cover stories from the Queen’s Quorum titles, I decided to settle on a story from his first collection of short stories ‘The Department of Queer Complaints’, Queen Quorum title # 94. There are 11 tales in this book out of which 7 feature Colonel March, the head of the Scotland Yard Department to handle “complaints which do not seem to bear the light of the day or reason”. Picking 1 out of the 11 proved not too easy a task because of the high caliber of each story. I wanted to feature ‘The Other Hangman’ which Carr himself considered as having one of his best plots (Thanks Douglas G Greene for the info) wherein he goes on to reveal how a man was paid to commit a ‘legal’ murder and get away with it. But then, I can’t really discuss the story without giving away the plot. Hence my choice for today, the first story to feature Colonel March – The New Invisible Man.

Horace Rodham approaches Scotland Yard to report a murder that he witnessed in the Hartley’s residence through his second floor room window which happens to be exactly opposite to the 2^nd floor room of the Hartley’s. He is directed to March’s room because of the strange circumstances of the crime: A man wearing white cotton gloves and a pistol is seen entering the Hartley’s room. He places the gloves and the gun on the top of the round table which has been placed in the centre of the room. He approaches the window, opens one of the panels, pokes his head out and gives a shrill hoot as a signal. 2 gunshots are fired from the gun on the table but no person is seen holding the gun and neither is there any other human presence in the room. The first shot takes down the man near the window; the second shot drills a hole in the window of the Hartley residence and gets lodged in a lamp in Rodham’s room almost killing him in the process. A few minutes later, when Rodham & a policeman enter the Hartley’s house, they don’t see any sign of a body and there’s no bullet hole in the window even though Rodham has the bullet in his hand to prove that a bullet was fired from this room.

Colonel March, in addition to the details provided by Rodham about the events and the description of the room, needs clarification to only 2 points to solve the problem: did the round table have three legs? How many doors did that room have?  The solution, which is made to look like a piece of cake, is like unraveling a magic trick and should delight anyone who loves them.

New Year's Resolution

In the eyes of a bibliophile, the whole universe can be split into two – people who read books and those who don’t. The people who read books can further be divided into folks who read fiction and those who don’t. The people who read fiction can be split into three categories – those who read only novels, those who read only short stories and those who read both. I certainly belong to the last category – enjoying the short stories and novels in the mystery genre in equal proportions. However, in the past few years, I’ve shamelessly neglected the short stories to give preference to its big brother (the novel), the only reason being the thrill of pitting one’s wits against the author and winning.

Reading a detective novel is indeed like engaging in a game of chess with the author where in the reader always has to look a few moves ahead of the detective, defend your intellectual fortress by avoiding the red herrings thrown at you by the author and plan a strategic offensive towards winning the game by analyzing all the clues presented and arriving at the solution to the mystery much before the author reveals the denouement. Somehow, I associate playing this game with the reading of a novel rather than a short story even though there are abundant short stories where this game can be played. And hence the reason for my neglect of the short stories these past few years. To quote numbers, in the year 2010, I read a total of 109 books out of which only 10 books were collections of short stories. In the year 2011, I read a whopping 154 books out of which only 16 were short story collections. The percentage of short story collections read in both the years is roughly 10 percent. An anomaly, which I would like to correct this year!

Not reading them has not deterred me from buying new ones. In the past 5 years, I’ve bought a total of 155 short story collections (105 of them back in India and 50 here in US) and all of them are patiently collecting dust while begging for my attention. To add insult to injury, I happened to read Ellery Queen’s seminal work ‘Queen’s Quorum’ recently and I realized that I’ve read only 12 of the 125 titles that have been considered as the most important books published in the field of detective-crime short story from 1845 to 1967. And that I believe, calls for some desperate measures from my side which leads to this New Year resolution: The Year 2012 for me would be the year of the SHORT STORY!

What are the stories that I’m gone read? Being a mystery fanatic, there is hardly a strong motive to deviate from the mystery genre but I would like to classify all the stories that I’ll be considering into these 4 categories:

1.    Locked Room Or Impossible Crime Stories

2.    Mystery stories in general to encompass detective, suspense & crime stories

3.    Stories with a Twist in the end

4.    A story which might not belong to any of the above 3 categories but still packs a punch to leave a lasting impression(doubt there will be many)

Exclusions: Romance, Pure Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror stories.

The source for the stories - For easier classification, I would like to split the stories into 2 different eras:

a.    1841 to 1967: Ellery Queen (the duo of Frederic Dannay & Manfred B Lee) has already provided me with all the tools that I need to tackle this period. I’ll be closely following the Queen's Quorum as a textbook in addition to the numerous Ellery Queen & Alfred Hitchcock Anthologies that have been published.

b.    1968 to the present: This is a blur for me as of now. I’ll be making use of the existing periodicals like The Strand, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Suspense Magazine, Online Forums, the yearly Anthologies (Pen/O. Henry Prize Stories & Best of the Mysteries), the mystery journals like Old Time Detection, CADS, Clues & others, Crippen & Landru series and finally the short story collections from various authors(wonder how many of the modern authors have short story collections as part of their huge output?).

There are a lot of reading challenges on the blogosphere. One such challenge ‘Can You Read a Short Story a Day?’ gave me an idea! Reading a story a day is no problem at all. So I thought I’d modify this into a more interesting and tougher challenge – why not read one GREAT STORY a day? There are very few (I believe) collections where at least half of the stories are really good. So in my opinion, to come across 1 GOOD or GREAT story, you need to read at least 9 duds. Of course, this analogy doesn’t hold good if you are thinking of only reading some of the best anthologies like the ‘101 Years of Entertainment’! Setting these few great anthologies aside, I’m anticipating reading around 4000 odd stories to get my figure of 365 good stories! I’m hoping this would also take me past my reading goal for the year which reads something like this:

a.    At least one story from each of the 50 Queen Quorum titles

b.    Completely read 20 of the Queen Quorum tiles

c.    Read 20 ‘Crippen & Landru’ titles

d.    At least 60 landmark stories from the modern practitioners – from the year 1968 to the present(I know, am a little pessimistic about this one as I hardly read contemporary authors)

How will I be using this blog? I’ve all along been taught that one of the best means of achieving something is to first set a goal, set deadlines around it, and achieve it in a step by step manner by measuring them periodically. And that’s exactly how I’ll be using this blog – not as a mode to review the stories or the books but as a monitoring and motivating tool to keep my goal in focus. Also, it’ll act as a recording tool for my voyage of discovering the whole new world of the detective short story. Of course, I’ll be writing about a few novels as well as I might take up a few more reading challenges for the year but they will be few and far apart. I don’t even know whether I’ll be able to keep up the blogging activity for a year but I’ll aim to post 1 story a day or 7 in a week, or in the worst case a total of 30 in a month – however possible. Posting 1 story a day for 365 days looks a tedious and boring thing. To overcome this feeling, I’ve set another twist to my challenge: I’m going to group my stories every alternate week on a particular theme. The first 10 to 15 days in January will solely concentrate on the stories that I’ve already read and which I’ll be revisiting – I’ll just be wandering all over the place reminiscing some of my very memorable stories. Day 16 to 30 should be stories which I’ve read very recently from old to the very present. From February, every alternate week will have a theme and the following 7 stories in that week will fall into it. Some of the themes that I can think off are: Legal Mysteries, Historical, Indian, Japanese, Forensic, Scientific Detective, Theatrical settings, Medical, Christmas Mysteries, Twist Endings, Espionage etc.

Finally, I’m going to set some rules for myself:

1.    The grand aim is to get a total of 365 stories. I might post one a day or club a few together when I’m discussing the stories from the same author.

2.    I’ll not be writing about all the stories in a book. I’ll be restricting myself to 2 or 3 of the best from that collection unless it is from an anthology where different authors are contributing on different or similar themes.

3.    Avoid the clichéd stories which can be found in numerous anthologies.

4.    Not all stories are gone be new. I’ll go back to a collection that I’ve previously read to highlight a particular story.

5.    I’ll be restricting the stories to one of the 4 categories that I’ve already mentioned: locked room, mystery story, twist in the tale and some rare exceptions.

6.    I may occasionally break one of the above rules. J