Six tales of murder by Robert Bloch from the 1950s

Visitors to any of the innumerable hideous shopping malls that litter the landscape of Maryland, a state that had never even entered my mind until at age 47 I learned I was moving there to pursue my wife's career, are likely to find lurking within its forbidding precincts a specimen of the chain store called Books-A-Million.  The raison d'etre of this institution is apparently to provide a place for people to buy super-deformed action figures and Harry Potter gewgaws, but they also sell books on the side, and recently even started selling used books, just mixed in there on the shelf along with the shiny new 2019 books.  On the fiction shelf at one of these temples to quidditch and Funko, I spotted a copy of Out of the Mouths of Graves, a hardcover collection of Robert Bloch stories put out by The Mysterious Press in 1979, for which was asked $3.00.  Three bucks is more than I like to pay for books, but something about this volume cried out to me--I felt that someone must take note of, must honor, its ridiculous surreal cover illustration by Paul Stinson and its peripheral connections to the 20th-century SF world, among them its dedication to Fritz Leiber, its mentions of Philip José Farmer, Isaac Asimov and Harlan Ellison on the back cover and of Weird Tales on the acknowledgments page, and who better than me, who would splash these artifacts of another age all over his well-read (or at least well-intentioned) blog? 

Oops...or a Bloch pun?

There are sixteen stories in Out of the Mouths of Graves; let's today read the six included stories first published in the 1950s, in order of publication, not the order in which they appear in this volume.  I am no Bloch fanboy--check out my hostile blog posts on "The World Timer" ("24 worthless pages"), "The Funny Farm" ("totally lame gimmick") and "The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton" ("gimmicky and unbelievable")--but I recognize that Bloch is capable of very good work, like "The Animal Fair," so I go into this exploration with an open mind and no predictions of whether I'll be unearthing gems or merds.

"Lucy Comes to Stay" (1952)

We start off with a story from a magazine I might actually read, Weird Tales, where "Lucy Comes to Stay" has a good illustration by Joseph Eberle.  This story has been embraced by the horror community, appearing in many anthologies over the decades edited by people like Stephen Jones and Charles Beaumont; it was also one of the stories Bloch adapted for Asylum, the 1972 film starring Peter Cushing.

Our narrator is Vi, an alcoholic.  She has returned home from a sanitarium, but still has the shakes and is confined to her room by her husband George and a live-in nurse, Miss Higgins.  Vi's friend Lucy sneaks into the room to explain to Vi that George and Miss Higgins are lovers, help her get some booze, and help her escape to a boarding house.  When the cops catch up to Vi at the boarding house we quickly learn that Lucy is just a figment of Vi's imagination, a friend she, a woman with no friends, has concocted for herself, and an alter ego who can take the blame for such deeds as murdering George.

Not bad.

"Man With a Hobby" (1957)

This one first was seen in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, a periodical I would not normally read.  This issue also includes two stories by Richard Matheson, whom I like, so maybe in the future I will be yet again going against type and have to copy and paste that blue cover into this blog a second and even third time.

This story takes place in Cleveland, where they actually have decent museums.  But the narrator of "Man With a Hobby" isn't in Cleveland to see old sculptures, he's there to attend a bowling convention, and right now he wants a drink!  Drinking beer in a lonely bar, he is accosted by another man with a bowling bag, a scotch drinker who complains about sports, saying that people watch football, wrestling, and boxing, and go hunting and fishing, because of their lust for blood, their love of killing!  He then talks about the famous "Cleveland Torso Slayer," who murdered bums and prostitutes in the 1930s but stopped when WWII broke out; the scotch drinker theorizes that the killer's spree of mayhem ended because he joined the military and got his kicks killing people with the approval of the U.S. government!  But the war is over now, and maybe the Slayer well come back to Cleveland and resume his bloody deeds!

s you know, these sorts of stories usually have a twist ending, and I won't reveal here whether it is the narrator or the scotch drinker who is the killer returned to Cleveland from assassinating Nazis in Europe to relive his glory days hacking a trail of blood through Ohio's derelicts and whores.  I am sure there is no need for me to tell you what sort of souvenir of his sanguine return to Cleveland the killer is carrying in his bowling bag.

Entertaining.  This one also serves up a slice of Bloch's bitter commentary on our culture; in the past we have had to swallow a hearty helping of Bloch's denunciations of humanity and society in such tales as "The Funnel of God" and "Terror Over Hollywood." 

"Crime in Rhyme" (1957)

Here's one that has never been anthologized, at least according to isfdb.  It first appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine behind a very effective cover.  Unfortunately, "Crime in Rhyme" is a "meta" joke story, the kind of thing I think is a waste of time.

A pretty blonde answers the ad for a secretary placed in the Times of London by a writer of Mickey Spillane-style detective stories.  After being given the job she searches the writer's lonely house in the countryside and learns conclusively what her superiors at Scotland Yard have suspected, that this novelist murders a woman in real life every year or so and then bases his latest novel on the crime he just committed.  A fight erupts--will the lady detective bring the writer to justice, or will her death be the inspiration for his next bestseller?

The primary source of humor in this story is the titles of the villain's books, which bear names like Mr. Munn Takes a Gun and Mr. Frazer Takes a Razor.  During her job interview the undercover cop is asked what she thinks of these books, and she responds that the former "hit the target" and the latter was "keen."  A secondary set of jokes is aimed directly at detective novel fans, including a spoof of Mike Hammer-type stories and the suggestion that all successful mystery writers, including Ellery Queen, base their fiction on crimes they have actually committed.

This kind of thing is not for me.

"The Living Bracelet" (1958)

This one first appeared in Bestseller Mystery Magazine under the title "The Ungallant Hunter."  It appears to have never been anthologized.  It is only two pages long.

Like "Crime in Rhyme," this is a story about British people, though this crew is living in India.  A guy thinks his wife is cheating on him.  He buys a venomous snake and tosses it at his wife's lover.  The snake bites the lover in the leg, but the lover doesn't keel over.  He tells the jealous husband that the Indian who sold him the snake must have cheated him, selling him a harmless snake, and that he was is lucky he did, because he is innocent--the serpent thrower's unfaithful wife lied about an affair because she is bitter that her advances were rejected by him.  The would-be killer apologizes, picks up the snake, and is bitten to death.  This guy was cuckolding him, and survived the snake attack because the reptile bit his artificial leg!

Filler.

"Night School" (1959)

"Night School" appeared originally in Rogue, in the same issue as a story by Harlan Ellison which would later be included in Gentleman Junkie and Other Stories of the Hung-Up Generation.  "Night School" has appeared in various Bloch collections, but never been anthologized.

In the start of the story (this one is like 13 pages, so Bloch has a little space to work with) Bloch wonders how used bookstores can possibly stay afloat, they having so few paying customers.  In the same way that "Crime in Rhyme" speculates that successful mystery writers are themselves murderers, this story theorizes that unprofitable shops are just a front, that the owners of used bookstores are in the business of helping people to get away with murder!  In "Crime in Rhyme" Bloch pointed out that about half of murders go unsolved, making "the perfect crime" a surprisingly common thing, and Bloch makes that same point again here.  (Cf. T. S. Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes: "Swarts: These fellows always get pinched in the end./Snow: Excuse me, they dont all get pinched in the end./What about them bones on Epsom Heath?/I seen that in the papers/You seen it in the papers/They dont all get pinched in the end.")

Anyway, the plot concerns a guy coming to a secondhand bookstore to get help plotting a murder, and then comes the revelation of the customer's relationship with the seller and the twist ending in which the customer kills the seller in a way the seller himself devised and then takes his place as owner of the store and guru to aspiring killers.

This one is approximately as silly as "Crime in Rhyme," but somehow it seems less absurd, and I have to say I liked it.  It is the first story here in Out of the Mouths of Graves, maybe because the people at The Mysterious Press recognized it was one of the better pieces.

"Double-Cross" (1959)

"Double-Cross"'s initial appearance was under the title "Double Tragedy" in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine--I like the use of bold colors and strong lines on the cover of this one--in a bizarre way it reminds me of the cover of a children's book.

This is a satire, or just an attack, on show biz, in which show biz people are portrayed as a bunch of fakers, ruthless moneygrubbers, mental cases, and participants in homosexual liaisons and bestiality.

Buzzie Waters is a successful TV comic, and a real jerk without any real friends.  Our narrator is his boss, an executive VP at a TV network who considers that Buzzie owes his success to his management and promotion--and of course to the four writers who script all the things Buzzie says on the boob tube.  One day, instead of coming in to rehearsals in Manhattan, Buzzie is at his summer house in the Hamptons getting drunk!  Our narrator drives out there to convince Buzzie to come to town because the show must go on!  Totally inebriated, Buzzie tries to hit our guy on the cabeza with a bottle, and in the ensuing fight Buzzie falls over, striking his gulliver on something hard and dying.

The VP doesn't call the fuzz, but instead Buzzie's stand-in, who can imitate Buzzie and take his place!  This plan works like a charm for a few weeks--the impostor does the TV show and public appearances, and is actually a better entertainer and more congenial co-worker than Buzzie was!  Nobody suspects Buzzie is lying dead in a quarry and the guy making America yuck it up is an impersonator...uh oh, scratch that.  A few weeks after Buzzie's untimely demise, Buzzie's girlfriend comes by the VP's office to blackmail him.  When the VP tries to get the stand-in's help to murder the girl, a rift opens between the VP and the new-and-improved Buzzie, who successfully seeks an offer from another network, which drives the VP to desperate measures.  The VP threatens to expose the stand-in as an accessory in the death of Buzzie--this will of course reveal that he (the VP) killed Buzzie, but, as he explains, if "Buzzie" leaves he has no reason to live because his show biz career will be ruined! 

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Then comes our twist and shock ending--"Buzzie" claims to be the real Buzzie, explaining that the stand-in was playing Buzzie in the Hamptons--as a gag(!)--when the VP accidentally killed him!  The VP responds by taking up a bottle and intentionally killing the current Buzzie, whoever he is.  Now all four of our principal characters' lives are ruined.

This isn't a bad story.  Both "Night School" and "Double-Cross" would be included in the 1965 Bloch collection Tales in a Jugular Vein before showing up in Out of the Mouths of Graves at the close of the Me Decade.

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These stories are perhaps trifles, but for the most part they are competent and I have to admit I found most of them fun. We'll look at the 1960s stories in Out of the Mouths of Graves in the next murderous episode of MPorcius Fiction Log.