The Best From Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine: A Boucher, R Bloch and A Davidson

Whether driven by an inexhaustible need for money or an irrepressible urge to express themselves artistically, many of the 20th-century SF writers we care about here at MPorcius Fiction Log published stories in the detective/crime genre.  In 1991 was published Fifty Years of the Best from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, edited by Eleanor Sullivan, who edited Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine from 1970 to 1982 and Alfred Hitchcock's Magazine from 1975 to 1981, and it includes stories by three of these guys, Anthony Boucher, Robert Bloch and Avram Davidson.  Let's see what sorts of mysteries these guys were putting out when, in the opinion of one of the big gatekeepers in the mystery world, they were at the top of their game.  I'm reading the stories in a scan of Fifty Years of the Best from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine that is available at the internet archive.  The internet archive also has a scan of the 2004 edition which is deceptively titled 50 Best Mysteries.

"The Girl Who Married a Monster" by Anthony Boucher (1954)

This story is kind of boring, a puzzle story that, maybe, is supposed to be faintly humorous.  The characters and their relationships are all quite bland.  One of the weaknesses of these puzzle stories is that, while in a conventional piece of fiction, if a woman wanted to murder her cousin--who was also her best friend!--for money, the author could write all kinds of scenes about the evil woman's twisted psychology, how and why she in fact hated the cousin but had to hide her hatred, how and why she loved money, and so on, that would develop her personality and compel the interest of and inspire emotion in the reader.  But in one of these puzzle stories in which we are not supposed to know who the villain is, the author can't do that, so the evil woman character is just a boring lump whom you don't even know is evil.

Doreen, a starlet with a flagging career, has her cousin/best friend Marie come to Hollyweird to be the maid of honor at her wedding to some old geezer.  Marie, because of past experience with creeps, can tell the old geez, Peabody, is a monster, and soon a friendly police lieutenant who is at the engagement party confirms Marie's intuition--Peabody is more than a sex perv, he is a bona fide serial killer who marries women and kills them for the insurance money and is clever enough to always get away with it.  

The very useful website philsp.com tells me that "The Girl Who Married a Monster" is one of seven stories about Nick Noble.  Noble, in this story at least, appears to be a broken-hearted drunk, a former police lieutenant who is consulted by the police when they need his super mind to crack the toughest cases.  Suffering from psychological trauma, Noble is taciturn, speaking rarely and in short, sometimes cryptic, phrases, and also suffers hallucinations.  Noble and the younger lieutenant try to convince Doreen to not marry Peabody but she says she wants to marry him even though she knows he probably killed a bunch of his earlier wives.  

Eventually the truth comes out.  Doreen convinces Marie to live with her and Peabody the serial killer after they are married.  Once Maroie is installed in the Peabody household, Doreen tries to kill her and disguise herself as Marie and disguise Marie's corpse as herself.  Doreen's expectation is that Peabody will be blamed for the apparent killing of Doreen and that she, taken for Marie, Doreen's only relative, will get the insurance money.  One of the themes of the story is that Doreen is a fuck up, and this plan is no more successful than her Hollywood career--Marie actually survives Doreen's incompetent assault, which Doreen does not notice as she cuts her unconscious cousin's hair and changes her clothes.

Boucher tries to enliven the story with some erotic undercurrents.  There are hints Marie was sexually abused in her youth, Doreen in a euphemistic way suggests she is marrying Peabody because he is good in the sack, and Peabody's hair fetish plays a role in the plot.  But these sprinklings of humor don't bring this thing to life and more than do the sprinklings of humor.

Boucher, who won an Edgar award and wrote tons of mystery story radio scripts and even has a mystery award named after him is presumably a master of this type of story and maybe "The Girl Who Married a Monster" is a masterpiece (it is in a "Best of" collection of his, Exeunt Murderers), but I am immune to its charms--to me, it feels cold and mechanical.      

"Life in Our Time" by Robert Bloch (1966)

I thought I was taking a break from scientists by reading from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine instead of Thrilling Wonder Stories, but this piece by Psycho scribe Bloch is all about a scientist.  And, like Boucher's "The Girl Who Married a Monster" it starts with Hollywood references.  Monotony pursues you even when you seek a change of pace.

I won't complain though, because this is actually a pretty good story, short and to the point, with one of my favorite topics at its center--the disastrous sexual relationship!

Jill is a simple-minded selfish money-loving slut who has bagged Harry, a genius college professor who happens to be loaded.  But she finds her rich intelligent husband a drag.  Harry doesn't watch TV, he doesn't drink or smoke, he doesn't want to go on a cruise or pay for expensive status symbols like that sable jacket Jill covets.  This guy sounds eminently sensible!  Harry also apparently doesn't like to have sex, which is where I will part ways with him, but to each his own, I suppose.  Jill plots to run off with their lawyer, Rick, who thinks he can use his legal skills to seize half of Harry's wealth even though Jill is the one who will be committing the infidelity.

Harry's university gives him the job of filling up a time capsule.  Harry decides to fill the capsule with stuff that represents ordinary Americans, not sophisticated geniuses like himself, so he asks his wife what she likes.  This is Bloch's chance to spoof rock music and soap operas and modern art and beatniks and so forth, our whole modern milieu, including frozen food and computerization and how we are all being turned into numbers.  (Remember how Charles Schulz introduced a character named "5" in September of 1963 to comment on ZIP codes and other encroachments of numeralization into our lives?  I guess Bloch considered this still a live issue two or three years later.)      

The climax: by chance Harry finds Rick and Jill embracing and he slays Rick and puts the corpse in the time capsule, which won't be opened for 10,000 years.  I was legitimately surprised by the ending, as I had thought it possible any or all of the three characters might end up dead.

Not bad.  I will warn all you sensitive types out there that "Life in Our Time" not only portrays a woman in a negative fashion but would probably be convicted of homophobia in the court of the woke, as Jill refers to their interior decorator as "fagilleh," which I guess is Bloch's idiosyncratic spelling of the Yiddish word that is more commonly styled "feygele" or "faygelah," and Harry calls the members of a rock band "hermaphrodites."

"Life in Our Time," which, if I may opine, is more of a horror story than a mystery, has been reprinted in five or six Bloch collections, including the 1979 Del Rey/Ballantine paperback Such Stuff as Screams Are Made Of.  I had never seen the cover of Such Stuff as Screams Are Made Of until today and I was taken aback by how embarrassingly lame the little logo used on Del Rey's 1979 Horror line was--it doesn't look at all horrifying; in fact it looks like the logo for a cheeky line of pseudo-sophisticated pornography, like the head of a satyr with a phallic nose and feminine lips.  How many books did this thing appear on?  In a just world, whoever submitted this design and whoever actually OKed it instead of axing it and replacing it with a skull or a bat would both be fired.  

"Revolver" by Avram Davidson (1962)

"Revolver" is about how government intervention distorts the housing market and government handouts sap the moral fiber of the people.  Did this thing debut in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine or National Review?

Edward Mason is an urban landlord who, in order to receive government subsidies, crams as many tenants into his buildings as possible.  He makes sure to rent to people who receive welfare, social security, disability, or whatever checks from the government, because these people will never lose their incomes, and don't have high standards when it comes to building maintenance.  

One of his tenants is a promiscuous woman with many children; she isn't quite sure who fathered some of them, and keeps the name Mrs. Richards even though Mr. Richards abandoned her long ago, as her men always abandon her.  Mason is paying her a visit to collect the rent.  She incompetently tries to avoid paying the rent, but eventually relents.  Her current boyfriend Curtis, who has been thinking of abandoning Mrs. Richards, notices that Mason is wearing a revolver inside his jacket (the neighborhood has become increasingly crime-ridden and he legally purchased the weapon to protect himself), and Curtis assaults Mason and steals the pistol and flees.  Mrs. Richards and her fellow tenants don't leap to aid the unconscious Mason--in fact, they find his blood loss sort of amusing.  

Curtis sells the pistol and negotiates with a man of his acquaintance who owns a convertible and wears mascara (maybe Robert Bloch would call this guy a "fagilleh") about taking a trip together to California.  We follow Curtis's efforts to get to Cali, and, separately, follow the revolver as it changes hands from one person of low morals to another.  Distracted by booze and totally incompetent besides, Curtis never makes it to California, the police catching up to him; they also nab the guy with the convertible, who I guess is a drug dealer.  As the story ends it is made apparent to us that a gang of criminals, among whose members is Mrs. Richards' eldest son, who have acquired the revolver are going to murder Mason with it.

This is a story that depicts the degradation of society and is full of alcoholism, sexual promiscuity, drug use, thievery, violence, and people who shirk all responsibility for themselves and all responsibility to others.  It is a little oblique, but Davidson seems to be blaming this degradation on government policies that are ostensibly meant to help the poor, but which in fact hurt them and end up turning entire neighborhoods into dangerous and violent slums.   

The story is well put together; thought-provoking and emotionally wrenching, it is obviously a success.  But it is not fun, being more sad than entertaining, more gross than engrossing--again and again it offers images you would want to look away from and forget, like when you see a crushed bird or a pool of vomit on the sidewalk.  "Revolver" would be reprinted in the 1998 Avram Davidson Treasury, a book enthusiastically endorsed by a pantheon of SF heroes, from Gene Wolfe and Ray Bradbury to Harlan Ellison and Damon Knight and available for us cheapos at the internet archive.  I checked out the introduction to "Revolver" by Bill Pronzini, which stresses the role of humor in Davidson's body of work--"Revolver" is often sarcastic and cutting--and suggests "Revolver" reminds him of the work of Gerald Kersh.  

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I am not the audience for Boucher's story, and didn't enjoy it, but I assume it achieves its goals.  The Bloch and Davidson stories, on the other hand, are not little puzzles whose attraction lies in watching some brainiac unravel them; rather, they are human dramas that grabbed me, exposes of how our society is going down the tubes: Bloch in a way that is somewhat amusing attacks the decadence of an affluent culture while Davidson offers a depressing description of people who have been lead into degradation by those with authority who have stupidly encouraged their baser instead of their higher instincts.  

It is back to straight science fiction in the next installment of MPorcius Fiction Log--see you then!