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We ve saved the best for last! Follow Dr. Sam Hawthorne through the war years, a time that he called the beginning of two of the most eventful years of my life. The final collection of Dr. Sam Hawthorne stories covers 1940-1944 and includes 15 stories of impossible crimes. From the death of a Siamese cat in a locked veterinary clinic to the death of a Nazi spy, Dr. Sam explains the mysteries that confront the town of Northmont, Connecticut. His cases include: an impossible crime where the wife disappears from the attic where she is confined a murder charge against Sheriff Lens on the cusp of his last campaign for office a case where a man claims to have killed a man using invisibility a cottage where suicides take place too frequently, told to a special visitor to Dr. Sam. While the Dr. Sam stories have come to an end, Crippen & Landru will proudly be presenting Hoch s Ladies next year, featuring the distaff characters from the master of the short story form. That collection will be followed by collections of both Simon Ark and Alexander Swift.
Edward D. Hoch
Edward D. Hoch (1930–2008) was a master of the mystery short story. Born in Rochester, New York, he sold his first story, “The Village of the Dead,” to Famous Detective Stories, then one of the last remaining old-time pulps. The tale introduced Simon Ark, a two-thousand-year-old Coptic priest who became one of Hoch’s many series characters. Others included small-town doctor Sam Hawthorne, police detective Captain Leopold, and Revolutionary War secret agent Alexander Swift. By rotating through his stable of characters, most of whom aged with time, Hoch was able to achieve extreme productivity, selling stories to Argosy, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, which published a story of his in every issue from 1973 until his death. In all, Hoch wrote nearly one thousand short tales, making him one of the most prolific story writers of the twentieth century. He was awarded the 1968 Edgar Award for “The Oblong Room,” and in 2001 became the first short story writer to be named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.
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