Remembering a Master of the Short Story

There's an old joke in the literary world: thousands of people make a good living every year teaching others how to write short stories; eight people make a good living every year writing short stories.

The exact numbers may be wonky, but the sentiment is true. Since the demise of the pulp fiction marketplace in the 1950s, novels have been the coin of the realm in publishing, not short stories, particularly within the genre fiction arena. That makes the career of Edward D. Hoch seem all the more remarkable. 

Ed Hoch (pronounced hoke) was born in 1930 in Rochester, New York, and he never strayed very far from his hometown. At the time of his death in 2008, he had published only a handful of novels, but nearly one-thousand short stories. His ground base was Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, which for years featured a Hoch story in every issue, though Ed published just about everywhere else (except Playboy, to his disappointment) and was highly sought-after by anthologists.

Ironically, even though he'd been writing since high school, it took Ed a while to make his first sale. After a stint in the military, he supported himself as a library researcher, ad copywriter, and PR agent, finally achieving authorhood in 1955 with a story in Famous Detective Stories. That tale's protagonist was "Simon Ark," who was not simply an amateur sleuth by an immortal, more than 2,000 years old, cursed to wander the earth and root out evil. Ark would go on to appear in forty-five more stories and would soon be joined by a phalanx of other series characters marching from Ed's fertile imagination. Among them were "Captain Jules Leopold," a conventional police detective operating in a mid-sized New England town; "Nick Velvet," a thief for hire; "Dr Sam Hawthorne," who specialized in locked-room mysteries' British cypher expert "Rand;" international couriers "Stanton and Ives;" Romany royal "Michael Vlado;" Revolutionary spy "Alexander Swift;" retain executive "Susan Holt;" mystery writer/amateur sleuth "Barney Hamnet;" private eye "Al Darlan;" "Sir Gideon Parrot," a gentle spoof of Golden Age cozy characters; and "Ben Snow," who solves mysteries in the Old West.

Ed also found time to pen a science fiction series centered on "The Computer Investigation Bureau" and several Sherlock Holmes pastiches. He also ghosted an Ellery Queen novel, The Blue Movie Murders (1972), though his best-known novel is probably The Shattered Raven (1969), a Barney Hamnet adventure set against an Edgar Award ceremony. Of the lot, Ed considered Nick Velvet his most profitable character, not because there were more Velvet stories than any of the others, but because he optioned the rights to television. Even though a series was never made, it was the gift that kept on paying. 

In addition to the "Ellery Queen" byline, Ed wrote as "Irwin Booth," "Stephen Dentinger" (Dentinger being his middle name), "Pat McMahon" (McMahon being his wife's maiden name), and "R.L. Stephens." He even turned out a string of stories featuring "David Piper, The Manhunter," which were bylined "Mr. X." Ed saved his most whimsical pseudonym for his non-fiction writing: "R.E. Porter."

Under any name and in any sub-genre, all Ed Hoch stories shared the same elements: intriguing and unusual characters, endless invention, and construction as solid as the Roman aqueduct. He was particularly adept at locked-room mysteries, creating astounding conundrums whose explanations turned out to be perfectly logical. Over his career, Ed received an Edgar, two Anthonys, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and a Grand Master Award from the MWA. Regarding the latter, Ed was one of only two authors who primarily wrote short stories to receive such an honor, the other being Stanley Ellin.

In 1999 I had the chance to chat with this genial master wordsmith at that year's Bouchercon in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While I believe there is a special lava pit in Hell reserved for authors who ask other authors where they get their ideas, I had to ask Ed how he was able to come up with so many. His reply: "Something hits me, either a news article or some odd fact, and I say, 'Hey, I never knew that before, I could make that into a story.'"

Another technique of Ed's was to use ideas he'd seen elsewhere as a springboard for his own tales. "If I'm reading something or seeing a movie, even a mystery, sometimes it will occur to me how it could have been done better, and I take off from that point," he said. "The stories that I come up with will have no relation to the ones that first gave the thought to me."

He had more words of wisdom regarding mystery story construction. "I rarely have the murder right at the beginning of the story," he told me. "You can fool the reader if you introduce some of the actual clues before the murder, because they [readers] are not thinking of them, and they don't know what's going ot happen."

Edward D. Hoch's last published story appeared in the Winter 2008 issue of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. Ed never saw its publication, having passed away the previous January at the age of 77. He published in excess of 950 short stories during his half-century career, in later years averaging about twenty a year. For someone with that kind of output, there seems to be one obvious question: did Ed Hoch every experience writer's block?

"Sometimes I get caught up and I don't have any ideas," he confessed, "but then I think about it, or thing about which character I haven't used in quite a while, and the plot tends to come to me. I think the longest block I ever had was probably a day."

On a personal note, I experienced one of Ed's story inspirations first-hand. Picking up a copy of EQMM one time, I turned right away to that issue's Edward D. Hoch story and then did a spit-take as I read on the first page, "Father Mike Mallory..." I immediately emailed Ed to thank him for the honor. He replied, "Sorry for ordaining you."