閱讀愛德華·霍剋 Edward D. Hoch在小说之家的作品!!! | |||
愛德華·霍剋的短篇作品文筆流暢、結構嚴謹、謎團設置巧妙、邏輯性和公平性兼具，是20世紀歐美“不可能犯罪”創作史上的最後一位大師。他堅持黃金時代作傢的理念，認為謎團是小說的核心，而且他還善於創新，比如在推理中融合科幻小說和幻想小說元素，創作了《轉換機》等三部科幻推理小說。霍剋的筆下曾出現過二十餘位偵探角色，且大部分都構成係列，其中最著名者莫過於山姆·霍桑（Dr. Sam Hawthorne），這位在新英格蘭小鎮行醫的醫生總是能在鎮裏遇到並破解各類不可能犯罪案件，像是走進屋橋便消失的馬車、被人監視的屋子發生殺人案、衆目睽睽下逃走的脫逃大王等等，這也使得《山姆·霍桑犯罪診斷書》成了他最為人津津樂道的代表作。其他如以一位妙手神偷為主角的尼剋費爾威係列（Nick Velvet Series）和以康涅狄格州某市警察局重案科的一位探長為主角的利奧波德隊長係列（Captain Leopold Series），也很受讀者歡迎。在談及為何對短篇小說情有獨鐘時，他說道：“我可以一兩周就寫出一篇短篇小說，長篇往往要花費我兩三個月。我很少寫長篇，我覺得自己會半途而廢，總想到下一個點子。”
Biography
Hoch (pronounced hoke) was born in Rochester, New York and began writing in the 1950s; his first story appeared in 1955 in Famous Detective Stories and was followed by stories in The Saint Mystery Magazine. In January 1962 he began appearing in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. In December 1962 he kicked off his most successful collaboration, with the appearance of his first story in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine; in the years since EQMM has published over 450 of Hoch's stories, roughly half of his total output. In May 1973 EQMM began publishing a new Hoch story in every monthly issue; as of May 2007 the author had gone an astonishing 34 years without missing a single issue.
Other magazines Hoch wrote for included Adventure,Double-Action Detective, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, The Magazine of Horror and Web Detective Stories.
Hoch was a master of the classic detective story, emphasizing mystery and deduction rather than suspense and fast action; EQMM has called him "The King of the Classical Whodunit." His stories are very well written and are usually tightly plotted puzzles, with carefully and fairly presented clues, both physical and psychological. He was particularly partial to "impossible crime" tales, where to all appearances the crime (usually a murder) could not have been committed at all; he invented numerous variants on the locked room mystery popularized by John Dickson Carr and others. For instance, in "The Second Problem of the Covered Bridge", a man is shot at close range while alone on a covered bridge, while crowds of witnesses watch both ends of the bridge. Hoch cited Graham Greene,John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen and Jorge Luis Borges as influences on his fiction.
Hoch also published magazine stories under the names "Stephen Dentinger", "R. L. Stevens", "Pat McMahon", "Anthony Circus", "Irwin Booth", "R. E. Porter", "Mr. X" and the House Name "Ellery Queen". In many cases he also had a story under his own name in the same magazine issue. Hoch also wrote a novel published as Ellery Queen, under the supervision and editing of Manfred Lee, half of the writing partnership known as Ellery Queen.
In 2001 Hoch was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, the first time a Grand Master was known primarily for short fiction rather than novels.
Edward D. Hoch died at home in Rochester of a heart attack. His wife, née Patricia McMahon, was his only immediate survivor. Hoch was 77 at his death.
Series storie
The overwhelming majority of Hoch's stories feature series characters. He has created at least a dozen different series of stories for EQMM alone. His Captain Leopold series reached over 100 stories.
Nick Velvet
Nick Velvet is a professional thief for hire, with a peculiar specialty: for a flat fee, he steals only objects of negligible apparent value. Since his first appearance in EQMM in September 1966, he has stolen such things as an old spiderweb (which he was then obliged to replace), a day-old newspaper, and a used teabag. His original fee for a theft was $20,000. In 1980 he raised it to $25,000 at the urging of his long-time girlfriend Gloria (who met Nick in 1965 when he was burgling her New York apartment); in the 21st century his fee has risen to $50,000. Unlike many fictional thieves, Nick usually works alone on his thefts—in fact, until 1979 Gloria believed that Nick worked for the U.S. government.
The Nick Velvet caper stories generally combine a near-impossible theft with the mystery of why someone would pay $20,000 to have an apparently valueless item stolen. Although Nick often appears as devoid of curiosity as his targets are of value, circumstances usually force him to identify his clients' true motives, making him as much of a detective as Hoch's more conventional characters. Most of the Nick Velvet stories have a light and humorous tone reminiscent of Leslie Charteris' early stories of the Saint. The fundamental immorality of Nick's chosen profession is frequently offset by the larger justice resulting from his detective work.
A Nick Velvet story, "The Theft of the Circus Poster" in May 1973, began Hoch's unbroken string of monthly appearances in EQMM. Another story, "The Theft of the Rusty Bookmark" in January 1998 featured the real-life Mysterious Bookshop of New York City, and its real-life owner (and Edgar-winning publisher and editor), Otto Penzler. "The Theft of Gloria's Greatcoat" (May 1998), which describes the first meeting of Nick and Gloria, is unusual in that it is told in the first person by Gloria; all of the other Nick Velvet stories (and indeed the majority of Hoch's stories) are third-person narratives.
Captain Leopold
Captain Jules Leopold is a police detective, the head of the Violent Crimes Squad of the police department of an unnamed city in Connecticut. Along with his colleagues Lieutenant Fletcher and Sergeant Connie Trent, he is one of Hoch's most conventional characters. The Leopold stories are police procedurals on the surface, showing the interaction of the officers as they investigate crimes, but the crimes themselves are frequently unusual and reflect Hoch's skill at plotting and placement of clues. The story outcomes usually depend on the deductive ability of Leopold and his comrades rather than on straightforward police work, and sometimes feature impossible crimes and locked rooms.
The Leopold stories best illustrate one of the attractions of Hoch's series tales: The characters age and alter realistically with time. In the course of the series, Leopold has divorced, remarried, retired, returned to work, and retired a second time. Lieutenant Fletcher has been promoted to captain to replace him, and Connie Trent has been promoted to Lieutenant. In some of the recent stories, the focus is on Fletcher and Trent, with Leopold only acting as a respected adviser.
Leopold first appeared as a subsidiary character in a 1957 story. In "The Theft of Leopold's Badge" in March 1991, Hoch brought Captain Leopold and Nick Velvet together in the same story.
EQMM has published the majority of the Leopold stories, but a number have appeared in AHMM as well. The Edgar-winning "The Oblong Room," perhaps the most frequently reprinted Leopold story, was first published in The Saint Magazine.
Dr. Sam Hawthorne
Dr. Sam Hawthorne is a retired family practitioner who is also a specialist in impossible murders. His tales are told as reminiscences of his small-town medical practice in the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. Sam Hawthorne tries to live a quiet life in the fictional New England town of Northmont, but wherever he goes someone always seems to die in a most improbable way.
First appearing in 1974, the Dr. Sam Hawthorne stories are carefully researched historical pieces, rich with period details about Sam's cars, medical practices of the times, politics, and clothing. The stories of this series are among Hoch's most humane tales: Sam himself is a cheerful fellow and tells his tales with humor, but his first-person narratives give readers a close look at his distress at the murders he investigates and his sympathy for the survivors. Because most of the tales take place in a single small town, the series has a larger-than-usual cast of recurring minor characters.
Each Hawthorn story is a "locked room mystery", where an impossible crime occurs, usually a murder.
The earlier tales of the series include one peculiar device: Each one ends with a hint about the next story's central puzzle, and each one begins with a reference to the previous story's hint. Such a device is sometimes inserted when stories are anthologized, to make them seem more like a continuous narrative, but it is very unusual in the initial publication of independent stories in a series.
In "The Problem of Suicide Cottage" (EQMM, July 2007), it is revealed old Sam is 80 years old, and has a daughter named Samantha. He is telling his stories in 1976, and was born in 1896.
Rand
Jeffery (sometimes Jeffrey) Rand is a code and cipher expert, formerly with the Department of Concealed Communications of British intelligence. The Rand stories take place in exotic locations around the world, and frequently feature secret messages or codes. After he left Concealed Communications, many of his stories involved his half-Egyptian, half-Scots wife, Lella Gaad, who Rand met in "The Spy and The Nile Mermaid". Rand met another Hoch character, Michael Vlado, in "The Spy and the Gypsy".
Simon Ark
Simon Ark was the protagonist of Hoch's first published story. He looks to be an ordinary man in his sixties but is actually over 2000 years old, a Coptic priest who travels the world looking for evil—specifically, Satan. It is said that he is cursed by God, that when Jesus carrying the cross wanted to rest, Ark refused him rest and in turn has never known rest himself, doomed to wander the globe forever. However the immortality element is not played up in any way and is just incidental. The Simon Ark stories have supernatural themes, although the crimes in them are always found to have been committed by mundane means.
Ben Snow
Ben Snow features in a series of American Old West mysteries set around the turn of the 20th century. Like the Dr. Sam Hawthorne series, these tales are carefully researched historical pieces, sometimes including real historical characters such as Butch Cassidy. He met another Hoch character, Sam Hawthorne, in "The Problem of the Haunted Teepee".
The first Ben Snow series appeared in 1961 in The Saint Mystery Magazine; the series has since been continued in EQMM.
Stanton and Ive
Walt Stanton and Juliet Ives are two Princeton graduates turned international couriers that have appeared in newer stories, beginning with "Courier and Ives" in November 2002. The pair are often sent to pick up or retrieve an item, and end up picking up the mystery around it.
Sir Gideon Parrot
Sir Gideon Parrot (pronounced parroe) is Hoch's humorous tribute to the famous detectives of the Golden Age of mystery fiction, particularly Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and John Dickson Carr's Dr. Gideon Fell. These stories are gentle parodies of classic mystery devices, the ones so overused they have become cliches.
Michael Vlado
Michael Vlado is the young king of a Romany (Gypsy) tribe in contemporary eastern Europe.
Alexander Swift
Alexander Swift, one of Hoch's more recent creations, is an intelligence agent for General George Washington during the American Revolutionary War. The stories comprise more nearly a serial than a series, as Swift probes ever deeper into rumors that the fort of West Point, commanded by General Benedict Arnold, houses a traitor who will betray the fort to the British Army. In the last Swift story, "Swift Among the Pirates", Swift travels to England, to discover Benedict Arnold is dead.
Barney Hamet
Barney Hamet is a mystery writer who stumbles into real mysteries when he attends mystery conventions. Hamet also featured in Hoch's 1969 novel The Shattered Raven.
Susan Holt
Susan Holt is a minor executive, in charge of promotions for a department store chain.
Interpol
The Interpol stories are an apparently discontinued series from the 1970s and '80s. Interpol officers Sebastian Blue and Laura Charme investigated cases of international crime in Europe.
Al Darlan
Al Darlan (originally Al Diamond; Hoch decided to change the character's name after the earliest stories to avoid confusion with radio/TV detective Richard Diamond) is a private investigator whose appearances have been sparse. His last appearance was in the May 2008 issue of EQMM.
Novel
The Shattered Raven, 1969. Barney Hamet investigates a murder at the Mystery Writers of America.
The Blue Movie Murders, 1972 (as Ellery Queen). "Trouble shooter" Mike McCall investigates the murder of a film producer.
Science fiction detective storie
These three science fiction novels, set in the mid-21st century, feature Carl Crader and Earl Jazine of the Computer Investigation Bureau, nicknamed the "Computer Cops".
The Transvection Machine, 1971
The Fellowship of the HAND, 1972
The Frankenstein Factory, 1975
Short story collection
City of Brass (Simon Ark), 1971 (paperback)
The Judges of Hades (Simon Ark), 1971 (paperback)
The Spy and the Thief (Rand / Nick Velvet), 1971
The Thefts of Nick Velvet (Nick Velvet), 1978
The Quests of Simon Ark (Simon Ark), 1984 (hardback)
Leopold's Way (Captain Leopold), 1985
The Spy Who Read Latin (Rand), 1990
The Night My Friend (non-series), 1992
Diagnosis: Impossible (Dr. Sam Hawthorne), 1996
The Ripper of Storyville (Ben Snow), 1997 (with Marvin Lachman)
The Velvet Touch (Nick Velvet), 2000
The Old Spies Club (Rand), 2001
The Night People (non-series), 2001
The Iron Angel (Michael Vlado), 2003
More Things Impossible (Dr. Sam Hawthorne), 2006
Collections edited by Hoch
Dear Dead Days, 1972
Best Detective Stories of the Year, 1976 through 1981
All But Impossible!, 1981
The Year's Best Mystery and Suspense Stories, 1982 through 1995
Murder Most Sacred: Great Catholic Tales of Mystery and Suspense,1989
Twelve American Detective Stories, 1997
Award
1968 Edgar Allan Poe Award (Mystery Writers of America): "The Oblong Room", The Saint Mystery Magazine, July 1967
1998 Anthony Award (Bouchercon World Mystery Convention): "One Bag of Coconuts", EQMM, November 1997
2001 Anthony Award (Bouchercon): "The Problem of the Potting Shed", EQMM, July 2000
2007 Ellery Queen Readers Choice Award (awarded 2008): "The Theft of the Ostracized Ostrich", EQMM, June 2007
Lifetime Achievement Award (Private Eye Writers of America), 2000
Grand Master (Mystery Writers of America), 2001
Lifetime Achievement Award (Bouchercon), 2001
Reference
^ a b Francis M. Nevins Jr.,"Hoch, Edward D(entinger)",in Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers,edited by James Vinson and D.L. Kirkpatrick. St. James Press, 1985. pp. 452-60.