“Death Never Rains But It Pours”

More on last week’s death of Edward D. Hoch, this time from Francis M. “Mike” Nevins and posted at the Mystery*File site:

Ed Hoch’s death was the sort we wish for ourselves and those we care about, instant, without pain. He got up and went to take a shower and his wife heard a thump from the bathroom and he was already gone, apparently a massive heart attack.

He would have been 78 next month. His ambition was to write 1,000 short stories but he died something like 50 short of that goal.

Read all of Nevins’ piece here. And do read it, as it’s quite exceptional. It is coupled, too, with a tribute from Nevins to “the first love of my life,” a woman known here only as “Lucy,” who apparently influenced his 1975 novel, Publish and Perish.

A Master of the Medium

(Editor’s note: Most of us never had a chance to meet Edward D. Hoch, the prolific short-story writer who passed away this week. But Al Navis did. A bookseller for more than a quarter-century, he managed two Bouchercon conventions in Toronto, Canada--one in 1992, the other in 2004. It was thanks to his Bouchercon involvement that Navis encountered, and later befriended, Hoch (shown at right). Following the author’s death, Navis wrote a personalized obituary of Hoch for the Canadian Booksellers Association newsletter, which will be published on Tuesday. In advance, he has given The Rap Sheet a chance to post that same obit. We appreciate his generosity and hope that readers not familiar with Hoch and his work will discover in this piece an author worthy of further, if now posthumous, investigation.)

* * *

I first met Edward D. Hoch (pronounced “hoke”), who passed away on Thursday, January 17 (the day after my 56th birthday, to those of you who forgot), at the age of 77, at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in Philadelphia in 1989.

At the time, he was just another name on a long list of “attending authors,” and after a bit of sleuthing, I was able to find a couple (of the five) novels he had written as well as a few of the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) collections of short stories that he had edited. So naturally I brought them along with me to sell, or if I couldn’t sell them, at least I would get them signed.

On the second day of the convention, Ed Hoch and his darling wife, Pat, came though the book dealers’ room and by my tables. I had never met him and indeed had never so much as heard of him, but after about 30 seconds of conversation, it felt as if we had known each other forever.

When he saw that I was from Toronto (he was from Rochester, New York), he immediately began extolling the virtues of my hometown (for those of you outside of Toronto, some people do like us). I instantly liked him as he signed the few copies of his books that I had brought. He was gracious, friendly and above all, classy. Even though I had never met him before, and hadn’t even heard his name before I saw it in the “authors” list of the convention, I felt that I had indeed made a friend.

The following year, Bouchercon was in London, and in 1991 it was in Pasadena, California, followed by the first Bouchercon that I was to host and chair, in Toronto in 1992. Over those years, I came to know Ed and Pat Hoch. After talking with colleagues, it seemed that Ed was the master of the mystery short story and that he’d had a story published in every issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine since 1973! At the time, that was a record of more than 20 years. Well, the string continued until his passing ... an unbelievable 34 years of continuous publication.

Now, some literary types may pooh-pooh the short story, saying that it’s for those who either can’t write a novel or who haven’t enough imagination for one. Well, when Ed was asked, “why the short story?,” he responded:

The ideas came quickly, as they still do, and I enjoyed the exhilaration of finishing a story in a couple of weeks rather than waiting several months before concluding a novel. As many others have observed over the decades, the short story was the first and perhaps most successful medium of the detective story. For Poe and Doyle and Chesterton it was the only medium, even when Doyle tried to stretch out a few of his stories to something approaching novel length.

It takes a special ability to tell a story in 3,000 words, without all the bumph and padding that so many modern novels have today, and Ed Hoch was a master of that medium. I say “master,” because the Mystery Writers of America have a little thing called the Grand Master Award, which is given to an individual who not only has a considerable backlist of work, but whose work has been of a consistently high standard. Hoch won the Grand Master in 2001.

Some of the other past recipients? Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, Ellery Queen, Erle Stanley Gardner, John Dickson Carr, Georges Simenon, James M. Cain, and John D. MacDonald. Too long ago for you, I hear you say? OK, then how about Stephen King, Stuart M. Kaminsky, Marcia Muller, Joseph Wambaugh, Robert B. Parker, Mary Higgins Clark, P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, Dick Francis, and this year’s recipient, Sue Grafton. Is that a bit more current? In between were authors such as Lawrence Block, Elmore Leonard, Tony Hillerman, Phyllis Whitney (who is still alive at the age of 104!), John le Carré, Daphne du Maurier, Graham Greene, and Eric Ambler. And I’ve missed tons of others.

The other thing about Ed Hoch was his undying generosity to younger writers. He was always willing to give ideas, read stories, and critique passages, and he had a very close bond with the Crime Writers of Canada (CWC), as he and Pat attended practically every Arthur Ellis Awards Banquet for the past 20 years.

While everybody who knew him had an “Ed Story,” mine is closely tied to the Ellis Awards. For a few years in the 1990s, the executive director of the CWC was a delightful and eccentric librarian, author, and book collector named David Skene-Melvin. It seemed that David and his dear late wife, Ann, were members of the Arts and Letters Club in downtown Toronto. So he was able to get a decent price for the annual banquet and awards presentation.

Well, we’d had the past two years’ dinners in that club’s Great Hall--a medieval room containing huge high-vaulted ceilings with massive exposed wooden beams, and complete with shields bearing the coats of arms of English heraldry--largely without incident. Then came what has come to be known as the “Duck Dinner.” Anyone who attended this will remember it. I was seated across from Ed and Pat Hoch when our entrées were served. I gazed down at a desiccated, dried-out excuse for a duck breast, entirely lacking the necessary meat that duck is famous for. This piece could have been excavated by Howard Carter from the tomb of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen. It had indeed been mummified.

As everyone was looking down at this crunchy piece of fowl, I looked over at Ed and said, “This is the first time I’ve ever had a dinner where the entrée was older than the wine.”

He and Pat began laughing, and Ed retorted, “Thereby damning both in but a single sentence.”

That was Ed Hoch. Funny and quick as lightning, but generous to give others a little bit of the spotlight. He was also a “must-have” on panels at mystery conventions, partly because he’d been writing since 1955, but mostly because he was so damn funny!

While most of you have never had any association with Ed Hoch--even now he’s just a name to you--I urge all of you to go to your local newsstand and pick up a copy of the latest Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and read Ed’s story. I guarantee that he’ll surprise and please you.

As for the thousands of people whom Ed has helped, befriended, touched and met, we’re all the lesser now, as we won’t have that smiling, cherubic face to hug anymore.

Farewell, old friend.

READ MORE: “Edward D. Hoch, Writer of Over 900 Mystery Stories, Is Dead at 77,” by Margalit Fox (The New York Times).

Edward D. Hoch Dies

Bill Crider brings word this morning that prolific American crime writer Edward D. Hoch--the creator of series characters Nick Velvet, Sam Hawthorne, and others--has died. He was 77, and had never ceased turning out fine new tales. Crider’s remembrance of Hoch pulls at the heart strings:

I have several very nice memories of him at various Bouchercons, including the time in Denver when his wife got a great laugh out of the fact that he and I had both sold stories to an anthology that wanted material that was heavy on the sex angle. And in Austin, when he was highly pleased with the duck-call he received when taking a tour of the city. ... I can’t imagine opening up an issue of EQMM without one of his stories in it. I can’t imagine not seeing him at Bouchercon.

At least readers of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine won’t have to be without Hoch’s contributions in the short term. He has a Sherlock Holmes short story in the February 2008 issue, in which, according to the editors, “Holmes finds himself again coming to the aid of Irene Adler--and her university-age son.”

AFTERNOON UPDATE: Ed Hoch’s death is bringing out the Web tributes, Sarah Weinman has a compilation of them here. Especially interesting is Steve Lewis’ interview with the now late author, which appeared originally in a 2004 issue of Mystery*File. I also want to quote Jiro Kimura’s brief synopsis, at The Gumshoe Site, of Hoch’s career, since many younger readers might be unfamiliar with this author’s vast body of work:

Edward D. Hoch died on January 17. He was a prolific short story writer of mystery fiction. He had [a] story in every issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine since May 1973. His first published story was “Village of the Dead” in the December 1955 issue of Famous Detective Stories, and it features Simon Ark, the occult detective. He [has] had almost 1,000 stories published since then. [He] has a lot of series characters, such as Nick Velvet, the thief, who steal only valueless thing; Captain Jules Leopold; [and] Sam Hawthorne, the doctor-detective of Northmont. He had pseudonyms such as Anthony Circus, Stephen Dentinger, R.L. Stevens, Mr. X, Pat McMahon, Irwin Booth, R.E. Porter, and “Ellery Queen.” I first met him in the mid-70’s in the MWA [Mystery Writers of America] gathering at its old headquarters on East 19th Street. We exchanged a lot of letters before the Internet Revolution, and a lot of e-mails after that. I translated a lot of his short stories and I am still translating his stories and have many things to ask of him. The last time I met him was at the Las Vegas Bouchercon in 2003 and I took this photo of him. He was 77.

Let us know in the Comments section of this post if you spot any additional Hoch tributes.

READ MORE: “Ed Hoch,” by Ed Gorman; “Ed Hoch,” by Martin Edwards (‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’); “12 Questions for Edward D. Hoch” (Ellery Queen: A Web Site on Deduction).

Eat His Dust, Energizer Bunny!

In celebrating the long career of short-story writer Edward D. Hoch, 76, British mystery anthologist Mike Ashley explains at the Crime Time Web site:

Once upon a time, when there were more pulps than you could click a mouse on, it was probably quite easy to write and sell a thousand stories. There are plenty of authors whose story count exceeds this--Hugh B. Cave, Ray Cummings, Arthur J. Burks, for example--and plenty more authors who would produce that equivalent wordage and shoot way beyond it by producing lead novels for magazines and long-running series--Lester Dent, L. Ron Hubbard, Walter Gibson, Paul Ernst, Norvell Page, Robert J. Hogan, H. Bedford-Jones, Frederick Faust, etc., etc.

But not any more. The near death of the all-fiction magazine and the slightly shaky state of the paperback market means that outlets for short stories are limited and the opportunity to sell regularly to those markets, let alone make a living out of it, is extremely rare. Well, not rare--unique.

I only know of one writer still working today who makes a living almost solely from producing short stories and is still able to sell them regularly to the magazine and anthology markets. As I write Ed Hoch is working on his 909th short story.

Wow! For those of you who’ve never read one of Hoch tales (most recently collected in The Iron Angel, 2003), this means you have a hell of a lot of catching up to do.