“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.