THIS COLLECTION OF TWENTY non-series stories, 1957–1979, is intended as something of a companion volume to The Night My Friend, edited by Francis M. Nevins and published by Ohio University Press in 1992. That collection consisted of twenty-two stories from the 1960s. For the present volume I went back to the beginning in 1955 and chose thirty tales that I remembered fondly. I reread each of them and narrowed the list to these twenty. I think the two books, taken together, collect most of my best non-series stories prior to 1980.
Though there are a few detective stories here (and even an impossible crime), I cannot disagree with critics who find a certain noir quality to my non-series tales in this period. Even some of the titles, like “The Night People” and “Festival in Black” (the latter published here for the first time in America), suggest the influence of Cornell Woolrich. Through these stories I can see my development as a mystery writer, from the early tales in Manhunt and its digest-size clones to regular appearances in The Saint, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.
Most of my work today, especially with my series characters, has been influenced more by Chesterton, Queen, and Carr, than by Woolrich. Yet editors still request my darker, more brooding stories from time to time and I’m happy to oblige. Even in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine I try to do at least one or two non-series tales each year.
So here are twenty of the best from those early years. Perhaps we’ll see a future volume covering the decades of the ’80s and ’90s.
—Edward D. Hoch