But there are still more than 60 of Fredric Brown’s pulp stories that have never been reprinted anywhere since their original magazine publications, or have only appeared in obscure anthologies or in digest crime magazines in the 50s and 60s. To be sure, some of these stories are badly dated; and others, written hurriedly for money and under deadline pressure, are of mediocre or poor quality. Still, more than a few have merit, some considerably so. Minor Brown they may be, but they are nonetheless deserving of disinterment from their crumbling pulp tombs for the enjoyment of modern readers. Seven of these comprise this long-overdue book—the first but not, Dennis McMillan and I both hope, the last such collection.
My personal favorite here is “The Spherical Ghoul” (Thrilling Mystery, January 1943), which has a typically wild and wonderful Brown plot—its ingredients include a morgue at night, a horribly disfigured corpse, mayhem aplenty, and a classic locked-room mystery—and one of the cleverest (if outrageous) central gimmicks you’re likely to come across anywhere. It puzzles me why Brown failed to include it in either of his own collections. And why no one (except The Saint Magazine in 1962, and yours truly in a 1981 horror anthology called The Arbor House Necropolis) has ever bothered to reprint it.
The lead story, “Red-Hot and Hunted” (Detective Tales, November 1948), is also very good Brown. It utilizes one of his favorite themes: the madness, or apparent madness, of either the protagonist or another main character—in this case, a stage actor named Wayne Dixon who may or may not have murdered his wife. The hallmark of any Brown story, aside from its unusual plot, is the maintenance of a high level of suspense; “Red-Hot and Hunted” has this quality in abundance.
“The Cat from Siam” (Popular Detective, September 1949) is another variation on the madness theme, with that same quality of suspense and a beautifully eerie tone. What Brown does with the Siamese cat of the title, and with such simple devices as a chess game, some gunshots in the dark, and a new kind of ratsbane, should provide a frisson or two.
“Listen to the Mocking Bird” (G-Man Detective, November 1941) makes use—as does another of my favorite Brown shorts, “Whistler’s Murder” (reprinted in The Shaggy Dog and Other Murders)—of old Vaudevillean characters; in this story, a mimic who specializes in bird calls. Its plot is both solidly plausible and satisfying, making the story one of his pre-World War II best.
The flute was Fred Brown’s favorite musical instrument; he played it often if not well, for pleasure and relaxation. His love for the flute and for music in general are evident in “Suite for Flute and Tommy-gun” (Detective Story, June 1942). Again, a clever plot and an unusual blending of its various components make this an above-average story.
“The Moon for a Nickel” is hardly one of Brown’s strongest yarns, but the fact that it was his first published fiction makes it important from the historical point of view. It also demonstrates that from the very first, he had all the tools that would later make him so successful—the fast-paced storyline, the wry style, the eye, ear, and feel for the unusual.
Brown wrote relatively few stories featuring private detectives—prior, that is, to his creation of the team of Ed and Am Hunter in The Fabulous Clipjoint. “Homicide Sanitarium” (Thrilling Detective, May 1944) is one of those few, and another neglected gem. Any number of fictional private eyes have taken undercover jobs in sanitariums, but none for quite the same reason as pint-sized and newly married Eddie Anderson: he’s hunting an escaped homicidal maniac, and what better place for a lunatic to hide, after all, than in a private loony-bin that allows its patients to come and go as they please? The plot twists are numerous and baffling, and the delightful surprise Brown springs on the final page is surprising indeed.
Fredric Brown was one of the best storytellers of his time. These seven vintage tales from his pulp years may be minor, as noted earlier, but that doesn’t diminish their value in any way. They’re pure entertainment, from a writer who understood the meaning of that word as well as—if not better than—any producer of popular culture.
What more could a reader ask?
The Little Lamb
SHE DIDN’T come home for supper and by eight o’clock I found some ham in the refrigerator and made myself a sandwich. I wasn’t worried, but I was getting restless. I kept walking to the window and looking down the hill toward town, but I couldn’t see her coming. It was a moonlit evening, very bright and clear. The lights of the town were nice and the curve of the hills beyond, black against blue under a yellow gibbous moon. I thought I’d like to paint it, but not the moon; you put a moon in a picture and it looks corny, it looks pretty. Van Gogh did it in his picture The Starry Sky and it didn’t look pretty; it looked frightening, but then again he was crazy when he did it; a sane man couldn’t have done many of the things Van Gogh did.
I hadn’t cleaned my palette so I picked it up and tried to work a little more on the painting I’d started the day before. It was just blocked in thus far and I started to mix a green to fill in an area but it wouldn’t come right and I realized I’d have to wait till daylight to get it right. Evenings, without natural light, I can work on line or I can mold in finishing strokes, but when color’s the thing, you’ve got to have daylight. I cleaned my messed-up palette for a fresh start in the morning and I cleaned my brushes and it was getting close to nine o’clock and still she hadn’t come.
No, there wasn’t anything to worry about. She was with friends somewhere and she was all right. My studio is almost a mile from town, up in the hills, and there wasn’t any way she could let me know because there’s no phone. Probably she was having a drink with the gang at the Waverly Inn and there was no reason she’d think I’d worry about her. Neither of us lived by the clock; that was understood between us. She’d be home soon.
There was half of a jug of wine left and I poured myself a drink and sipped it, looking out the window toward town. I turned off the light behind me so I could better watch out the window at the bright night. A mile away, in the valley, I could see the lights of the Waverly Inn. Garish bright, like the loud jukebox that kept me from going there often. Strangely, Lamb never minded the jukebox, although she liked good music, too.
Other lights dotted here and there. Small farms, a few other studios. Hans Wagner’s place a quarter of a mile down the slope from mine. Big, with a skylight; I envied him that skylight. But not his strictly academic style. He’d never paint anything quite as good as a color photograph; in fact, he saw things as a camera sees them and painted them without filtering them through the catalyst of the mind. A wonderful draftsman, never more. But his stuff sold; he could afford a skylight.
I sipped the last of my glass of wine, and there was a tight knot in the middle of my stomach. I didn’t know why. Often Lamb had been later than this, much later. There wasn’t any real reason to worry.
I put my glass down on the windowsill and opened the door. But before I went out I turned the lights back on. A beacon for Lamb, if I should miss her. And if she should look up the hill toward home and the lights were out, she might think I wasn’t there and stay longer, wherever she was. She’d know I wouldn’t turn in before she got home, no matter how late it was.
Quit being a fool, I told myself; it isn’t late yet. It’s early, just past nine o’clock. I walked down the hill toward town and the knot in my stomach got tighter and I swore at myself because there was no reason for it. The line of the hills beyond town rose higher as I descended, pointing up the stars. It’s difficult to make stars that look like stars. You’d have to make pinholes in the canvas and put a light behind it. I laughed at the idea—but why not? Except that it isn’t done and what did I care about that. But I thought awhile and I saw why it wasn’t done. It would be childish, immature.