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The Crime of My Life: Favorite Stories by Presidents of the Mystery Writers of America
Short stories by authors including John D. MacDonald, Robert Bloch, Stanley Ellin, and Georges Simenon depict strange crimes and baffling murders
- GenresAnthologies
269 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 1984
About the author
Brian Garfield
107 books79 followersBrian Francis Wynne Garfield was a novelist and screenwriter. He wrote his first published book at the age of eighteen, and gained prominence with 1975 his book Hopscotch, which won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. He is best known for his 1972 novel Death Wish, which was adapted for the 1974 film of the same title, followed by four sequels, and a remake starring Bruce Willis.
His follow-up 1975 sequel to Death Wish, Death Sentence, was very loosely adapted into a film of the same name which was released to theaters in late 2007, though an entirely different storyline, but with the novel's same look on vigilantism. Garfield is also the author of The Thousand-Mile War: World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History. Garfield's latest book, published in 2007, is Meinertzhagen, the biography of controversial British intelligence officer Richard Meinertzhagen.
Brian Garfield was the author of more than 70 books that sold more than 20 million copies worldwide, and 19 of his works were made into films or TV shows. He also served as president of the Western Writers of America and the Mystery Writers of America.
Pseudonyms:
• Bennett Garland
• John Ives
• Drew Mallory
• Frank O'Brian
• Brian Wynne
• Frank Wynne
His follow-up 1975 sequel to Death Wish, Death Sentence, was very loosely adapted into a film of the same name which was released to theaters in late 2007, though an entirely different storyline, but with the novel's same look on vigilantism. Garfield is also the author of The Thousand-Mile War: World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History. Garfield's latest book, published in 2007, is Meinertzhagen, the biography of controversial British intelligence officer Richard Meinertzhagen.
Brian Garfield was the author of more than 70 books that sold more than 20 million copies worldwide, and 19 of his works were made into films or TV shows. He also served as president of the Western Writers of America and the Mystery Writers of America.
Pseudonyms:
• Bennett Garland
• John Ives
• Drew Mallory
• Frank O'Brian
• Brian Wynne
• Frank Wynne
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 11, 2023
CONTENTS
●"Introduction" - Brian Garfield
•"Chinoiserie" - Helen McCloy
•"Present for Minna" - Richard Martin Stern
•"Hangover" - John D. MacDonald
•"The Leopold Locked Room" - Edward D. Hoch
•"Give the Devil His Due' - Lawrence Treat
•"Framed for Murder" - Harold Q. Masur
•'The Man Who Knew Women" - Robert Bloch
•"The Question" - Stanley Ellin
•"Galton and the Yelling Boys" - Hillary Waugh
•"Milady Bigamy" - Lillian de la Torre
•"Scrimshaw" - Brian Garfield
•"Blessed Are the Meek" - Georges Simenon
•"The Purple Is Everything" - Dorothy Salisbury Davis
The Mystery Writers of America have been issuing anthologies since the 1940s. The editor and each of the contributors are members of that organization. This book celebrates the thirty-ninth anniversary of its founding. This particular volume in the series has a special distinction: all the contributors had been presidents of the Mystery Writers of America, Inc. Each of them was "asked to pick a favorite story from his or her own body of work."
Brian Garfield's introduction explains: "MWA presidency is a coveted honor rather than an administrative position... Election in the presidency is the equivalent of a salute from one's colleagues for one's work."
The thirteen stories assembled here come from several different sources: one from The Saint, one from Cosmopolitan, one from This Week, one from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and (impressively) nine from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Original publication dates range from 1946 to 1979. Each story has a brief introduction by the author of that story.
In previous reviews of MWA anthologies, I have often mentioned that a surprisingly large number of stories are not really relevant to the stated theme of the particular anthology. This time there is no such theme.
Most of these stories are good, with just three that I do not much like, although even these are not terrible. Lawrence Treat, who wrote such fine police procedural fiction, has a fantasy story of a psychiatrist who makes a deal with the devil, "Give the Devil His Due". The psychiatrist evidently has not read other stories on this theme and fails to take even the simplest precautions. Nonetheless, part of the gimmick is clever.
The other two stories that I would put in this category both are police stories and both have a police captain as the central figure. In "Galton and the Yelling Boys" by Hillary Waugh, Captain Galton is told of a girl who had been parked in a car with her boyfriend when three young men grabbed them from the car, knocked out the man, and abducted the woman. Galton quickly resolves the situation - in a way that I don't believe. I need to use another spoiler:
Captain Leopold is a continuing character in a series by Edward D. Hoch. In "The Leopold Locked Room," Leopold is alone in a room with his extremely bitter former wife at a wedding reception. She suddenly seems to be shot. A doctor confirms that she is dead from the bullet. It is later found that the bullet unmistakably came from the gun Leopold was carrying. The explanation is so preposterous that people in the story keep pointing out how easily the killer's plan could have gone wrong.
Brian Garfield, who edited this collection, also has a story here, "Scrimshaw." A young woman traveling alone is in Hawaii, almost totally out of funds. She is "alone" in every possible way - her family is gone (including her much-loved son), she has no job, she has no plans and only scant hopes. She runs into an old college acquaintance, a man she never much liked who is now living in Hawaii and working as a scrimshander, a person who creates art by making scrimshaw, pictures painstakingly etched into ivory or bone. I read this powerful tale years ago and remembered it well. Garfield's story introduction says that this story was filmed (very well, Garfield says) as an episode of Tales of the Unexpected.
John D. MacDonald's story "Hangover" was also filmed for television, in this case as an episode of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, with Tony Randall playing the lead. The central character is a heavy-drinking man working in advertising. Everyone tells him he needs to cut back on his drinking - his wife, his coworkers, his boss. But he doesn't, and his drunkenness leads to disaster - and to his waking up the next day after a black-out with a hangover to end all hangovers.
Lillian de la Torre wrote a frequently wonderful series about Samuel Johnson, usually referred to in these tales as "Dr. Sam: Johnson." These are, of course, narrated by Johnson's real biographer, James Boswell. "Milady Bigamy," set in 1778, tells of the lovely Duchess of Kingsford, recently widowed, whose right to inherit her late husband's wealth has been challenged by that husband's nephew. The nephew says that he can prove that the Duchess's marriage to his uncle was never legal as she was already married to someone else. The Duchess enlists the legal help of Boswell, which means that Johnson will also be on her side. This is one of the best entries from that series that I have read - and startlingly cynical as well.
Three of these stories are greatly concerned with particular paintings. In "Framed for Murder," Harold Q. Masur's series character lawyer Scott Jordan had a client who owned an art gallery who had recently died suddenly. Jordan is one of three people present when the late gallery owner's safety deposit box is opened. There is a bomb in the box and the other two people are killed; Jordan, through a lucky happenstance, is only slightly injured. But who planted the bomb and why? And is the Vlaminck painting recently sold by the gallery to a very unhappy Japanese client really a forgery? A clever mystery, marred by a badly caricatured picture of the man from Japan.
Helen McCloy's story "Chinoiserie" is set in China before the Boxer Rebellion, which took place just at the turn of the Twentieth Century. An elderly American, once in the diplomatic service, tells the tale of a tragedy that took place in China at that time. That young man went to dine at the Russian Legation, where the minister in charge of the Legation lived with his much younger, strikingly beautiful wife. But she was not the only beautiful aspect of the Legation; the minister has recently acquired a near-legendary Chinese painting, known to be part of a set of four. People other than the minister want to take possession both of the painting and of the wife. This is a touching tale and a fine mystery as well.
In Dorothy Salisbury Davis's story "The Purple Is Everything," there is a Monet painting that hangs in the (fictional) Institute of Modern Art that has come almost to obsess a woman in her mid-thirties, a designer for a wallpaper company. She spends much of her time contemplating this Monet. One day she is in the Institute when a fire breaks out. She observes people taking paintings down from the wall to bring them to safety. The woman takes the Monet but can not find anyone to give it to so she takes it home. When she tries to convince the Institute that she has their painting, they believe that she is lying; the Monet had burned up in the fire, they tell her. This is the third story by Davis that I have read in the past month. They have all been truly fine; I probably should seek out more of her work.
Georges Simenon has the longest story in this collection, "Blessed Are the Meek." A poor tailor lives with his family in a town in France in which a serial killer is murdering older women. He begins to suspect that one of his neighbors is the killer. There is a substantial reward offered for anyone who can identify the murderer to the police, but the tailor must be sure that he is correct, find out why the murders are being committed, and be able to prove all this to the police - and he needs to do all this soon, before someone else might get the reward. A typically atmospheric Simenon tale, with a clever solution.
In "The Man Who Knew Women" by Robert Bloch, the main character is a man who finds women with money and then finds ways to get that money. Some times that involves marriage and some times it also involves murder. He is courting a woman whose brother is an entertainer, a former vaudevillian who now mostly performs in nightclubs. The brother is suspicious of the scheming fellow, as well he might be. I did not anticipate the ending.
The most mild, totally non-violent story in this book is "Present for Minna" by Richard Martin Stern. A ship docks and one of the sailors, Andy, is confronted with a problem. He has brought back a case of brandy from France to give to his wife. He had given no thought to Customs duty, which another sailor estimates as sixty dollars, which he does not have. It is suggested that Andy smuggle the case through Customs, which he replies wouldn't be honest. The second sailor offers to make a ten to one bet that Andy "couldn't get that case through Customs if [he] tried." Andy's plan has more than one surprise in it.
Brian Garfield says that Stanley Ellin was "the reigning master of the mystery short story," an opinion with which I concur. There is no violence - in fact, no crime - in Ellin's story "The Question." The narrator is the second generation in his family to have two jobs: he runs an electrical supply and repair shop and, unknown to most of the world, including his own son, he is his state's executioner. When he finally does tell his son, he suggests bringing the boy into the family business - or, rather, the family businesses. But the boy asks a question. Ellin seldom disappointed; he certainly does not here.
This is the fifth MWA anthology that I have reviewed on Goodreads in the last two months. It is by far the best. If the three stories that I don't like were not in the book, I would give this a five star rating. I will instead give it four stars, but those are four very enthusiastic stars.
●"Introduction" - Brian Garfield
•"Chinoiserie" - Helen McCloy
•"Present for Minna" - Richard Martin Stern
•"Hangover" - John D. MacDonald
•"The Leopold Locked Room" - Edward D. Hoch
•"Give the Devil His Due' - Lawrence Treat
•"Framed for Murder" - Harold Q. Masur
•'The Man Who Knew Women" - Robert Bloch
•"The Question" - Stanley Ellin
•"Galton and the Yelling Boys" - Hillary Waugh
•"Milady Bigamy" - Lillian de la Torre
•"Scrimshaw" - Brian Garfield
•"Blessed Are the Meek" - Georges Simenon
•"The Purple Is Everything" - Dorothy Salisbury Davis
The Mystery Writers of America have been issuing anthologies since the 1940s. The editor and each of the contributors are members of that organization. This book celebrates the thirty-ninth anniversary of its founding. This particular volume in the series has a special distinction: all the contributors had been presidents of the Mystery Writers of America, Inc. Each of them was "asked to pick a favorite story from his or her own body of work."
Brian Garfield's introduction explains: "MWA presidency is a coveted honor rather than an administrative position... Election in the presidency is the equivalent of a salute from one's colleagues for one's work."
The thirteen stories assembled here come from several different sources: one from The Saint, one from Cosmopolitan, one from This Week, one from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and (impressively) nine from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Original publication dates range from 1946 to 1979. Each story has a brief introduction by the author of that story.
In previous reviews of MWA anthologies, I have often mentioned that a surprisingly large number of stories are not really relevant to the stated theme of the particular anthology. This time there is no such theme.
Most of these stories are good, with just three that I do not much like, although even these are not terrible. Lawrence Treat, who wrote such fine police procedural fiction, has a fantasy story of a psychiatrist who makes a deal with the devil, "Give the Devil His Due". The psychiatrist evidently has not read other stories on this theme and fails to take even the simplest precautions. Nonetheless, part of the gimmick is clever.
The other two stories that I would put in this category both are police stories and both have a police captain as the central figure. In "Galton and the Yelling Boys" by Hillary Waugh, Captain Galton is told of a girl who had been parked in a car with her boyfriend when three young men grabbed them from the car, knocked out the man, and abducted the woman. Galton quickly resolves the situation - in a way that I don't believe. I need to use another spoiler:
Captain Leopold is a continuing character in a series by Edward D. Hoch. In "The Leopold Locked Room," Leopold is alone in a room with his extremely bitter former wife at a wedding reception. She suddenly seems to be shot. A doctor confirms that she is dead from the bullet. It is later found that the bullet unmistakably came from the gun Leopold was carrying. The explanation is so preposterous that people in the story keep pointing out how easily the killer's plan could have gone wrong.
Brian Garfield, who edited this collection, also has a story here, "Scrimshaw." A young woman traveling alone is in Hawaii, almost totally out of funds. She is "alone" in every possible way - her family is gone (including her much-loved son), she has no job, she has no plans and only scant hopes. She runs into an old college acquaintance, a man she never much liked who is now living in Hawaii and working as a scrimshander, a person who creates art by making scrimshaw, pictures painstakingly etched into ivory or bone. I read this powerful tale years ago and remembered it well. Garfield's story introduction says that this story was filmed (very well, Garfield says) as an episode of Tales of the Unexpected.
John D. MacDonald's story "Hangover" was also filmed for television, in this case as an episode of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, with Tony Randall playing the lead. The central character is a heavy-drinking man working in advertising. Everyone tells him he needs to cut back on his drinking - his wife, his coworkers, his boss. But he doesn't, and his drunkenness leads to disaster - and to his waking up the next day after a black-out with a hangover to end all hangovers.
Lillian de la Torre wrote a frequently wonderful series about Samuel Johnson, usually referred to in these tales as "Dr. Sam: Johnson." These are, of course, narrated by Johnson's real biographer, James Boswell. "Milady Bigamy," set in 1778, tells of the lovely Duchess of Kingsford, recently widowed, whose right to inherit her late husband's wealth has been challenged by that husband's nephew. The nephew says that he can prove that the Duchess's marriage to his uncle was never legal as she was already married to someone else. The Duchess enlists the legal help of Boswell, which means that Johnson will also be on her side. This is one of the best entries from that series that I have read - and startlingly cynical as well.
Three of these stories are greatly concerned with particular paintings. In "Framed for Murder," Harold Q. Masur's series character lawyer Scott Jordan had a client who owned an art gallery who had recently died suddenly. Jordan is one of three people present when the late gallery owner's safety deposit box is opened. There is a bomb in the box and the other two people are killed; Jordan, through a lucky happenstance, is only slightly injured. But who planted the bomb and why? And is the Vlaminck painting recently sold by the gallery to a very unhappy Japanese client really a forgery? A clever mystery, marred by a badly caricatured picture of the man from Japan.
Helen McCloy's story "Chinoiserie" is set in China before the Boxer Rebellion, which took place just at the turn of the Twentieth Century. An elderly American, once in the diplomatic service, tells the tale of a tragedy that took place in China at that time. That young man went to dine at the Russian Legation, where the minister in charge of the Legation lived with his much younger, strikingly beautiful wife. But she was not the only beautiful aspect of the Legation; the minister has recently acquired a near-legendary Chinese painting, known to be part of a set of four. People other than the minister want to take possession both of the painting and of the wife. This is a touching tale and a fine mystery as well.
In Dorothy Salisbury Davis's story "The Purple Is Everything," there is a Monet painting that hangs in the (fictional) Institute of Modern Art that has come almost to obsess a woman in her mid-thirties, a designer for a wallpaper company. She spends much of her time contemplating this Monet. One day she is in the Institute when a fire breaks out. She observes people taking paintings down from the wall to bring them to safety. The woman takes the Monet but can not find anyone to give it to so she takes it home. When she tries to convince the Institute that she has their painting, they believe that she is lying; the Monet had burned up in the fire, they tell her. This is the third story by Davis that I have read in the past month. They have all been truly fine; I probably should seek out more of her work.
Georges Simenon has the longest story in this collection, "Blessed Are the Meek." A poor tailor lives with his family in a town in France in which a serial killer is murdering older women. He begins to suspect that one of his neighbors is the killer. There is a substantial reward offered for anyone who can identify the murderer to the police, but the tailor must be sure that he is correct, find out why the murders are being committed, and be able to prove all this to the police - and he needs to do all this soon, before someone else might get the reward. A typically atmospheric Simenon tale, with a clever solution.
In "The Man Who Knew Women" by Robert Bloch, the main character is a man who finds women with money and then finds ways to get that money. Some times that involves marriage and some times it also involves murder. He is courting a woman whose brother is an entertainer, a former vaudevillian who now mostly performs in nightclubs. The brother is suspicious of the scheming fellow, as well he might be. I did not anticipate the ending.
The most mild, totally non-violent story in this book is "Present for Minna" by Richard Martin Stern. A ship docks and one of the sailors, Andy, is confronted with a problem. He has brought back a case of brandy from France to give to his wife. He had given no thought to Customs duty, which another sailor estimates as sixty dollars, which he does not have. It is suggested that Andy smuggle the case through Customs, which he replies wouldn't be honest. The second sailor offers to make a ten to one bet that Andy "couldn't get that case through Customs if [he] tried." Andy's plan has more than one surprise in it.
Brian Garfield says that Stanley Ellin was "the reigning master of the mystery short story," an opinion with which I concur. There is no violence - in fact, no crime - in Ellin's story "The Question." The narrator is the second generation in his family to have two jobs: he runs an electrical supply and repair shop and, unknown to most of the world, including his own son, he is his state's executioner. When he finally does tell his son, he suggests bringing the boy into the family business - or, rather, the family businesses. But the boy asks a question. Ellin seldom disappointed; he certainly does not here.
This is the fifth MWA anthology that I have reviewed on Goodreads in the last two months. It is by far the best. If the three stories that I don't like were not in the book, I would give this a five star rating. I will instead give it four stars, but those are four very enthusiastic stars.
July 7, 2023
MWA was formed in 1945. In 1984, this anthology was published. It contains stories by all the living (at that time) presidents of the association. These stories were published from 1946 - 1979. The authors were each asked to choose one of their previously published pieces and write an introduction for it. I don't think I've read an MWA anthology that has author introductions, so that was interesting.
Another enjoyable collection from the MWA!
Another enjoyable collection from the MWA!
July 5, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews