Short Story Collections

This Edgar Award–winning collection from the author behind the Peter Duluth novels delivers “a dozen shock treatments for varying degrees of murder” ( Kirkus Reviews ). Patrick Quentin, best known for the Peter Duluth puzzle mysteries, also penned outstanding detective novels from the 1930s through the 1960s under other pseudonyms, including Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge. Anthony Boucher wrote: “Quentin is particularly noted for the enviable polish and grace which make him one of the leading American fabricants of the murderous comedy of manners; but this surface smoothness conceals intricate and meticulous plot construction as faultless as that of Agatha Christie.” This Edgar Award–winning short story collection introduces multiple murderers with a myriad of motives: In the title story, which was adapted for an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour , a wealthy woman trapped in a vault passes the hours pondering her life and her loves as time—and her oxygen supply—runs out . . . In post–World War II Sicily, a visiting American discovers that his charity toward a young boy has ensnared him in a trap only a child could have dreamed up . . . A cheating husband planning on killing his wife learns that even the best-laid plans can go astray—especially if your wife is a lot smarter than you . . . A child writes down what she’s going to say in a court case, revealing the honest, innocent heart of a little girl—and the cold, calculating mind of a monster . . . Quentin’s collection of crimes “produces a cool chill and a calculated thrill” ( Kirkus Reviews ) and includes: “The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow,” “A Boy’s Will,” “Portrait of a Murderer,” “Little Boy Lost,” “Witness for the Prosecution,” “The Pigeon-Woman,” “All the Way to the Moon,” “Mother, May I Go Out to Swim?,” “Thou Lord Seest Me,” “Mrs. Appleby’s Bear,” “Love Comes to Miss Lucy,” and “This Will Kill You.”

DEATH FREIGHT The American Magazine was a glossy, lavishly illustrated “slick” aimed primarily at middle class women readers, filled not only with dastardly murders, but beautiful women and handsome men living the high life, the sweet spice of romance adding to the sordid criminal proceedings. Here are four clever, sophisticated mysteries from the pages of The American Magazine written by Hugh Wheeler in the early 1950s as “Patrick Quentin.” Each story takes the reader on a world tour of murder… The trip begins with “Mrs. B.’s Black Sheep” as a European Tour for Girls is quickly disrupted by theft and murder. In “Death Freight” a world-traveling writer bound for Zanzibar is thrown into a shipboard murder mystery involving an old flame and a pouch of stolen diamonds. “The Scarlet Box” takes us to Rome where an artist must solve the murder of a famous director to prove the innocence of a young woman he has grown to love. And in “The Laughing Man,” a San Francisco police inspector is pitted against a would-be serial killer who cackles as he kills.