ALSO EDITED BY OTTO PENZLER
The Big Book of Female Detectives
The Big Book of Rogues and Villains
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper
The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories
The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries
The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries
The Big Book of Ghost Stories
Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!
The Big Book of Adventure Stories
The Vampire Archives
Agents of Treachery
Bloodsuckers
Fangs
Coffins
The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories
The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL, OCTOBER 2019
Copyright © 2019 by Otto Penzler
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Due to limitations of space, permissions to reprint previously published material can be found on this page–this page.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available at the Library of Congress.
Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Trade Paperback ISBN 9780525563884
Ebook ISBN 9780525563891
Cover design by Joe Montgomery
Cover photographs: man © Barnaby Hall/Photonica/Getty Images; woman © Mark Owen/Trevillion Images; headlights © Wolfgang Simlinger/plainpicture; spot light © matusciac/Deposit Photos
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This one is for Jane Friedman, my dear friend and invaluable colleague who taught me so much.
CONTENTS
Cover
Also Edited by Otto Penzler
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction by Otto Penzler
The Suspense Is Killing Me
Agatha Christie
The Witness for the Prosecution / Witness for the Prosecution
Charlotte Armstrong
The Enemy /Talk About a Stranger
Cornell Woolrich
I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes / I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes
Cornell Woolrich
And So to Death / Fear in the Night
Howard Breslin
Bad Time at Honda / Bad Day at Black Rock
Cornell Woolrich
The Boy Cried Murder / The Window
Jack Finney
The House of Numbers / House of Numbers
John Hawkins & Ward Hawkins
The Killer Is Loose / The Killer Is Loose
Cornell Woolrich
Face Work / Convicted
Cornell Woolrich
Dormant Account / The Mark of the Whistler
Cornell Woolrich
He Looked Like Murder / The Guilty
Marie Belloc Lowndes
The Lodger / The Lodger
Joyce Carol Oates
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? / Smooth Talk
Cornell Woolrich
C-Jag / Fall Guy
Cornell Woolrich
All at Once, No Alice / The Return of the Whistler
Stop, You’re Killing Me
Stuart Palmer
The Riddle of the Dangling Pearl / The Plot Thickens
Stuart Palmer
The Riddle of the Forty Naughty Girls / Forty Naughty Girls
Gerald Beaumont
The Making of O’Malley / The Great O’Malley
Stuart Palmer & Craig Rice
Once Upon a Train / Mrs. O’Malley and Mr. Malone
Richard Connell
Brother Orchid / Brother Orchid
Isn’t This Thrilling?
Ian Fleming
From a View to a Kill / A View to a Kill
Richard Connell
The Most Dangerous Game / The Most Dangerous Game
H. C. McNeile
Thirteen Lead Soldiers / Thirteen Lead Soldiers
W. Somerset Maugham
The Traitor / Secret Agent
Oh, the Horror!
Daphne du Maurier
Don’t Look Now / Don’t Look Now
Robert Bloch
The Real Bad Friend / Psycho
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Body Snatcher / The Body Snatcher
Tod Robbins
Spurs / Freaks
Isn’t It a Crime?
Stanley Ellin
The Best of Everything / Nothing But the Best
Dennis Lehane
Animal Rescue / The Drop
Fredric Brown
Madman’s Holiday / Crack-Up
G. T. Fleming-Roberts
Lady Killer! / Lady Chaser
Irwin Shaw
Tip on a Dead Jockey / Tip on a Dead Jockey
John Hawkins & Ward Hawkins
Criminal’s Mark / Crime Wave
Dashiell Hammett
On the Make / Mr. Dynamite
Richard Wormser
The Road to Carmichael’s / The Big Steal
W. W. Jacobs
The Interruption / Footsteps in the Fog
E. W. Hornung
Gentlemen and Players / Raffles
Barry Perowne
The Blind Spot / Blind Spot
A. H. Z. Carr
The Trial of John Nobody / Johnny Nobody
MacKinlay Kantor
Gun Crazy / Gun Crazy
Frank Rooney
Cyclists’ Raid / The Wild One
Budd Schulberg
Murder on the Waterfront / On the Waterfront
I Love You to Death
Thomas Burke
The Chink and the Child / Broken Blossoms
O. Henry
A Retrieved Reformation / Alias Jimmy Valentine
Edgar Wallace
The Death Watch / Before Dawn
Elick Moll
Night Without Sleep / Night Without Sleep
Rita Weiman
One Man’s Secret / Possessed
Edgar Wallace
The Ghost of Jo
hn Holling / Mystery Liner
Aldous Huxley
The Gioconda Smile / A Woman’s Vengeance
Sinclair Lewis
The Ghost Patrol / The Ghost Patrol
W. Somerset Maugham
The Letter / The Letter
Is There a Detective in the House?
Edgar Allan Poe
The Murders in the Rue Morgue / Murders in the Rue Morgue
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Five Orange Pips / The House of Fear
G. K. Chesterton
The Blue Cross / The Detective
Vincent Starrett
Recipe for Murder / The Great Hotel Murder
Frederick Nebel
No Hard Feelings / Smart Blonde
Dashiell Hammett
The House in Turk Street / No Good Deed
Dashiell Hammett
Woman in the Dark / Woman in the Dark
Raoul Whitfield
Inside Job / High Tide
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Adventure of the Six Napoleons / The Pearl of Death
Permissions Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION
THE HISTORY OF MOTION PICTURES is closely intertwined with mystery, crime, suspense, espionage, and detective fiction.
There are any number of arguments about which is the first motion picture of all time, and the definition of what makes a motion picture is often unclear. In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge produced what is acknowledged as the first moving picture—a series of photos of a running horse taken with several cameras, joined together. Identifying the first narrative film is more difficult, but an argument could be made for a very brief, thirty-second vignette titled Sherlock Holmes Baffled, which has been dated as a 1900 production by some film scholars but 1903 by others.
In the film, Holmes walks into a room and sees that he is being burgled. The thief instantly vanishes. Holmes, clearly confused, lights a cigar in an attempt to ignore the event, no doubt to try to deduce what has just happened. But the burglar reappears and, when Holmes tries to take back the stolen items by pulling a pistol from the pocket of his dressing gown and firing it at the crook, he again vanishes, leaving Holmes looking utterly, yes, baffled.
As technology improved, such entrepreneurial inventors as Thomas A. Edison saw the potential of this new form of entertainment, and he produced a series of films showing a man lifting weights, Carmencita (a Spanish dancer), a blacksmith at work, etc. In 1903 his movie production company released The Great Train Robbery, which is famously, although apparently incorrectly, cited as the first narrative film.
The Great Train Robbery is the thrilling story of a gang of outlaws that holds up a train, robs the passengers, and is then chased by a sheriff and his posse. All the actors are uncredited, but the “star,” playing several roles, was G. M. Anderson, who later became better known as the first western film star, Broncho Billy. With a running time of eleven minutes, this cinematic leap wowed audiences, some of whom panicked when they saw a man aiming a gun directly at the camera, fearing he aimed it straight at them. The scene is said to have inspired the final scene in Goodfellas (1990), when Joe Pesci aims his gun at the camera.
The first feature-length multi-reel motion picture also was a crime film, The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906). An Australian production, it captured the life of the notorious bushranger Ned Kelly (1855–1880), an outlaw who terrorized rural Australia.
This collection accepts a broad definition of the category of stories that inspired mystery movies, in part because it is a challenging genre to define. If we think of mystery and crime movies, it is common to think of a murderer being hunted by a detective. That is also the definition of most western movies, the major difference being that there aren’t many horses in mysteries. Furthermore, it is commonplace for horror and supernatural films to feature death and destruction by mysterious hands, with someone trying to identify and locate the cause of the terror.
Crime is a greater motivating factor in motion pictures than any other—even love—and audiences delight in seeing the criminal confronted and defeated on the silver screen. The detective, whether amateur sleuth, official crime fighter, private eye, or espionage agent, is a necessary component of these narratives. These (mostly) heroic figures have had a rich life in films, and this volume barely scratches the surface as it focuses on a single literary form, the short story.
It is fair to say that most of the greatest mystery and crime films were adapted from novels or were original screenplays.
A pause for an indulgent sidebar, please. The greatest films adapted from crime novels are The Third Man, The Maltese Falcon, The Godfather, The Godfather II, Laura, The Thin Man, Out of the Past, Double Indemnity, The Night of the Hunter, Vertigo, and Touch of Evil.
The greatest mystery films made from original screenplays are Chinatown, White Heat, The Sting, Sunset Boulevard, North by Northwest, The Conversation, The Usual Suspects, Body Heat, Dirty Harry, and Mean Streets.
And which are the best films in the mystery genre to have been inspired by short stories? I’d nominate Psycho, On the Waterfront, Witness for the Prosecution, The Letter, Don’t Look Now, The Lodger, The Wild One, Gun Crazy, and Bad Day at Black Rock. I would add The Killers to this list but, sadly, could not get permission to use the Ernest Hemingway story in this collection.
The preponderance of mystery stories historically preferred by readers have been detective tales by such writers as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ellery Queen, John Dickson Carr, S. S. Van Dine, Erle Stanley Gardner, Ngaio Marsh, Rex Stout, and their colleagues. However, it has proven to be extremely difficult to transfer this genre to the screen. The very demanding exercise of creating a puzzle, throwing in red herrings, and sprinkling in enough clues to keep the fictional detective hopeful and the reader satisfied can be achieved only by creative planning and meticulous execution. Alas, these challenging elements do not translate to motion pictures very well. Observation and deduction are integral to a novel or a story, but they are not exactly cinematic.
Movie audiences are far more interested in seeing action: car chases, explosions, gun fights, fist fights, and such, rather than watching a brilliant detective sit and think. With the exception of some superb but dated films about Van Dine’s Philo Vance and the big-budget forays into nostalgia of several Agatha Christie films, no memorable films have been based on the works of the authors mentioned, though they are among the cream of the crop on the printed page.
The result of the diametrically opposed strengths of the two media are Hollywood productions that feature actors and actresses that audiences like to see on the screen—an advantage over the printed word, where readers can imagine the physical appearances of the characters but cannot be warmed by the charm of Gene Tierney, hear the voice of Humphrey Bogart, revel in the eccentricity of Peter Lorre, bask in the smile of Donna Reed, or marvel at the fearless confidence of Clint Eastwood.
Mystery, crime, and suspense movies remain among the most popular films of this era, just as they have been since the creation of motion pictures, and I confess to being a devotee. In addition to reading every story in this collection (of course!) I watched all but three of the films they inspired. Sometimes I preferred the story, other times the film. They provided different pleasures in most cases, none of which I would willingly have given up.
It’s a wonderful life!
—Otto Penzler
The Witness for the Prosecution
AGATHA CHRISTIE
THE STORY
Original publication: Flynn’s, January 31, 1925, titled “Traitor’s Hands”; first collected under its ultimate, more familiar, title in The Hound of Death and Other St
ories by Agatha Christie (London, Collins, 1933)
THE MOST POPULAR and beloved mystery writer who ever lived, Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller Christie Mallowan (1890–1976) was also the most successful (she has reportedly sold more than 2.5 billion books).
Born in Devon to an English mother and an American who died when she was still a girl, she began writing some romantic short stories but turned to mysteries when she was fairly young. She had numerous rejections, finally selling her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, for $125 in 1920, a paltry sum even then, and her contract bound her to the publisher for four additional books. The book introduced Hercule Poirot, the eccentric Belgian detective who became the first of her famous detectives, the other being the spinster Miss Jane Marple.
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 1