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Post by dem bones on Nov 7, 2009 17:20:35 GMT
Edward D. Hoch - The Judge Of Hades & Other Simon Ark Stories (Leisure, July 1971) Introduction - Hans Stefan Santesson
Village Of The Dead The Hour Of None The Witch Is Dead Sword For A Sinner The Judge Of Hades A man with a strange, unbelievable past: a man who gives few clues to his identity. But if the scant information about him is to be believed, Simon Ark is close to two thousand years old! He is a Copt, almost certainly a one-time priest; a man who could curse Satan in the language of Christ's disciples in Egypt; a big man, a quiet man, whose face betrays no definite years ... but whose endless search to destroy evil leads him to ever-changing and bizarre surroundings!Edward D. Hoch, who passed away last year aged 78, was astonishingly prolific, having had upward of 900 short stories published in his long career, the very first of which, The Village Of The Dead ( Famous Detective Stories, Dec, 1955), introduced Simon Ark. Robert A. W. Lowdnes, the editor who accepted the story, would revived a number of Ark's adventures for Startling Mystery Stories in the 'sixties, noting they were "controversial in that they always get extreme reactions of like and dislike when we present one of them, the majority of you, the active readers who let us know how you feel, have indicated that you would like to see them now and then." (note to The Vicar Of Hell, Startling Mystery Stories #17, Fall 1970) The stories are narrated by the same eyewitness but i don't think we ever get to learn his name. All we really know is he's a publisher at Neptune books, married to Shelly Constance and, whichever corner of the globe his work takes him, he usually bumps into Simon Ark. Warning: contains spoilers! The Village Of The Dead: The village of Gidaz (population 74), suddenly becomes the village of Gidaz (population 0), when the citizens take it into their heads to leap off a cliff and splatter themselves on the rocks below. Simon Ark surveys the mangled corpses for clues and finds a burnt page from a book by St. Augustine. And that's the case as good as solved. You've probably twigged that it's all the fault of a 1, 500 year old religious maniac masquerading as the friendly mailman by now, but I'll add a spoiler alert up top just in case: And one could argue, I suppose, that it all had a perfectly sane explanation. As driver of the mail truck, the insane Joe Harris would have known enough about the people to scare them into believing he was a man of supernatural powers. He had been after the remains of the gold in the old mines, and had carefully planned for two years to drive the entire town to suicide. You get the feeling that if Ark can defeat this caliber of criminal mastermind without breaking sweat, there's not much hope for the other evil-doers he encounters in his other adventures. The Witch Is Dead: ( Famous Detective Stories, Apr 1956 Startling Mystery Stories #2 (Fall, 1966) "Before the next moon has come, your school will be a campus for the dead." Old Mother Fortune, chain-smoking alcoholic and crystal ball-gazer, has cast a spell over the students at the Hudsonville College, and already several of the girls are confined to the sick bay with a wasting illness. The school board are keen to hush up the scandal as they know their predecessors are at least party responsible for the 'tragedy'. Fifty years earlier, Helen Marie Carrio was expelled from college two weeks before graduation for the heinous crime of smoking. Helen is, of course, the broken Mother Fortune, and between cigs, she's down to sticking hat-pins in the college yearbook. But when the old girl dies horribly in what looks like a clear-cut case of spontaneous human combustion, the pupils fail to recover, so Hoch introduces a second plot involving a tube of radioactive cobalt hidden in the drain of the communal swimming pool! Not in the book but worth a mention; The Vicar Of Hell: ( Famous Detective, August 1956: Startling Mystery Stories #17, Fall, 1970). The hunt is on for the single surviving copy of Sir Francis Bryant's suppressed book, The Worship Of Satan. Our friend from Neptune Books is invited to England by the gorgeous Rain Richards, historian and firearms fanatic. Rain has been contacted by a man named Hugo Carrier, who wishes to sell the book for £10, 000. Carrier is murdered before they reach his Kensington flat, his corpse pinned to the wall by arrows and a blood pentagram drawn at his feet. Rain and Mr. Anonymous are set upon as they leave the crime scene and only the intervention of Simon Ark saves their lives. Luckily, Carrier, who had a good idea he was about to be killed, sent Rain a letter before the Satanists struck, tipping her off the The Worship Of Satan is hidden in a room behind the Blue Pig pub that served as a priests hole during the first Elizabeth's reign. Pub landlord George Kerrigan is a jovial fellow - he shows Ark & Co. around, insists on giving them free drinks - in short, the last person you'd suspect of presiding over a Black Mass! Great punch up at the end when Ark leads a police raid on the Satanists just as they're about to sacrifice Rain to Satan - you almost expect him to cry "To Hell with the Devil!" - but the big shock is the man from Neptune books forgetting all about Shelly Constance and having a fling with Ms. Richards. Ark goes ballistic. "Who is to say that the sin of adultery is any less evil than the sin of devil worship? Certainly they are both works of Satan." And in case you've forgotten the location. "We left the buildings of New Scotland Yard, and walked through the chill December air toward Westminster Abbey. Whitehall was buzzing with midday activity and before we'd gone two blocks there was already a newsboy shouting about the "weird murder in Kensington" .... a double-decker bus rumbled by us and we turned west on Victoria Street. Behind us, Big Ben was tolling the hour of one o'clock ....".
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Post by andydecker on Nov 8, 2009 12:57:22 GMT
Here is the german edition from 1975, published as a Vampir Horror paperback VHR monthly 1975, "Midnight Shock" Content is the same as the original for once. When I read it back then, I thought it rather lame. Ah, youth, what do you know? Re-read it a few years ago and liked it a lot. There were some good twists at the end, and the character of Ark is great, perfect for short stories. Is this the only Simon Ark collection or are there more?
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Post by dem bones on Nov 8, 2009 13:40:46 GMT
There was another one from Leisure books, The City Of Brass & Other Simon Ark Stories (1971) and then Hoch picked his favourite nine for The Quest Of Simon Ark, (Mysterious Press hardcover, 1984), though i don't know the contents of either. According to Robert Lowdnes, the post-Famous Detective Arks are a very different beast to the early efforts. He doesn't go into specifics and i've not read any, but perhaps titles like The Case of the Sexy Smugglers and The Case of the Naked Niece tell their own story.
That Midnight Shock cover is magnificently inappropriate! i'm with you; Ark did nothing for me at all when i read his stuff in Startling Mystery Stories - he's not exactly dynamic for a 2000 year old - but then i was probably in a rush to get to De Grandin and Dr. Satan!
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