Allan Barnard (edited by) - The Harlot Killer

[severance]

The Harlot Killer - edited by Allan Barnard, Dell (1953). Cover art by Bill George.

Allan Barnard (edited by) - The Harlot Killer par severance_23, on ipernity

"Out of the fabric of horror with which The Ripper cloaked London, outstanding writers have woven innumerable chilling stories. Here are thirteen of them, the best in fact and fiction about history's most sadistic creature of violence..."

Contents:

Introduction by Allan Barnard
Murder Unlimited by Alan Hynd
The Alarm Bell by Donald Henderson
The Intruder by William Sansom
The Stripper by Anthony Boucher
The Jack-the-Ripper Murders edited by Richard Barker
Love Story by Kay Rogers
The Hands of Mr. Ottermole by Thomas Burke
In the Fourth Ward by Theodora Benson
The Lodger by Mrs. Marie Belloc Lowndes
"Frenchy" - Ameer Ben Ali by Edwin M. Borchard
Jack El Destripador
Jack the Ripper by Edmund Pearson
Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper by Robert Bloch

Only just picked this up, so don't expect a review anytime soon!!

[dem bones]

Brilliant find, Sev. Great cover and, bar the ubiquitous Belloc-Lowdnes and Bloch efforts, what looks a particularly imaginative selection. Always wondered where Michel dredged up In The Fourth Ward.

[dem bones]

Donald Henderson - The Alarm Bell: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July 1945). Alerted by the ringing of an alarm clock while walking through Shepherds Bush, the man in the mackintosh creeps in through a window and throttles all four members of the Randall family (victim #4, Uncle George's last conscious thought is that he'll regret miss reading this Sunday's News Of The World). No point asking him why. No sooner is the killer out of the house than his amnesia kicks in. There have been several such murders in recent weeks.

William Sansom - The Intruder: (Cosmopolitain, March 1948). This story of lonely Clara and Ron Raikes, chief suspect in the Victoria strangler investigation, is better known as Various Temptations, under which name it has appeared in several anthologies including The Fourth Pan Book Of Horror Stories and Jacquelyn Visick's London Tales Of Terror.

Anthony Boucher - The Stripper: (as by 'H. H. Holmes', Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May 1945). "It is obvious," Professor Lowe enunciated, "that the Stripper is one of the three of us." His colleagues, young pulp-fiend Hugo Ellis, and the huge, hunchbacked Professor de Cassis, are suitably perplexed. Could one of them really be responsible for the nude knife-man slayings on the Southern Californian campus? The only substantial clue is a cryptic note written by the latest victim shortly before he was butchered. Between them, Police Lieutenant Marshall and investigative nun, Sister Ursula, must unravel the complex and grisly mystery - who is "Quasimodo"?

Robert Bloch - Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper: (Weird Tales, July 1943). Not that it matters a jot, but I've always thought this story overrated. His admittedly preposterous, Night Of The Ripper is infinitely more entertaining.

To be continued ...

Thanks, Sev

[dem bones]

Thomas Burke - The Hands of Mr. Ottermole: (The Story-Teller, February 1929). A young journalist on The Daily Torch trails the Mile End strangler. Perhaps Burke's most famous story, and surely an influence on Robert Bloch, whose Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper jazzes up the action with a knife and supernatural aspect.

Kay Rogers - Love Story: (MF&SF, June 1951). Penniless and desperate for gin, Liz Stride is mocked and cajoled to her doom by the ghost of the beautiful young woman she once was. A lean four pages but does its job admirably.

[Anthony Boucher] - Jack El Destripador: (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, (?) 1945). Cruelly abridged (three pages!) translation of an endearingly farcical Spanish pulp novel. Sherlock Holmes and his "ancient enemy" Detective Murphy strike a £1000 wager over which of them will catch the Ripper, now on thirty-seven murders (and counting). On this evidence, Holmes' flair for excessive disguise is borderline certifiable.

[dem bones]

Vintage Whitechapel Terror reprints. Advertisement from Ripperologist #30, August 2000.

Theodora Benson - In The Fourth Ward: (The Man from the Tunnel & Other Stories, 1950). As later featured in Michel Parry & Christopher Lee's Omnibus Of Evil . While on shore leave in New York, Sailor Ben Higgs visits two of Water Street's most violent drinking dens in the company of veteran seaman, Thomas Gooldan. The city is especially dangerous for Brits at the time as the chief of police recently issued a public challenge to Jack the Ripper - sail to the US of A , and see how quickly my boys have you under lock and key! The two men are approached by a pathetic crone, 'Shakespeare,' a former star of the English stage who lost her battle with the bottle. Gooldan is hostile toward her on account of "she's not only mad, she's diseased."

Story is also notable for a vicious cat-fight between Gally Mags, the Hole-In-The-Wall's formidable chucker-outer, and Sadie the Goat, a female pirate.

Finally, for the unashamedly fictional content at least.

Marie Belloc-Lowndes - The Lodger. The original, short story version, (McLure's Magazine, Jan. 1911), as later featured in Michel Parry's Jack The Knife.

[dem bones]

Not featured in the above, but published the same year and I couldn't think where else to post it. Had wanted to read this since I first saw the illustration via Haining's Terror!

Tyler

David Alexander - The Other Ones: (Lester del Rey [ed.], Fantasy Fiction #3, Aug. 1953). There was a curse on the other two, in this strange borderland where only hatred could keep a soul awake. They were doomed to howl by night, while Jesse James and Jack the Ripper slept.

After bodging an attempt on the President's life, a hired assassin is killed in a road smash as he flees to New Mexico. The killer - he got the wrong man - awakens at "Murderer's Mesa," a castle of bones in the desert, home to those infamous murderers who ever live on in the public memory. The dead-alive Jesse James takes a shine to the newcomer and introduces him to his pals, John Wilkes Booth and Jack the Ripper. They each warn him to steer clear of "the other ones we never speak of" and refuse to identify by name. Suffice to say, 'The Strutter' and 'The Limper' are such an obscene blight on mankind that even the (he insists) tragically misunderstood Bloody Jack wants nothing to do with them.