Helpful Score: 1
Stories from a time before Post-Modern obscurity, which beat you over the head with Shock/Horror endings that can be seen coming from a mile off. A mix of stories by writers with names like "McKnight Malmar," who seem to have been stalwarts of magazine fiction in the early decades of the 20th Century, and lesser works by better writers like Dorthy L. Sayers, Ambrose Bierce and Saki.
Stories by the A-listers are by far the best of a bad lot: they clearly knew how to spin out a whisper-thin idea, and make it more about character and circumstances than about the Big (Disappointing) Reveal; Saki even managed to sneak in a half-decent twist at the end of his story, "The Interlopers."
My favorite, by far, was "Two Bottles of Relish" by Lord Dunsany, not because I didn't see what was coming, but for the style and the sheer unlikeliness of the premise: an armchair detective and his Watson, a "drummer" (or salesman) for a brand of relish called "Num-Numo" which prominently features in a disappearance/murder case that has the best minds of Scotland Yard baffled. Makes me hope that Lord D may have written more adventures for his unlikely team of Linley and Smithers ...
Stories by the A-listers are by far the best of a bad lot: they clearly knew how to spin out a whisper-thin idea, and make it more about character and circumstances than about the Big (Disappointing) Reveal; Saki even managed to sneak in a half-decent twist at the end of his story, "The Interlopers."
My favorite, by far, was "Two Bottles of Relish" by Lord Dunsany, not because I didn't see what was coming, but for the style and the sheer unlikeliness of the premise: an armchair detective and his Watson, a "drummer" (or salesman) for a brand of relish called "Num-Numo" which prominently features in a disappearance/murder case that has the best minds of Scotland Yard baffled. Makes me hope that Lord D may have written more adventures for his unlikely team of Linley and Smithers ...
