If you picked up yesterday’s collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, you might want to skip City of Brass: And Other Simon Ark Stories by Edward D. Hoch. I’m glad I tried them, but they’re much slower paced and not as interesting as the Holmes stories.
Supposedly, Simon Ark is an immortal Coptic priest who has been around since the time of Christ. He investigates supernatural mysteries, but, of course, they had human causes. Two of the stories are narrated by an unnamed publisher friend of Ark’s, who even refers to himself as a third-rate Watson. In “City of Brass” Henry Mahon is a friend of the narrator’s, a former playboy who married and moved to Baine City, New York, known as the “City of Brass” because Baine Brass is the only industry there. Mahon wants the narrator to contact Simon Ark, saying there is something strange going on in a research lab at Baine University. Mahon’s sister-in-law, Cathy, says the same. However, it’s Cathy’s murder that bring the two men back to town to investigate.
The third story, “The Hoofs of Satan”, should have been the second because Ark meets Chief Inspector Ashly of Scotland Yard on the train to Devonshire where strange cloven hoof prints have been discovered in the snow. The area has a legend that they’re hoof prints from the devil himself. Simon complains that instead of a supernatural occurrence, he finds a publiciity-seeking mayor, a spy-hunting inspector, and an ex-movie queen. However, there is a body.
I said the third story should have preceded “The Vicar of Hell” because the publisher is back as narrator, and Ashly returns after a man is murdered. The story is set in England, where the publisher went to meet with a woman named Rain Richards who hoped to put her hands on a book that had been suppressed when it was first written. It’s a seventeenth century book called “The Worship of Satan” about two mysterious deaths, those of the James Butler, the ninth Earl of Ormonde, and Sir Francis Bryan, called the “Vicar of Hell”. It’s Ark who says there is evil involved in the recent murder of the man who knew where the book is hidden.
I found “The Vicar of Hell” interesting, but that was because I went down a rabbit hole reading about Sir Francis Bryan, a fascinating man, and a survivor during the reign of Henry VIII. As with the Holmes book, I enjoy the inclusion of real people in the stories, especially ones that are little known today.
I had only read a few of Hoch’s mysteries before, but I’ll pick up more. I like his ideas and turn of phrase. “City of Brass” included a sentence that caught my attention. The narrator talks about Mahon and his wife, just casual acquaintances. “They were people of a borderland at best, people who helped fill up your life without ever really being a part of it.”
Jeff recommends the locked-room mysteries featuring Dr. Sam Hawthorne. I’ll try those soon.
City of Brass: And Other Simon Ark Stories by Edward D. Hoch. Mysterious Press.com/Open Road, 2013. 148p.
FTC Full Disclosure – I bound a digital edition from Kindle Unlimited with no expectation of a review.
