Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Happy birthday, Edward D. Hoch.

Collection of Hoch's
Dr. Sam Hawthorne tales,
from Crippen & Landru
MWA Grand Master Edward D. Hoch was born today in Rochester, NY, in 1930. It's estimated that during his career, he published upward of 900 short stories, particularly in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (EQMM). He received an Edgar for "The Oblong Room" and an Anthony for "The Problem of the Potting Shed." He wrote "V-2," a story for me for Malice Domestic 8, and I had the pleasure of meeting this gracious man at one EQMM event. He died in 2008.

2 comments:

Todd Mason said...

I met him at the 2001 BoucherCon. An utter gentleman. And I believe, after no lack of stories for magazines going back to Robert Lowndes's Columbia crime-fiction pulps and digests (and Hoch would as a result loyally write for Lowndes's even lower-budget horror and suspense magazines published by Health Knowledge in the '60s), that he had a story of some sort in every issue of EQMM from sometime very much like early 1973 till after his death. A run comparable to the pop-science essays Willy Ley and Isaac Asimov wrote for other fiction magazines.

Black Pipe said...

Ed Hoch is one of my all-time favorite mystery writers. Dr. Sam Hawthorne, Captain Leopold and Nick Velvet are my favorite sleuths. What a great loss to the mystery world with his premature departure.