A couple weeks ago I reviewed Ed Hoch’s A Funeral in the Fog (you can read my review here). A Funeral in the Fog featured stories about Hoch’s investigator of supernatural mysteries, Simon Ark. Ark might be 2000 years old.
In a comment on A Funeral in the Fog, Art Scott mentioned he had some input into the plotting of another Simon Ark story, “The Witch of Park Avenue.” I had read “The Witch of Park Avenue” years ago so I decided to reread the story. And, of course, once I started read Ed Hoch’s The Quests of Simon Ark (1984) I couldn’t stop.
Once again, Simon Ark explores weird happenings and solves mind-bending mysteries. With each story, my admiration of Ed Hoch’s creativity and talent increased! Highly recommended! GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction — ix
Village of the Dead — 1
The Man from Nowhere — 24
The Vicar of Hell — 45
The Judges of Hades — 78
Sword For a Sinner — 121
The Treasure of Jack the Ripper — 162
The Mummy from the Sea — 188
The Unicorn’s Daughter — 213
The Witch of Park Avenue — 238
Simon Ark Checklist –267
And apparently, this 1984 book contained only a selection of the 38 (or more!) Ark stories published up through 1982…
From ISFDB:
Cover: The Quests of Simon Ark by Barbara Chilenskas
Notes: “Village of the Dead” first appeared in Famous Detective Stories (Dec 1955), “The Man from Nowhere” in Famous Detective Stories (Jun 1956), “The Vicar from Hell” in Famous Detective Stories (Aug 1956), “The Judges of Hades” in Crack Detective & Mystery Stories (Feb 1957), “Sword for a Sinner” in The Saint Mystery Magazine (Oct 1959), “The Treasure of Jack the Ripper” in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (Oct 1978), “The Mummy from the Sea” in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (Jan 1979), “The Unicorn’s Daughter” in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (Jan 6, 1982), and “The Witch of Park Avenue” in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (Aug 1982).
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?274882
Thus the first four in the book, and presumably some others, were in Robert Lowndes’s Columbia Publications crime-fiction magazines (and I suspect a few appeared in his horror fiction magazines in the ’60s he edited for the Health Knowledge magazine group)…
And here are those (with their numbers in the sequence of Ark stories as published) with citations in ISFDB, since they were in magazines, or reprinted in magazines such as Lowndes’s STARTLING MYSTERY STORIES, the HK psychic detective and horror magazine companion to MAGAZINE OF HORROR), or in Ark collections (SF denotes “short fiction”, C “collection”]:
Simon Ark
1 Village of the Dead (1955) [SF] also appeared as:
Translation: Das Dorf der Toten [German] (1975)
2 The Hoofs of Satan (1956) [SF]
3 The Witch Is Dead (1956) [SF] also appeared as:
Translation: Hexenmord [German] (1975)
Translation: A feiticeira está morta [Portuguese] (1991)
4 The Man from Nowhere (1956) [SF]
5 The Vicar of Hell (1956) [SF]
8 The Judges of Hades (1957) [SF] also appeared as:
Translation: Das Höllengericht [German] (1975)
11 The Hour of None (1957) [SF] also appeared as:
Translation: Der Satanspriester [German] (1975)
17 Sword for a Sinner (1959) [SF] also appeared as:
Translation: Das blutige Schwert [German] (1975)
20 City of Brass (1959) [SF]
27 Funeral in the Fog (1973) [SF]
28 The Treasure of Jack the Ripper (1978) [SF]
29 The Mummy from the Sea (1979) [SF]
34 The Vultures of Malabar (1980) [SF]
36 The Unicorn’s Daughter (1982) [SF]
38 The Witch of Park Avenue (1982) [SF]
Day of the Wizard (1963) [SF]
The Judges of Hades and Other Simon Ark Stories (1971) [C] also appeared as:
Translation: Schock um Mitternacht [German] (1975)
City of Brass and Other Simon Ark Stories (1971) [C]
The Quests of Simon Ark (1984) [C]
The Stalker of Souls (1989) [SF]
The Society of the Scar (1993) [SF]
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?1752
Indexed in ISDFDB because they were in fantastic-fiction magazines originally, that is, or…(it’s heavy early!).
Todd, I’m hoping more Simon Ark collections are published in the years ahead.
I agree. I thought this collection was better than the newer one, though of course even the weakest Hoch collection is well worth reading.
Jeff, I have a few Ed Hoch collections I haven’t read yet so sometime in the next year or so, I hope to read them all. You’re right about THE QUESTS OF SIMON ARK being the best set of Simon Ark stories so far.
I have yet to read any of the Simon Ark stories. But I did order a copy of the Criippen & Landru’s collection, The Old Spies Club and Other Intrigues of Rand, which I found at a decent price. It hasn’t come yet, but I am excited about it.
Tracy, you’ll enjoy any of the Hoch collections! And, after you read one, you’ll want to read more!