The Big Book of Reel Murders Read online

  ALSO EDITED BY OTTO PENZLER

  The Big Book of Female Detectives

  The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

  The Big Book of Jack the Ripper

  The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories

  The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

  The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries

  The Big Book of Ghost Stories

  Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!

  The Big Book of Adventure Stories

  The Vampire Archives

  Agents of Treachery

  Bloodsuckers

  Fangs

  Coffins

  The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

  The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

  A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL, OCTOBER 2019

  Copyright © 2019 by Otto Penzler

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Due to limitations of space, permissions to reprint previously published material can be found on this page–this page.

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available at the Library of Congress.

  Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Trade Paperback ISBN 9780525563884

  Ebook ISBN 9780525563891

  Cover design by Joe Montgomery

  Cover photographs: man © Barnaby Hall/Photonica/Getty Images; woman © Mark Owen/Trevillion Images; headlights © Wolfgang Simlinger/plainpicture; spot light © matusciac/Deposit Photos

  www.blacklizardcrime.com

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  This one is for Jane Friedman, my dear friend and invaluable colleague who taught me so much.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also Edited by Otto Penzler

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction by Otto Penzler

  The Suspense Is Killing Me

  Agatha Christie

  The Witness for the Prosecution / Witness for the Prosecution

  Charlotte Armstrong

  The Enemy /Talk About a Stranger

  Cornell Woolrich

  I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes / I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes

  Cornell Woolrich

  And So to Death / Fear in the Night

  Howard Breslin

  Bad Time at Honda / Bad Day at Black Rock

  Cornell Woolrich

  The Boy Cried Murder / The Window

  Jack Finney

  The House of Numbers / House of Numbers

  John Hawkins & Ward Hawkins

  The Killer Is Loose / The Killer Is Loose

  Cornell Woolrich

  Face Work / Convicted

  Cornell Woolrich

  Dormant Account / The Mark of the Whistler

  Cornell Woolrich

  He Looked Like Murder / The Guilty

  Marie Belloc Lowndes

  The Lodger / The Lodger

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? / Smooth Talk

  Cornell Woolrich

  C-Jag / Fall Guy

  Cornell Woolrich

  All at Once, No Alice / The Return of the Whistler

  Stop, You’re Killing Me

  Stuart Palmer

  The Riddle of the Dangling Pearl / The Plot Thickens

  Stuart Palmer

  The Riddle of the Forty Naughty Girls / Forty Naughty Girls

  Gerald Beaumont

  The Making of O’Malley / The Great O’Malley

  Stuart Palmer & Craig Rice

  Once Upon a Train / Mrs. O’Malley and Mr. Malone

  Richard Connell

  Brother Orchid / Brother Orchid

  Isn’t This Thrilling?

  Ian Fleming

  From a View to a Kill / A View to a Kill

  Richard Connell

  The Most Dangerous Game / The Most Dangerous Game

  H. C. McNeile

  Thirteen Lead Soldiers / Thirteen Lead Soldiers

  W. Somerset Maugham

  The Traitor / Secret Agent

  Oh, the Horror!

  Daphne du Maurier

  Don’t Look Now / Don’t Look Now

  Robert Bloch

  The Real Bad Friend / Psycho

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  The Body Snatcher / The Body Snatcher

  Tod Robbins

  Spurs / Freaks

  Isn’t It a Crime?

  Stanley Ellin

  The Best of Everything / Nothing But the Best

  Dennis Lehane

  Animal Rescue / The Drop

  Fredric Brown

  Madman’s Holiday / Crack-Up

  G. T. Fleming-Roberts

  Lady Killer! / Lady Chaser

  Irwin Shaw

  Tip on a Dead Jockey / Tip on a Dead Jockey

  John Hawkins & Ward Hawkins

  Criminal’s Mark / Crime Wave

  Dashiell Hammett

  On the Make / Mr. Dynamite

  Richard Wormser

  The Road to Carmichael’s / The Big Steal

  W. W. Jacobs

  The Interruption / Footsteps in the Fog

  E. W. Hornung

  Gentlemen and Players / Raffles

  Barry Perowne

  The Blind Spot / Blind Spot

  A. H. Z. Carr

  The Trial of John Nobody / Johnny Nobody

  MacKinlay Kantor

  Gun Crazy / Gun Crazy

  Frank Rooney

  Cyclists’ Raid / The Wild One

  Budd Schulberg

  Murder on the Waterfront / On the Waterfront

  I Love You to Death

  Thomas Burke

  The Chink and the Child / Broken Blossoms

  O. Henry

  A Retrieved Reformation / Alias Jimmy Valentine

  Edgar Wallace

  The Death Watch / Before Dawn

  Elick Moll

  Night Without Sleep / Night Without Sleep

  Rita Weiman

  One Man’s Secret / Possessed

  Edgar Wallace

  The Ghost of Jo
hn Holling / Mystery Liner

  Aldous Huxley

  The Gioconda Smile / A Woman’s Vengeance

  Sinclair Lewis

  The Ghost Patrol / The Ghost Patrol

  W. Somerset Maugham

  The Letter / The Letter

  Is There a Detective in the House?

  Edgar Allan Poe

  The Murders in the Rue Morgue / Murders in the Rue Morgue

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  The Five Orange Pips / The House of Fear

  G. K. Chesterton

  The Blue Cross / The Detective

  Vincent Starrett

  Recipe for Murder / The Great Hotel Murder

  Frederick Nebel

  No Hard Feelings / Smart Blonde

  Dashiell Hammett

  The House in Turk Street / No Good Deed

  Dashiell Hammett

  Woman in the Dark / Woman in the Dark

  Raoul Whitfield

  Inside Job / High Tide

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  The Adventure of the Six Napoleons / The Pearl of Death

  Permissions Acknowledgments

  INTRODUCTION

  THE HISTORY OF MOTION PICTURES is closely intertwined with mystery, crime, suspense, espionage, and detective fiction.

  There are any number of arguments about which is the first motion picture of all time, and the definition of what makes a motion picture is often unclear. In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge produced what is acknowledged as the first moving picture—a series of photos of a running horse taken with several cameras, joined together. Identifying the first narrative film is more difficult, but an argument could be made for a very brief, thirty-second vignette titled Sherlock Holmes Baffled, which has been dated as a 1900 production by some film scholars but 1903 by others.

  In the film, Holmes walks into a room and sees that he is being burgled. The thief instantly vanishes. Holmes, clearly confused, lights a cigar in an attempt to ignore the event, no doubt to try to deduce what has just happened. But the burglar reappears and, when Holmes tries to take back the stolen items by pulling a pistol from the pocket of his dressing gown and firing it at the crook, he again vanishes, leaving Holmes looking utterly, yes, baffled.

  As technology improved, such entrepreneurial inventors as Thomas A. Edison saw the potential of this new form of entertainment, and he produced a series of films showing a man lifting weights, Carmencita (a Spanish dancer), a blacksmith at work, etc. In 1903 his movie production company released The Great Train Robbery, which is famously, although apparently incorrectly, cited as the first narrative film.

  The Great Train Robbery is the thrilling story of a gang of outlaws that holds up a train, robs the passengers, and is then chased by a sheriff and his posse. All the actors are uncredited, but the “star,” playing several roles, was G. M. Anderson, who later became better known as the first western film star, Broncho Billy. With a running time of eleven minutes, this cinematic leap wowed audiences, some of whom panicked when they saw a man aiming a gun directly at the camera, fearing he aimed it straight at them. The scene is said to have inspired the final scene in Goodfellas (1990), when Joe Pesci aims his gun at the camera.

  The first feature-length multi-reel motion picture also was a crime film, The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906). An Australian production, it captured the life of the notorious bushranger Ned Kelly (1855–1880), an outlaw who terrorized rural Australia.

  This collection accepts a broad definition of the category of stories that inspired mystery movies, in part because it is a challenging genre to define. If we think of mystery and crime movies, it is common to think of a murderer being hunted by a detective. That is also the definition of most western movies, the major difference being that there aren’t many horses in mysteries. Furthermore, it is commonplace for horror and supernatural films to feature death and destruction by mysterious hands, with someone trying to identify and locate the cause of the terror.

  Crime is a greater motivating factor in motion pictures than any other—even love—and audiences delight in seeing the criminal confronted and defeated on the silver screen. The detective, whether amateur sleuth, official crime fighter, private eye, or espionage agent, is a necessary component of these narratives. These (mostly) heroic figures have had a rich life in films, and this volume barely scratches the surface as it focuses on a single literary form, the short story.

  It is fair to say that most of the greatest mystery and crime films were adapted from novels or were original screenplays.

  A pause for an indulgent sidebar, please. The greatest films adapted from crime novels are The Third Man, The Maltese Falcon, The Godfather, The Godfather II, Laura, The Thin Man, Out of the Past, Double Indemnity, The Night of the Hunter, Vertigo, and Touch of Evil.

  The greatest mystery films made from original screenplays are Chinatown, White Heat, The Sting, Sunset Boulevard, North by Northwest, The Conversation, The Usual Suspects, Body Heat, Dirty Harry, and Mean Streets.

  And which are the best films in the mystery genre to have been inspired by short stories? I’d nominate Psycho, On the Waterfront, Witness for the Prosecution, The Letter, Don’t Look Now, The Lodger, The Wild One, Gun Crazy, and Bad Day at Black Rock. I would add The Killers to this list but, sadly, could not get permission to use the Ernest Hemingway story in this collection.

  The preponderance of mystery stories historically preferred by readers have been detective tales by such writers as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ellery Queen, John Dickson Carr, S. S. Van Dine, Erle Stanley Gardner, Ngaio Marsh, Rex Stout, and their colleagues. However, it has proven to be extremely difficult to transfer this genre to the screen. The very demanding exercise of creating a puzzle, throwing in red herrings, and sprinkling in enough clues to keep the fictional detective hopeful and the reader satisfied can be achieved only by creative planning and meticulous execution. Alas, these challenging elements do not translate to motion pictures very well. Observation and deduction are integral to a novel or a story, but they are not exactly cinematic.

  Movie audiences are far more interested in seeing action: car chases, explosions, gun fights, fist fights, and such, rather than watching a brilliant detective sit and think. With the exception of some superb but dated films about Van Dine’s Philo Vance and the big-budget forays into nostalgia of several Agatha Christie films, no memorable films have been based on the works of the authors mentioned, though they are among the cream of the crop on the printed page.

  The result of the diametrically opposed strengths of the two media are Hollywood productions that feature actors and actresses that audiences like to see on the screen—an advantage over the printed word, where readers can imagine the physical appearances of the characters but cannot be warmed by the charm of Gene Tierney, hear the voice of Humphrey Bogart, revel in the eccentricity of Peter Lorre, bask in the smile of Donna Reed, or marvel at the fearless confidence of Clint Eastwood.

  Mystery, crime, and suspense movies remain among the most popular films of this era, just as they have been since the creation of motion pictures, and I confess to being a devotee. In addition to reading every story in this collection (of course!) I watched all but three of the films they inspired. Sometimes I preferred the story, other times the film. They provided different pleasures in most cases, none of which I would willingly have given up.

  It’s a wonderful life!

  —Otto Penzler

  The Witness for the Prosecution

  AGATHA CHRISTIE

  THE STORY

  Original publication: Flynn’s, January 31, 1925, titled “Traitor’s Hands”; first collected under its ultimate, more familiar, title in The Hound of Death and Other St
ories by Agatha Christie (London, Collins, 1933)

  THE MOST POPULAR and beloved mystery writer who ever lived, Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller Christie Mallowan (1890–1976) was also the most successful (she has reportedly sold more than 2.5 billion books).

  Born in Devon to an English mother and an American who died when she was still a girl, she began writing some romantic short stories but turned to mysteries when she was fairly young. She had numerous rejections, finally selling her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, for $125 in 1920, a paltry sum even then, and her contract bound her to the publisher for four additional books. The book introduced Hercule Poirot, the eccentric Belgian detective who became the first of her famous detectives, the other being the spinster Miss Jane Marple.