FANTASTIC CRIME

FANTASTIC CRIME

Introduction by Boyd White

Could smuggling Faerie fruit into Dorimare possibly be connected to the decades-old poisoning of Jeremiah Gibberty with the berries of merciful death?  What is the Society of Sparta’s motivation for engineering a suicide epidemic all across Europe in 1875?  Why do the Three Imposters sew discord and death throughout London as they search for an ancient Roman coin commemorating an orgy held by the Emperor Tiberius?   How can Ben Reichs possibly kill his chief business rival and avoid being demolished when the entire police force has telepathic powers that allow murderers to be detected before they even commit a crime?

The answers to these questions and many more are found in Lloyd Currey’s Fantastic Crime, a genre-bending selection of science fiction, fantasy, and horror that chronicles the exploits of robot detectives, telepathic masterminds, murderous ghosts, and fiendish secret societies.  The books Lloyd has gathered illustrate how classic elements from crime and mystery fiction have long been used to ingenious ends by writers from the fantastic tradition.

Since science fiction’s golden age, numerous authors have expanded the scope of crime and criminals by invoking a wide range of highly imaginative contexts.  E. E. Doc Smith’s The History of Civilization (1934 to 1948) pits the Lensmen, an interstellar peacekeeping force, against the Boskone, a ruthless galactic criminal organization bent on ruling the universe.  The defining space opera, Smith’s Lensman novels provided the blue print not only for DC Comics’ Green Lantern Corps but also George Lucas’ Star Wars saga, as well as numerous intergalactic police forces, such as Poul Anderson’s Time Patrol and Harry Harrison’s Special Corps.  Some of science fiction’s most thoughtful, enduring scenarios, however, involve crimes on a much smaller scale.  In Hal Clement’s Needle (1950), a symbiotic alien policeman and his quarry crash on Earth, respectively taking over the bodies of a young boy and his father as cop and criminal try to outwit one another.  Isaac Asimov’s The Caves of Steel (1954) introduces us to detective Elijah Bailey and his robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw who solve murders in the far future when tensions between humans and robots have reached the breaking point.  Ken Malone, an FBI agent who specializes in “impossibilities,” pursues a telepathic spy in Randall Garrett and Laurence Janifer’s Brain Twister (1962), and DeWitt Dawson, police chief of a small Texas town cut off from the rest of the world by an invisible alien barrier, investigates the death of a Mary Kay sales representative in Patricia Anthony’s Happy Policeman (1994).

Supernatural fiction, of course, has always had its share of investigators of the bizarre and unusual.  Most readers and collectors are familiar with K. and Hesketh Pritchard’s Ghosts: Being the Experiences of Mr. Flaxman Low (1898), Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence (1908), and William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki the Ghost-Finder (1913), but what about Josephine Bacon’s The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon (1913), Uel Key’s The Broken Fang and Other Experiences of a Specialist in Spooks (1920), or John Nicholson’s Costello, Psychic Investigator (1954)?  Drawn into a number of strange disappearances and particularly gruesome murders, Arthur Machen’s Mr. Dyson participates in a memorable series of investigations that bring him into direct contact with the treacherous little people in The Three Imposters (1895), “The Red Hand” (1895) and “The Shining Pyramid” (1895).   Pulp great A. Merritt combines elements of hardboiled crime fiction with supernatural horror in two of his most memorable novels, Burn Witch Burn! (1933) and Creep Shadow! (1934) in which wisecracking New York mobsters team up with a skeptical neurologist to battle a range of dark forces, including an evil dollmaker and a two-thousand-year-old sorceress.  In his World-Fantasy-Award winning The Skin Trade (1988), George R. R. Martin extends the blending of crime fiction and supernatural fiction to its logical conclusion—having monstrous crimes investigated by actual monsters—as P.I. Randi Wade tackles a series of brutal killings with the help of Willie Flambeaux, a collection agent who is an actual werewolf.

Of course, a catalog of Fantastic Crime, by necessity, highlights not only criminals and their adversaries but also the plethora of incredible, over-the-top schemes and devices employed by both sides.  In Richard Marsh’s The Goddess: A Demon (1900), a Hindu idol clockwork automaton commits a series of grisly murders, and in Allan McIvor’s The Mechanic (1908), a brilliant engineer seeks revenge on corrupt industrial trusts by using fluids that deodorize oil and decompose metal.  Robert M. Coates’ The Eater of Darkness (1929) features a weapon that “sees through solids and applies remote-control heat to kill people invisibly.”  Sydeny Horler’s The Screaming Skull and Other Stories (1930) includes a “death beam transmitted over the wireless.”  C. S. Forester’s The Peacemaker is a bumbling schoolmaster who creates a machine that demagnetizes iron at a distance while Belli Luigi’s The Metal Monster (1951) is “a radio-controlled flying killer automaton. . . used for jewel smuggling.” Even the most jaded reader or collector must pause when considering David V. Reed’s The Thing That Made Love (1951), a bit of pulp-fiction insanity whose tag line “No Woman Could Survive Such Harrowing Ecstasy!” apparently refers to women being murdered by a metal swamp monster.

Match wits with Madame Koluchy—doctor, scientist, extortionist, bank robber, murderer—the criminal mastermind behind L. T. Meade’s The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings (1899), a super genius who precedes Siegel and Schuster’s Lex Luthor by three decades.  Try not to get lost while following Gabriel Syme of Scotland Yard’s Philosophical Policemen in G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) as he infiltrates the Supreme Council of Seven, a clandestine terrorist group who may not be quite what it seems.  Wander with orphan Kirth Gersen in Jack Vance’s The Demon Princes (1964 to 1981) as he tracks down the five intergalactic criminals responsible for the death not only of his family but also of an entire planet.

Peruse Fantastic Crime, and discover worlds beyond Holmes and Moriarty.  Be quick.  The game is afoot!

(To view alternate copies of these books and additional fantastic crime titles, click here.)

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5.
CHTHON. Piers Anthony, Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob

CHTHON.

[London]: Macdonald Science Fiction, [1970]. Octavo, boards. First British (and first hardcover) edition. (#225)
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9.
THE STRANGE CASES OF DR. STANCHON. Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon

THE STRANGE CASES OF DR. STANCHON.

New York and London: D. Appleton and Company, 1913. Octavo, pp. [1-8] [1-2] 3-362 [363-364: blank] [note: last leaf is a blank], inserted frontispiece by W. J. [Aylworth?], original decorated salmon cloth, front and spine panels stamped in gold and blind. First edition. First printing with code "(1)" at base of text on page 362. (#147363)
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12.
HYDROGEN STEEL. K. A. Bedford, Kenneth Adrain Bedford

HYDROGEN STEEL.

Calgary, [Alberta, Canada];: Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing A Division of Hades Publications Inc.], [2006]. Octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. (#146655)
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13.
ORBITAL BURN. K. A. Bedford, Kenneth Adrain Bedford

ORBITAL BURN.

[Calgary, Alberta, Canada];: Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing A Division of Hades Publications Inc.], [2004]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#146431)
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32.
THE INVISIBLES: A NOVEL. Edgar Earl Christopher

THE INVISIBLES: A NOVEL.

Akron, Ohio, New York, Chicago: The Saalfield Publishing Company, 1903. Octavo, pp. [1-6] 7-329 [330-332: blank] [note: first and last leaves are blanks], four inserted plates with illustrations by Winfield S. Luken, original pictorial red cloth, front panel stamped in green, white and gold, spine panel stamped in green and gold. First edition. (#150699)
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33.
BY NIGHT. Robert Clay, Keating

BY NIGHT.

Philadelphia & London: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1927. Octavo, pp. [1-6] 7-352, original blue cloth, front and spine panels stamped in white. First U.S. edition. (#147142)
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36.
THE EATER OF DARKNESS. Robert Coates

THE EATER OF DARKNESS.

[Paris: Contact Editions, 1926.]. Octavo, pp. [i-xv] xvi [1] 2-179 [180: blank] [181: printer's imprint] [182-184: blank] [note: paper wrapper folded over first and last leaves; leaf preceding half title leaf is a blank], original marbled paper wrappers, printed paper labels affixed to front and spine panels. First edition. (#9837)
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Price: $1,250.00

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37.
THE EATER OF DARKNESS. Robert Coates

THE EATER OF DARKNESS.

New York: The Macaulay Company, [1929.]. Octavo, pp. [1-10] 11-238 [239-240: blank] [note: last leaf is a blank], original yellow cloth, front panel stamped in black and silver, spine panel stamped in silver, top edge stained yellow. First U.S. (and first hardcover) edition. (#149447)
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38.
VAMPIRE OF THE SKIES. James Corbett

VAMPIRE OF THE SKIES.

London: Herbert Jenkins Limited, [1932]. Octavo, pp. [i-vi] vii [viii] [9-10] 11-282 [283-288: ads], original orange cloth, front and spine panels stamped in black, publisher's monogram stamped in black on rear panel. First edition, first printing with "First Printing, 1932" on copyright page. (#156015)
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Price: $1,750.00

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40.
THE CRACK OF DOOM. Robert Cromie

THE CRACK OF DOOM.

London: Digby, Long & Co., 1895. Octavo, pp. [1-8] [1] 2-214 [215-216: ads] + 8-page publisher's catalogue dated "May 1895" inserted at rear, original red cloth, front cover stamped in black and gold, spine panel stamped in gold, publisher's monogram stamped in blind on rear panel, white endpapers with floral pattern printed in olive green. First edition. (#79735)
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49.
THE SHADOW OF QUONG LUNG. Doyle

THE SHADOW OF QUONG LUNG.

Philadelphia & London: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1900. Octavo, pp. [1-2] [1-6] 7-8 [9-10] 11 [12] 13-267 [268: blank] [269-272; ads] [note: first leaf is a blank; title leaf is a cancel], title page printed in red and blank, original buff cloth, front panel stamped in red, blue and black, spine panel stamped in red and black, t.e.g., other edges untrimmed. First edition, first issue. (#148917)
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58.
HARTMANN THE ANARCHIST; OR, THE DOOM OF THE GREAT CITY. Fawcett, Douglas

HARTMANN THE ANARCHIST; OR, THE DOOM OF THE GREAT CITY.

London: Edward Arnold, 1893. Octavo, pp. [i-vii] viii [1] 2-214 [215-216: ads] + 16-page publisher's catalogue dated "October, 1893" on page [1] inserted at rear, 25 illustrations by Fred T. Jane, original pictorial red cloth, front panel stamped in black, spine panel stamped in gold, yellow coated endpapers, all edges untrimmed. First edition. (#148102)
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61.
THE PEACEMAKER. Forester

THE PEACEMAKER.

Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1934. Octavo, pp. [1-4] [1-3] 4-310 [311-312: blank] [note: last leaf is a blank], original pictorial orange cloth, front and spine panels stamped in black. First U.S. edition. (#104362)
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Price: $450.00

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62.
THE PEACEMAKER. Forester

THE PEACEMAKER.

London: William Heinemann Ltd, [1934]. Octavo, pp. [1-6] 1-341 [342-344: blank] [note: last leaf is a blank], original green cloth, spine panel stamped in gold, Heinemann windmill device stamped in blind in rear panel. First edition. (#111898)
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67.
THE SCARLET FAN. Gates

THE SCARLET FAN.

New York: The Macaulay Company, [1932]. Octavo, pp. [1-10] 11-249 [250-256: ads], original pictorial maroon cloth, front and spine panels stamped in black, top edge stained maroon. First edition. (#152517)
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70.
THE BAT WOMAN. Cromwell Gibbons

THE BAT WOMAN.

New York: Published by World Press, [1938]. Octavo, pp. [1-7] 8-223 [224], with one full-page illustration in text, original green cloth, spine panel stamped in gold. First edition. (#156019)
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82.
MRS. GREET'S STORY OF THE [GOLDEN OWL]. Dora Victoire Greet

MRS. GREET'S STORY OF THE [GOLDEN OWL].

London: Published by The Leadenhall Press, Ltd... Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., Ltd. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons..., 1892-3. Octavo, pp. [i-v] vi [vii-viii] [1] 2-271 [272: publisher’s imprint], 24 inserted plates with illustrations by Ambrose Dudley, design of golden owl impressed in gold on recto of title leaf, printed throughout on brown paper stock, original green cloth, brown paper labels printed in black and gold affixed to front and spine panels, brown endpapers, tan ribbon marker. First edition. (#151906)
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97.
AN ARISTOCRATIC DETECTIVE. Richard Bernard Heldmann, "Richard Marsh."

AN ARISTOCRATIC DETECTIVE.

London: Digby, Long & Co., 1900. Octavo, pp. [i-vi] vii [viii] [1-2] 3-310 [311-312: ads] + 16-page publishers catalogue dated "October 1900" inserted at rear, inserted frontispiece with illustration by Harold Piffard, original pictorial red cloth, front panel stamped in green, black and white, spine panel stamped in black and gold, publisher's monogram stamped in blind on rear panel, white endpapers with floral pattern printed in light green, First edition. (#151756)
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Price: $550.00

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