The Old Spies Club and Other Intrigues of Rand
Penzler Pick,January  2002:One of the mystery world's all-time prodigies (as well as one of  its best-loved citizens), Edward D. Hoch is a short-story master with a  subspecialty in the "locked room" or "impossible crimes" genre. Thanks to his  many ongoing series characters and hundreds of tricky tales, many first seen in  the pages ofEllery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Hoch's talents have been  celebrated repeatedly by his peers, including those at the Mystery Writers of  America, who made him a Grand Master in 2001.Whether he's writing about Nick Velvet, the brilliant thief who steals only  items with no apparent value; the wandering gunslinger Ben Snow; occult sleuth  Simon Ark; or any of his other instantly recognizable heroes, Ed Hoch is  uniquely successful as a mystery writer in the short story form. It is no wonder  EQMM has labeled him "the king of the classical whodunit."As is fairly obvious, to pull off the execution of an "impossible" crime within  the confines of just a few pages, and also to resolve that crime in those same  few pages, is a serious challenge. It usually tookJohn Dickson  Carr, probably the preeminent practitioner of the locked-room form, a whole  book to accomplish what Hoch manages within a fraction of the space.The Jeffrey Rand stories, now collected for the first time asThe Old Spies  Club, are top contenders for Hoch's most enduring creations. (Those  involving Nick Velvet run a close second, probably because I'm at heart a  romantic, drawn to gentlemen thieves as well as to well-bred secret agents.)Rand, director of the Department of Concealed Communications until his recent  retirement, is an Englishman with an archaeologist wife and a penchant for  finding trouble in exotic places. Among the most satisfying of the Rand  intrigues found here are "Waiting for Mrs. Ryder," which offers a clever riff on  a classic ploy of misdirection, and "The War That Never Was," a dangerous story  of one man's memories and the risks brought about by sharing them.--Otto  Penzler